New Critical Approaches to the Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

by Jackson J Benson

  However, present critical opinion has produced two disputes which need to be considered before proceeding. One is the question of whether there is one cat or two cats in the story, and the second is the question of whether the wife wants to have a baby or whether she is already pregnant.

  Carlos Baker calls “Cat in the Rain” a story about “the normal married state” (Writer as Artist, 141) and concludes that the story has a happy ending: “[the cat that the wife has seen in the rain] is finally sent up to her by the kindly old inn-keeper” (Writer as Artist, 136).

  John V. Hagopian sees the story as a marriage crisis “involving the lack of fertility, which is symbolically foreshadowed by the public garden (fertility) dominated by the war monument (death)” (230). He suggests that the wife’s feelings, “‘very small and tight inside . . . really important . . . of supreme importance,’ [are] all phrases that might appropriately be used to describe a woman who is pregnant. The conscious thought of pregnancy never enters her mind, but the feelings associated with it sweep through her” (Hagopian 231–32). Hagopian sees the resolution of the story as a “final, ironic coda. The girl’s symbolic wish [for a cat] is grotesquely fulfilled” (Hagopian, 232) by a cat that “will most certainly not do” (232). Hagopian suggests, in contrast to Baker, that the “tortoise-shell” (94) is “probably not” (Hagopian, 232) the same cat as the one the wife saw in the rain, but he gives neither reason nor evidence for his conclusion.

  David Lodge sides with Hagopian against Baker that there are two cats in the story, but he does so on the weak basis of a negative argument: “Hemingway would have described the kitty as ‘tortoise-shell’” (198). He also agrees with Hagopian that the “cat as a child-surrogate is certainly a possible interpretation” (Lodge, 30), but he disagrees with Hagopian’s interpretation of the girl’s feelings.

  [Hemingway’s phrases do] not, surely, . . . describe a woman who merely wants to be pregnant. Indeed, if we must have a gynaecological reading of the story it is much more plausible to suppose that the wife’s whimsical craving for the cat, and for other things like new clothes and long hair, is the result of her being pregnant. (Lodge 30)

  Lodge enlists biography in support of his thesis about pregnancy: the “Hemingways had left the chilly thaw of Switzerland and gone to Rapallo because Hadley had announced that she was pregnant” (Lodge, 30).

  The number of cats in the story and the wife’s condition are crucial elements in the story’s meaning, and the disputes about them need to be reexamined in terms of all the textual and extra textual evidence.

  Textual evidence in regard to the number of cats suggests that the “kitty” (91) the wife has seen and the “tortoise-shell” (94) the padrone sends to the room are two different cats. In the story, when the wife goes to look for the cat, which she describes as a “kitty,” the wife is the only person who has seen it, and the maid expresses both surprise and disbelief: ”‘A cat?’ the maid laughed. ‘A cat in the rain?’” (92). The “kitty”is obviously an unknown stray animal, and the fact that the cat so quickly disappears, before the wife can get downstairs, reinforces its stray nature. The weather is “brutto tempo” (92), “raining harder” (92), and only one man, protected by a “rubber cape” (92), has ventured out in it. The padrone has an umbrella, which he sends via the maid, but the umbrella is insufficient protection: despite the umbrella the maid insists that “‘We must get back inside. You will be wet’” (92). Since the padrone does not go out in this “bad weather” (92) but sends the maid, who is also unwilling to remain outside, it is highly improbable that either the padrone or the maid would leave the hotel later to look in the rain for a cat. And if they did, it would be impossible for either the padrone or the maid to find and capture a particular stray, wet cat which neither of them has ever seen. It is much more likely that the padrone has a cat of his own in the hotel, probably for protection against rats and mice, a “big tortoise-shell” (94), and that he sends his own cat to the girl in order to please her.

  Extratextual evidence supports the view that there are two different cats. According to Baker, when Hemingway visited Ezra Pound in Rapallo, Pound gave Hemingway a copy of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. “Ernest was unable to take it seriously, though he echoed it once after watching the antics of a pair of cats on a green table in the hotel garden. The big cat gets on the small cat’ he wrote. ‘Sweeney gets on Mrs. Porter’” (Baker, 107). Since both the garden and the green table appear in the published story, it is reasonable to conclude that the “pair of cats” also appears. The “small cat” in Hemingway’s note becomes the female “kitty” (91) the wife sees, and the “big” male cat becomes the “big tortoise-shell” (94) which the padrone sends to the room.

  In regard to the question of pregnancy, Hagopian’s interpretation that the wife “wants” to be pregnant is more valid than Lodge’s counterinterpretation that the wife is pregnant. Lodge’s thesis about the pregnancy seems to be derived from his assumption that the wife’s desires for a “cat, and for other things like new clothes and long hair” (Lodge, 30) are merely “whimsical craving[s]” (30) which “result from her being pregnant” (30). The words, “whimsical craving,” seem to refer to an old wives’ tale that a woman who is pregnant may develop cravings for particular foods. The tale is scientifically sound; the cravings result from the foetus’s need for particular nutrients. But Lodge’s use of the tale is in error. Pregnancy cravings are biologically determined, not “whimsical,” and consequently such cravings cannot be construed to include cats, clothes, candles, silver, or long hair. Textually, the relevant portion of the story to which Hagopian alludes in his interpretation, and about which Lodge assumes greater gynecological expertise, reads in full:

  As the American girl passed the office, the padrone bowed from his desk. Something felt very small and tight inside the girl. The padrone made her feel very small and at the same time really important. She had a momentary feeling of being of supreme importance. She went on up the stairs. (IOT, 93)

  In this passage the girl’s sensations occur suddenly in relation to the padrone bowing from his desk, and they are “momentary” (93). There are no such sudden and momentary sensations of pregnancy. And the words “small” and “tight” do no gynecologically describe a condition of pregnancy. The girl would not feel “small” because she would, in fact, be getting larger; neither would she feel “tight inside” because she would, in fact, be expanding. Furthermore, the text clearly states that it is the “padrone [who] made her feel very small and at the same time really important.” If the girl were pregnant it would have to be the child in her to which her sensations are attributed, not the padrone, and if she were pregnant, it would be the child in her which would be “really important” and of “supreme importance,” not herself in the presence of the padrone. Lodge’s citation of “extratextual support” (30) from Baker that the story was about Hemingway and Hadley and that they had come to Rapallo because “Hadley had announced that she was pregnant” (Lodge, 30) is misleading. Baker admits that his “identification of EH and Hadley with the persons of the story is my surmise. EH denied [it]” (Baker, 580). Baker refers here to a letter from Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald, dated December 24, 1925.

  Cat in the Rain wasnt about Hadley. I know that you and Zelda always thought it was. When I wrote that we were at Rapallo but Hadley was 4 months pregnant with Bumby. The Inn Keeper was the one at Cortina D’Ampezzo and the man and the girl were a harvard kid and his wife that I’d met at Genoa. Hadley never made a speech in her life about wanting a baby because she had been told various things by her doctor and I’d—no use going into all that.

  The only story in which Hadley figures is Out of Season . . . I reported [the drunk of a guide] to the hotel owner—the one who appears in Cat in the Rain. (Letters, 180).

  The relevant point for the purpose here is not that Hemingway denied the story was about Hadley, but that he disassociates Hadley from the wife in the story on the grounds that Hadley was a
lready pregnant, which negates any assumption that Hemingway intended the wife in the story to also be pregnant. Contrary to Lodge’s interpretation, both the textual evidence and the extratextual evidence confirm that the wife is not pregnant.

  The most probable explanation for what Hemingway is rendering, whether accurately or inaccurately, in his description of the girl’s sensations is female sexual arousal in conjunction with the masculine qualities which may initiate them. That Hemingway was much interested in sexual roles and female sexual desire is documented by Michael Reynolds.

  During [Hemingway’s] Toronto winter [1920], he bought and read the Havelock Ellis book, Erotic Symbolism. . . . Ellis confirmed what Ernest suspected: women enjoyed sex as much as he did. In Erotic Symbolism he found detailed explanations of the female orgasm as well as copious analysis and examples of the Krafft-Ebing fetishes, including the erotic nature of hair. (120)

  In January 1921 Hemingway sent a copy of Psychology of Sex to Hadley, and “two weeks later she and Ernest were exchanging ‘essays’ on male and female roles” (Reynolds, 185). In Hemingway’s description in the story, the girl’s feelings pass through three stages, tight inside, important, and of momentary supreme importance, and these stages reflect a correspondence to the sensations of desire, intercourse, and orgasm. An artistic purpose for Hemingway’s description of the girl’s feelings is necessary, and this seems to be the most sound way to interpret them.

  When Hemingway made a note for a story which became “Cat in the Rain” and identified two copulating cats with Sweeney and Mrs. Porter, he was directly alluding to Eliot’s The Waste Land. Hagopian appears to be picking up echoes in the story itself when he sees the public garden as symbolic of fertility, the war monument as symbolic of death, and the crisis in the marriage as a crisis involving the “lack of fertility” (Hagopian, 230). “What seems . . . likely,” as Jackson J. Benson has suggested, “considering Hemingway’s antagonism toward Eliot, is that both [men] were subject to the same influences, and among these was certainly Ezra Pound” (40). Both men were, of course, also looking at the same world, a world unheroically devastated by modern trench warfare and a disillusioned generation that had largely lost its way in the war’s aftermath. Eliot’s eventual response to this world was to turn to Christianity, both personally and poetically. Hemingway’s response to this world was to try in his fiction to find a way to “live in it” (SAR, 148), and in that effort he sometimes created a role model or “code hero” figure. The role model is a man who is usually old and a foreigner, but more importantly, he is a man with dignity, will, and commitment (or endurance). Against this model others can be measured. Recognized role models, or “code heroes,” in Hemingway’s fiction are Pedro Romero in The Sun Also Rises (only nineteen, but with the “old thing” [SAR, 168]), and Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea.

  The role of the padrone in “Cat in the Rain” has been seen as that of a “father” (Hagopian, 231), or a “father figure” (White, 243), who “seems to conform to [the wife’s] notion of what a benevolent and protective father ought to be, not what a father is likely to be” (DeFalco, 159). The difficulty with this thesis is that the padrone does not treat the wife as he would treat a daughter. A father does not stand and bow to a daughter. Nor does the wife respond to the padrone as she would respond to a father. A daughter does not feel small and tight inside when she passes her father. The wife likes the padrone because of the particular qualities which he possesses, and these qualities are manifested through his profession as a hotel keeper. The qualities which the wife likes are delineated in the text in just four sentences: “She liked the deadly serious way he received any complaints. She liked his dignity. She liked the way he wanted to serve her. She liked the way he felt about being a hotel keeper.” The padrone is an admirable man, and although briefly sketched, he is Hemingway’s earliest role model. Each of the padrone’s qualities corresponds to the qualities of the role model as he later appears in Hemingway’s fiction: a man of dignity, will, and commitment. The padrone has dignity, and he lends dignity to his profession: he likes “being a hotel keeper” (92). His “will” is demonstrated in the “deadly serious way” (92) in which he “receives any complaints” (92), and his “commitment” to his profession as a hotel keeper is shown in his efforts to “serve” (92) the wife who is a guest in his hotel. The balance and strength in the padrone’s character is elaborated in a manuscript fragment. Though on one hand he is described as “never servile nor obsequious” (JFK item 319), on the other hand he is shown not to be arrogant: the wife “like[s] the respect he had for her” (item 319). The padrone’s age is also important in terms of the role model figure. Age is related to values that have been proven by experience over time, and in the presence of age the values which the young have lost are made apparent. This relationship between age and values can also be more clearly seen in the manuscript fragments where the padrone is described as “nice and old and polite” (item 319), and he is “nice” and “polite” because he “be-long[s] to the older generation of polite Italians” (item 321). In addition to the padrone’s age, even his tallness can be seen as a reflection of the stature of his character. The padrone has the “old thing” (SAR, 168) of an older generation.

  The wife’s recognition of the padrone’s extraordinary character suggests that her husband, George, lacks the qualities which the wife finds so attractive in the padrone. George has neither dignity nor will nor commitment. He is a “kid” (Letters, 180) who throughout the story remains in the undignified position of “lying propped up” (91) on the bed. He makes a pretense of having the will to get up and take action, but in reality there is no such will in him. When his wife says, “I’m going down and get the kitty” (91), George says, “I’ll do it” (91), but he makes no physical move to do so. He doesn’t even look up from his book. His activity throughout the story is limited to “putting the book down” (93), “resting his eyes” (93), and, on one occasion, “shift[ing] his position in the bed” (93). George’s lack of commitment is shown in the contrast between the way the padrone treats the guests in his hotel and the way George treats his wife. The padrone sends a maid with an umbrella to help the girl when he realizes that the girl is going outside. George, in contrast, makes a flippant, mean-spirited remark: “Don’t get wet” (92). He does not have enough commitment to his wife to care that she is leaving the room with neither umbrella nor rainwear to go out in the rain. Later, when she returns without the cat, George asks, without looking up from his book, “Did you get the cat?” (93). If he were seriously interested, he would look up and see that she doesn’t have a cat. And since he does not look up, he has no concern that his wife might be wet. His wife says, “It was gone” (93), to which he replies, “Wonder where it went to” (93), “resting his eyes from reading” (93). One would expect a response that would express concern for his wife, such as, “That’s too bad,” but the cat’s new location is of greater interest to him than his wife who is before him. When his wife complains, “I want to eat at a table with my own silver and I want candles” (94)—which is a cry for recognition, a place, and a purpose—George orders her to “shut up and get something to read” (94). Rather than respect her, as the padrone does, George disdains her. His egocentricity is so concentrated that he expects his wife to deny her own desires, model herself on her husband, and do as he does.

  The difference between the old padrone and George establishes a dichotomy throughout the story in which George functions as the padrone’s antithesis, and it is the wife’s situation in this dichotomy which creates the story’s meaning. The wife quite clearly recognizes the qualities of the padrone, and she quite clearly feels the effect of George’s lack of character, his indifference, and his rejection of her rightful place in the relationship. The effect is a sense of homelessness, similar to the condition of a homeless cat in the rain, and the authorial voice identifies the cat “crouched under one of the dripping green tables” (91) as a female, “trying to make herself
so compact that she would not be dripped on” (91). When the wife sees the cat in the rain she has no way of knowing that it is female, yet she immediately makes a subconscious transference of her own sense of homelessness to the cat, and she wants to do for the cat what George will not do for her, provide a place of acceptance and comfort. Her identification with the cat remains subconscious: “I don’t know why I wanted it so much” (93), but the identification is made explicit to the reader when the wife says, “‘It isn’t any fun to be a poor kitty out in the rain’” (93), and it is reinforced when she says that she wants a female kitty that will” ‘purr when I stroke her’” (93). The “poor kitty” (91) in the story is ironically the wife herself, an interpretation supported by the manuscript fragments. The fact that the original title of the story was “The Poor Kitty” (item 320), and the fact that in another fragment the husband calls his wife “Kitty” (item 321) indicates that Hemingway’s original intention was to portray the wife as the “poor kitty” and the actual cat in the rain as symbolic of the wife.