Joe Vastano. Critical analysis #3. Cat’s Eye, by Margaret Atwood.

Cat’s Eye is a work that does not equal the sum of its parts, and the central question is

whether or not Atwood intended this effect. Autobiographical narratives are generally written

with the lilt of hope, as the result of a complete or near-complete redemptive process. For

instance, Mary Karr’s The Liar’s Club (which is straight memoir) gives a clear sense that the

narrator has already done most if not all of the significant and painful emotional work of healing

from childhood trauma. Cat’s Eye has an entirely different feel, along with a different form –

one so disjointed and heavy-handed that it is difficult to tell whether Atwood intended this dreary

effect or whether it might well consist of a hodgepodge of fragments of different works stitched

together to rather unconvincing effect. Cat’s Eye is not an uplifting work but a kind of horror

story. It can be viewed as a subversion of memoir in which we are presumably intended to

empathize with the very psychic dislocation and emotional stunting of its narrator. Present-day

Elaine hopes for redemption – and the reader is left hoping that she will attain it.

If Cat’s Eye succeeds at any level, it is the part of the narrative that explores – in real-time –

Elaine’s experience with a particularly cruel group of girls, which is led by the formidable

Cordelia. The pace is brisk, the characterizations good, and dramatic action is at the forefront,

which works in direct contrast to the narrator’s otherwise relentless navel-gazing. The wider

world is also addressed here, as well as its World War II-era setting, while the cruelty inflicted

on Elaine is offset by the quirkiness and charm of Elaine’s family. Atwood gives stunning

insight into the emotional politics of being a little girl in a world of other little girls, implicitly

interrogating the notion that women are somehow morally and ethically superior to men (the

later scenes with 60s-era radical feminists seems to be an attempt to parody this). Elaine is first

left by the girls for symbolic death (they bury her in a hole and slide plywood over the top) and
then an actual one, when Cordelia throws Elaine’s cap into the dreaded ravine and Elaine nearly

freezes to death trying to retrieve it. These incidents completely numb Elaine on an emotional

level and result in her stress-driven self-mutilation. She shuts down altogether at this point, even

though it results in the first real exercise of her will; the disavowal of Cordelia and the other

girls. Elaine and Cordelia share an almost pathological inability to clear up the past, which has

resulted in present-day Elaine’s chronic reliving of childhood trauma. Most revealing in this

regard are her satirical paintings of the people and events of this tormented time. Referring to

one of her unflattering portraits of Mrs. Smeath, Elaine muses, “Why do I hate her so much?

Why do I care, in any way, what went on in her head?” (Atwood 64).

Cat’s Eye might have been a much thinner book and arguably a more complete work had it

focused entirely on Elaine’s childhood and concluded with her disavowal of the bullying girls,

but that doesn’t serve Atwood’s purpose; Elaine’s victory in leaving these girls is tinged with

still more emotional numbing. If the disavowal had truly been a victory for Elaine, she would

most likely not have “befriended” Cordelia in high school, where she exacts revenge on her

through calculated passive aggression. Well-done memoir hits hardest when the author exhibits

full ownership of the story, when s/he is fully committed to the form as self-redemption. If this

narrative means anything at all, it is as an account of the gradual formulation of Elaine’s self-

reproach; a regret that she has not cultivated more grace in her life, more forgiveness, less spite.

She is haunted not so much by Cordelia and the injustices she received at her hands, but by her

own inability to summon compassion for her.