Cat’s Eye: Part 11 Summary & Analysis

Elaine observes how fragments of the past do not necessarily mean anything if they go unnoticed, and that even great events like wars will eventually be forgotten. However, she does still observe the importance of the Union Jack, which means that the connection between Canada and the UK has yet to disappear. She also tends to notice churches, even though they remain in the background for her at this point, and any evidence of how much Toronto has gentrified, though she doesn’t necessarily see this transformation as progress. Thinking about Josef now that she is older helps her to understand him, though she also now understands the problematic nature of their relationship—thinking as a mother changes her perspective, though she also does not seem to be that connected with her daughters and their desires.

Elaine still perceives any interruption by a woman to be Cordelia, which reveals the influence the latter still has on her. This stranger represents the darker side of ongoing conflicts, and the novel reminds readers of the human costs of wars. It also is revealed here that Stephen is not only dead, but has been killed—this is glossed over in the narrative at this moment, but is a shocking reveal for the reader. In many ways, the novel refuses to let its climactic events be climactic, instead focusing on the long-term impact that they have on someone’s life. Instead, Elaine reflects on suffering on a global scale, and seems to have an extremely pessimistic view about the state of the world—the contrast between Toronto’s upward development that has been described so far and this description of global poverty is poignant.

Because Elaine has to move back home, she starts feeling like her life and her identity are fragmented. These are emotions somewhat typical of coming-of-age stories, but exaggerated in Elaine’s case, in part due to her traumatic relationship to Cordelia—she has already divided the past from the present, and now separates different areas of her life and keeps them apart from each other.

Elaine loves both men, because they symbolize different things for her—whereas her relationship with Josef has a push and pull of authority that recalls her dynamic with Cordelia, Jon represents a refreshing escape from all of that.

Jon comes to symbolize a relationship to art that Elaine ultimately rejects, which is of art as a pure state of being that rejects social norms—in his case, it involves a typical masculine rejection of doing household work, as well as a sense that art is something totally pure. Jon still puts women into boxes, just like Cordelia had, but he sorts Elaine into the superior box—at the same time as feeling flattered, Elaine feels dismissed by him for two reasons: any categorization of her as a woman bothers her, and boxing off people with labels tends to incite her hostility. Elaine’s yearning towards individuality shines through, and her instinctive sense that these modes of categorizing others have more to do with power dynamics than they do with a true judgement about the world.

Although Josef has no real claim over Elaine as they lack a formal relationship, he shows how easily one falls into normative conventions when in relationships by feeling so possessive over her.

Elaine’s bias against Susie almost has deadly consequences. Susie has had an illegal abortion, which nearly takes her life, and only has Elaine as her primary contact. This shows how lopsided their relationship is, as Elaine dislikes Susie strongly, but Susie does not seem to share her suspicion if she trusts Elaine in this situation. Instead of feeling pity for Susie after identifying with her, Elaine translates her sense of identification with Susie into feelings of vengeance, as though she had won some kind of competition. This shows the depth of her own internal cruelty, much of which has sprung out of these gendered biases against women that she still carries.

Josef, unsurprisingly, reacts to the event with melancholy, which means that he is making the crisis about himself, instead of Susie. Elaine ends things with Josef in the same manner that she ended her relationship with Cordelia: by walking away. Elaine seems to follow a pattern of intense emotional involvement with someone that culminates in her abandoning them, which relates to her sense of individuality and her asociality. However, Elaine does seem to be plugged into a social sense of morality that bleeds into her dreams, as she identifies Susie with Cordelia. This shows her sense of guilt for abandoning both women, though this guilt transforms instantly into Elaine’s old sense of self-hatred, which manifests in believing that she has done something wrong.

Elaine’s relationship with Jon does not display particularly unique qualities, except for the newfound lack of secrecy. In general, this novel places a heavy emphasis on secrecy and on the division between what happens in public and in private: the two differ even in the most private relationships, and a sense of secrecy or asociality adds emotional intensity to a situation that is otherwise identical. Secrecy creates situations of power. In their relationship, Jon continues to show a tendency towards inane masculine rejections of conventional norms, all of which result in his access to free relationships with women and pretentious abstract art.

Elaine continues to go to school and begins to develop her own style. While she dislikes these Renaissance images for their religiosity and depictions of women, she does start to develop her own artistic style by using old egg-based paints. The fact that she is drawn to mirrors and reflective surfaces shows that one of her main interests is this theme of reflection, which relates to the question of reality: what is real, and how does one perceive reality?

In her own work, Elaine is drawn to these depictions of contemporary objects, in part because of the commercial art that she studies—she learns from an artist who works in advertising, and this reveals much contemporary art is funded and supported in the commercial realm. There is never pure art, as artists have to make a living; older generations of artists made religious work because they were supported by the church, while contemporary artists make work influenced by commercialism because funding exists there.

Elaine’s parents finally return to an environment more like where they spent their summers, which fully allows Elaine to live in the freedom of adulthood. Elaine’s life seems to be a balance of her daytime work and art, as she does not make enough money to self-sustain from her art; the fact that she paints so much anyway shows the depth of her dedication to her craft. She has grown only more distant from Stephen, as represented by his few and taciturn postcards from all over the world. Far from the closeness of their childhood, it seems that their adult relationship is characterized by the bare bones of information exchange.

When Stephen finally returns to Toronto, he does so in the capacity of a respected professor, and his talk echoes the topics he taught Elaine about during her childhood: time and space. From what Elaine understands of his theory, the present is composed of pieces of the past, as all light comes from distant stars and all of reality is a relic of the Big Bang.

When the two siblings speak after the talk, it becomes clear that the significant images from their childhood that have so defined Elaine’s thinking are relatively inconsequential for Stephen. He does not remember the songs he sang or the marbles, which have been recurring images at every stage of Elaine’s life. However, she finds something comforting in his secrecy, as it reminds her of his privacy in their childhood. In this case, it’s difficult to discern what is a sign of his consistent character and what is a record of the innate differences between people. Two people will always conflict over their perspectives on what is important, and this creates a profound difference between even close relatives. Elaine clearly still loves her brother and thinks of his birthday, but it also appears that she sees him as somehow having transcended time and convention.

Jon’s art has come to resemble Elaine’s, which shows the weakness of his prior relationship to art. Furthermore, his lack of desire to ask her for advice also shows that he continues to have this gendered expectation that female artists have nothing to share with him. He has a strong ego that withstands all evidence of his own weakness, from his changing opinions to his lack of success. His social milieu has expanded to other typical non-conformers in the form of these American draft dodgers, who have a principled anti-war sentiment but also seem to have national beliefs given their disappointments about Toronto.

Over time, the relationship between Elaine and Jon has become more domestic, and it appears normal until her pregnancy. Elaine’s pregnancy triggers massive dissociation, and the images she describes resemble her description of being buried when she was a child. It seems that pregnancy has a similar connotation of self-negation for Elaine, and it sets her off into the past. Although a child usually symbolizes futurity, it makes Elaine think of the past, perhaps to a degree because having a child inevitably reminds her of when she was a child.

This orientation towards the past manifests in her work, as she paints significant items from the period where she was being bullied by Cordelia—all of which are chapter names of the novel. Although Elaine does not explicitly remember these objects, they do come from defining moments, which shows that even though she has repressed these events, the past remains close at hand. She even begins self-harming again, by biting her fingers like she used to. The most important figure she paints is Mrs. Smeath, the adult witness to her bullying, whom she hated so fiercely as a child. Mrs. Smeath makes Elaine feel young and badly behaved—she reminds her of the worst of social conventions, both religious and class-based, and reminds her that she once did not fit into those conventional spaces. Instead of blaming the spaces, Elaine blamed and continues to blame herself, which reinforces the theme of how an identity can be built in situations of conflict.

This two year jump is the largest gap in time up until this point, and it both starts to indicate that the narrative is nearing its end, in that gaps in time prevent a sense of building up to a climax, and also implies that the experience of early motherhood was not particularly essential to Elaine. As she reveals, the first two years felt like living in a fog, which indicates that her identity as a mother does not feel like her central identity.

Elaine’s relationship to Jon seems to be souring, in part because he treats their relationship with humor that she does not share. Playing socially conventional roles, like having children and getting married, seems like a joke to him, whereas it’s serious for her. Elaine also starts to get a sense of her own mortality in this moment, as she approaches thirty, and begins to thematize her own inevitable death in that sense of aging.

The conflicts between Jon and Elaine are shockingly violent and a complete disruption from the sort of conflicts that Elaine was involved with in the past, which centered on emotional manipulation, secrecy, and withholding, instead of anger and physical aggression. It appears that they are both uncomfortable with playing adults, even though they also know they have to play those roles. Jon’s relationship to art seems to have become more material with his constructions: this turns the entire world into a playground, because anything can be art, and anything can be made into a toy. Elaine does not seem able to balance her motherhood and her art, and is drained of energy—being a mother is a job in itself, and drains her of energy.

Elaine’s decision to go to this feminist meaning implies that she was open towards feminism, which could be surprising given her tendency to describe men as blameless. This aligns with her open-mindedness, but that same tendency to avoid dogmatism makes it difficult for her to integrate into this feminist space. Elaine also reflects on how much femininity focuses on convincing women that they need to correct something about themselves via cosmetic products or changes in their behavior, which connects to the bullying Elaine experienced from Cordelia.

The discussions in Elaine’s feminist group highlight just how grave misogynistic violence and cruelty can be. It’s particularly important to note Elaine’s observation that she never spends time in all-female spaces, which is a partial explanation of her distrust of sisterhood. Although Elaine and the novel acknowledge and condemn sexist violence, and do seem to lay a lot of pressure on the patriarchy, the conclusions remain undogmatic in that Elaine does not want to reject men entirely. She feels uncomfortable being asked to take sides or throw away her family, but she feels that this decision makes her vulnerable to criticism.

Elaine’s relationship to art becomes more clear, as she uses art to process the gender and power-based themes that have plagued her for years. This image of Mary shows that religion remains important to her, while emphasizing the power and pressure that women face in domestic roles, from motherhood to being a wife. Elaine reclaims oppressive images in her Mary paintings and turns them on their head to show an empowering side to them. She seems not to care about whether her paintings are taken seriously, which indicates that her motivation is not explicitly to influence others, but rather to let out something inside her. Jon reveals his own internalized sexism when he dismisses her as a woman, though Elaine seems to have grown—instead of taking his criticism on authority, she recognizes him for a jerk and is able to recognize her own anger.

This art show reveals that Elaine can get along with other women, despite her previous doubts and experiences, and it also provides more perspective on what art can mean to women. The three women that Elaine works with all focus on different kinds of material art, where they repurpose objects to create aesthetics and messages. Though they all have different styles and resources, the common theme is to juxtapose domestic materials, like lint, with the artistic theme. It shows that even things like shopping, sex, and laundry have artistic potential, and that daily lives can be made the vehicle for profound messages. It’s clear that their audience has them typecast as feminists in what is meant to be a derogatory way, but that only serves to make their sexist views seem small.

Elaine continues to feel marginal even at her own exhibition, because she does not trust the strength of her work or her relationships. She is still haunted by Cordelia, which shows the indelible mark that relationship left on her. Interestingly, meeting another mother who disapproves of her work leads her to think about her own mother, which also indicates that many of Elaine’s internalized expectations about the important relationships in her life have a sense of conflict at their center

These images of Mrs. Smeath draw on several of the themes that caused Elaine the most distress and pain as a child. She highlights memorable objects like the rubber plant, as well as themes of deception and hypocrisy as forms of corruption through the rotting face and the damaged heart being given as a gift.

The confrontation with this angry woman, whom Elaine first takes as a vision from the past, shows how much conflict can be embedded in art. This woman clearly took the art personally, as an insult to a certain kind of matronly motherhood and religious belief. However, the scandal ends up benefitting Elaine, which is a recurring motif in the novel—explicit attempts to sabotage someone can play to their benefit. The women are still typecast in a sexist manner by the media, but they show that embracing stigma can be empowering when they claim for themselves the same words that were wielded against them.

This reveal of Cordelia’s institutionalization is one of the novel’s biggest turns, as it shows the complete reversal of their fortunes. Although her decline has been tracked and even foreshadowed for most of the novel, the fact that Cordelia attempted suicide shows depths to her psyche and to her pain that clash with the image of her as a torturing child. Cordelia has been brought down, kept on drugs, and trapped in a situation that clearly makes her unhappy.

Elaine does not appear to bear much sympathy for Cordelia and refuses to help her, proving inaction to the pinnacle of cruelty in the novel. Elaine and Cordelia serve as mirrors for each other, and they disturb the reader’s natural desire to designate allegiances with a protagonist and against an antagonist. Elaine’s dreams are highly symbolic, and they recall images both from her childhood, in the snow angel, and her art—these images carry a sense of danger and risk, and they represent the calm before the storm—the moment before the body hits the awaiting cliffs or before the cloth has been lifted to reveal the skull. Deception and secrecy are key images here, as is the sense of painful anticipation.