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Cat in the Rain Hemingway

Cat in the Rain - Hemingway


To marry someone is to accept to live beside this loved person for the rest of the life. While time gives the opportunity to make the beloved happier everyday, it can also have disastrous consequences such as monotony. When a couple arrives at this sad situation, once will do anything to get a little excitements; whether by distracting his mind or worse, flirting with someone else. “Cat in the rain”, written by Ernest Hemingway, presents a couple who lost their last spark of love. I will show the loneliness of the woman, her attraction for another man, and try to interpret her desires.
From the beginning of the text, a lot of spatial boundaries are drawn. These boundaries ultimately evoke a claustrophobic sense of isolation, especially for the American wife. Being the only American couple in an Italian hotel, the couple is isolated on a cultural level. The second sentence shows also cultural isolation: “They did not know any of the people they passed on the stairs on the way to and from their room” (Hemingway 129). The woman standing at the window is also a sign of solitude. Instead of describing the relation between the American wife and her husband, Hemingway describes the view from the hotel’s room as if there was nothing to say about them or their mutual love. By proposing to get the kitty for his wife, the husband dos not intend to serve her, but more assumes his duty of husband and gentleman. He gives her a choice, signaling his opposite desire. She refuses his offer as if she didn’t expect anything from him anymore: “No, I’ll get it” (19). The husband doesn’t show any interest in what his wife is doing and comes up with a poor answer: “Don’t get wet” (Hemingway 22).
When life beside her husband tends to be boring, a wife sometimes flirts with other man. The hotel owner bowing to the American woman as she passes the office is a contrast with the husband. He stands up whereas the husband stays on the bed. The hotel owner is the introduction of a new male model, challenging the husband. She sees the man as a hotel owner, contrasting with a hotelkeeper, giving him much more respect and putting him on a higher level in the society. The insistence of the verb “to like” shows definitely the attraction the woman has for the hotelkeeper: “Liking him she opened the door” (33). The interaction with this other man distracts her from her primary goal of getting the kitty and she now hesitates do go outside under the rain: “Perhaps she could go along the caves” (34).
Once she is outside, the maid’s question to the American woman could be on something else than the cat “Ha perdutato quaque cosa, Signora?” (41). She hasn’t lost any cat, as she doesn’t own it. She lost something deep inside her.
The wife’ remark that she wants a kitty can be interpreted as a symbol of her desire to have a child. Or perhaps she is already pregnant and just imagining what it will be like when the baby comes. Obviously, the woman is in search of something here, either companionship, attention, love, or a sense of belonging; and seemingly willing to go to whatever extremes to get what she wants. George, confronted with these impossibilities, secure in his own narcissistic possession of a boyish wife and happy with his reading, his own substitute for passion, tells her: “Oh, shut up and get something to read” (48). If she didn’t know why she wanted the cat before, her next words make it clear that she does now: “`Anyway, I want a cat,’ she said, I want a cat. I want a cat now. If I can’t have long hair or any fun, I can have a cat’” (88). Gone is any pretense of compassionate desire to protect the cat; the cat is clearly a substitute for her needs.
Love can die within the marriage and once love is gone, there is nothing left. Hemingway’s “Cat in the rain” is a typical example of a couple that lost their mutual love. Passionate conversations have been replaced by insignificant comments and all the magic between the two persons has disappear. The real danger is to see a beloved drifting away, attracted by another person.