Cat’s EyeMargaret Atwood

Presentation by:

Jenna BrawleyLeah AddingtionRegan DuarteCaitlin GarciaAnna Reiniger

Rachel Vinjamuri

About the AuthorMargaret Atwood is a Canadian author of more than forty

books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa, and grew up in northern Ontario, Quebec,

and Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master’s degree from Radcliffe College. Atwood often portrays female characters dominated by patriarchy in her novels, like Cat’s

Eye, and sheds light on women's social oppression that results from patriarchal ideologies. Throughout her writing career,

Margaret Atwood has received numerous awards and honorary degrees.

About the BookCat’s Eye is a first-person reflection of the life of a

painter named Elaine. Her most vivid memories are of her grade school group of friends – most notably Cordelia, the leader of the trio of girls – whose

influences continue to haunt and shape Elaine's life and art throughout her adulthood. The novel is set in

Canada from the time of World War II to the late 1980s, and highlights many cultural aspects of that time

period, including feminism and various modern art movements. Cat’s Eye was a finalist for the 1988

Governor General's Award and for the 1989 Booker Prize.

Plot SummaryWhen Elaine returns to her hometown in Toronto for a retrospective show of her

artwork, she finds herself recalling vivid childhood memories. In her young years, Elaine is never in one place for long as she travels with her free-spirited mother and entomologist father. At the age of eight, her father finds a new job

and she is forced to live in one spot. For the first time in her life, she has to regularly attend a public school and make friends, and she soon realizes that

her uncommon upbringing has left her feeling unprepared to meet the standards and expectations of conventional femininity and womanhood. Elaine makes friends with a trio of girls – Carol, Grace, and Cordelia, the leader of the group – who often bully her. One winter day, the girls throw Elaine's hat into a

ravine and abandon her after she falls into the frozen water. Elaine sees a vision of the Virgin Mary, who guides her to safety. This is a turning point in Elaine’s

young life, and she decides she no longer wants to allow herself to be a victim. She makes new friends, but during high school, she reestablishes a friendship with Cordelia. The two girls lose touch with one another after high school. The

narrative then follows Elaine through her teenage years and into early adulthood as she becomes an art student and painter. She continues to be

haunted by her childhood and has difficulties forming relationships with other women as a result.

Symbols & ThemesA main symbol in this book actually gives the book its name, Cat’s Eye. Growing up, Elaine and her brother would play with marbles, and her

prized possession was a cat's eye marble that she kept in her red purse. The cat's eye later appears as a common motif in Elaine's

paintings, linked with those she perceived to be an ally or a source of comfort, although she does not remember why it is associated with those feelings. When Elaine finds the marble in her red purse years later, she regains many long-forgotten memories surrounding her

desire to escape the persecution of her so-called friends.

The most prominent theme in Cat's Eye is the exploration and construction of identity. The story is written primarily as a set of

flashbacks, as Elaine reflects on the forgotten events of her childhood that shaped her personality, her self-esteem, and her identity as a

woman.

RetrospectiveWe now present to you our own

retrospective art show of Elaine’s life and the pivotal moments that ultimately shaped her identity…

One of the major themes in Cat’s Eye was gender roles/identities. It directly relates to the article, The Social Construction of Gender by Judith Lorber. Lorber states that gender isn’t an inherent quality that everyone is just born with, rather it is ingrained in our day to day life. Prior to moving to Toronto, Elaine would spend the majority of her time with her brother. When she moved, she suddenly was around other little girls all the time. A particular little girl, named Cordelia, became someone Elaine followed as a guide on how to act like a girl. The first time Elaine went to Cordelia’s house, her perspective began to change. “I begin to want things I’ve never wanted before; braids, a dressing-gown, purse of my own. Something is unfolding, being revealed to me. I see that there’s a whole world of girls and their doings that has been unknown to me, and that I can be a part of it…” (62). One of the first thing she learns is to say her scrap book is “awful”. “It’s the thing you have to say, so I begin to say it too,” (62). Elaine not only learned from Cordelia, but also Cordelia’s older sisters. “But now these bodies are revealed in their true upsetting light: alien and bizarre, hairy, squashy, monstrous,” (97). What Elaine learns at a young age, sets up her actions and beliefs in the future. The picture I drew portrays Elaine as her younger self, thinking about all the things she has learned about being a girl.

~ Rachel Vinjamuri ~

~ Leah Addington ~

"It turns colder and colder. I lie with my knees up, as close to my body as I can get them. I'm peeling the skin off my feet; I can do it without looking, by touch. I worry about what I've said today, the expression on my face, how I walk, what I

wear, because all of these things need improvement. I am not normal, I am not like other girls. Cordelia tells me so, but she

will help me. Grace and Carol will help me too. It will take hard work and a long time.”

This particular chapter highlights Elaine's self-consciousness and low self-esteem. Even though Cordelia bullies and controls her, she views her as her best friend because Elaine believes

Cordelia will make her a better person, which in her adolescence, translates to something that will make her

happy. Her coming of age in adolescence and relationships with people are two major themes in Cat's Eye, and it is shown through the friendship she believes she has with Cordelia, but instead, Cordelia is bullying her by "helping" her be a better person. Elaine is oppressed by women throughout the book,

which challenges the material we have covered in class since we have focused the oppression of women as a whole, not as an individual who feels oppressed by her own sex. However,

Margaret Atwood argues that oppression can form in any relationship. The description of her peeling her feet reveals that mentally, Elaine is troubled by the fact "She never had

[any friends] before, and [she's] terrified of losing them. [She] wants to please" (132). She's trapped in this mindset that she needs other people to make her happy. But once she finds art, she realizes she doesn't need people to make her happy--she

can have own happiness by doing what empowers her, without the help of anyone. 

Chapter 22 pages 127-132:

~ Anna Reiniger ~

This piece shows Elaine in her bed with darkness surrounding her, the only light that is coming in is from the window in her room. In the text, she was asked to draw what she does after she gets home from school. She chose to draw this. This shows

how excluded she feels, how alone she is, and how tired she is. I chose to use only the color black

because it signifies her feelings at this moment. When Elaine is at school she has a specific role to play, but when she gets home she realizes that it is all a farce. She has no true friends, and in the end she can only trust herself. In essence she is

alone in this cruel world, and she is okay with that. At this moment Elaine realizes that she doesn’t

need her “friends” approval, and she begins to live her life for herself rather than for others. She now knows that she doesn’t have to act like a girl just

because she is one.

Chapter 31

page 293

I chose to paint the scene at the end of chapter 35 because I felt that it was a significant turning point in Elaine's life and it resonated with my experiences growing up quite a bit.

 Elaine was raised somewhat in isolation by her father (a scientist), her mother, and older brother.

When they moved to Toronto, Elaine befriended two girls, Grace and Carol, but because she was not exposed to much city life or the friendship of girls her own age, she came into her new life with a

lack of understanding of what it means to be a girl in the big city. Unfortunately when a girl named Cordelia befriends the trio, the dynamic of the group becomes abusive toward Elaine and the other three girls take advantage of her naïveté. This scene takes place just after Cordelia throws Elaine's hat into a ravine, forces her to retrieve it, and then leaves just as Elaine falls through the ice and

begins to go into hypothermic shock. As she is succumbing to the shock, she realizes that the girls she has been calling her friends have in fact been cruel and abusive and begins to see a vision of a

hooded woman with light emanating from her body, a heavenly glow, and a bright heart floating toward her, giving her the strength to return home despite the fact that she was close to death.

 After this point Elaine turns the tables on Cordelia and begins to bully her bully. Although she grows out of this, some of these new behaviors follow her adulthood until she is able to face some of the

repressed memories.  

This particular point of the story highlights issues of abuse and violence within genders and goes into some of the dangers of conventional, and taught, femininity.  Had Elaine known to surround herself by friends who would appreciate her for who she is as a person and not try to force her to

conform to societal expectations, she would not have been abused by Cordelia and her crew. ~ Caitlin Garcia ~

For my final project I wanted to focus on the personal growth of the main character. I wanted to create a piece that represents self-realization through Elaine. I'm focusing on chapter 74 because I feel that is the climax of her self-realization and ultimate growth as an individual. On page 459 there is a quote that encapsulates how Elaine has changed and blossomed: " I'm older now, I'm stronger. If she stays here any longer she will freeze to death; she will be left behind in the wrong time. It's almost too late.     I reach out my arms to her, bend down, hands open to show I have no weapon. It's alright, I say to her. You can go home now."     Going off of the idea that Elaine has blossomed and grown into her own individualized self, I wanted to create a drawing of flowers blossoming. The continuation of the blossoming flowers signifies the stages and hardships Elaine went through but in the end became a realized individual.      Identity is one of the main themes of this book which goes along well with themes discussed in our class. We've discussed a lot about the hardships of embracing who we are when dealing with our bodies, gender and sexual orientation in this class. I think we can correlate a lot of what we have discussed in class to this book.

~ Regan Duarte~