Cat’s Eye: Part 3 Summary & Analysis

Back in the present, this moment reveals the darker sides of Elaine’s mental health. She attributes her low self-esteem directly to Cordelia, which suggests that the girls’ friendship was rooted in psychological manipulation. The fact that Elaine feels so comfortable in Jon’s messy apartment surrounded by fake severed arms speaks both to the fragmented nature of her mind and self-esteem, and to the violence underlying her thoughts and memories.

The Happy Gang was a radio show that played during the 1930s and 1950s—though the exact timeline of the novel is unclear, Elaine would not have heard this tune for at least a decade or two. These cheerful variety shows provided a contrast to wartime woes, and Elaine’s memory of that song is attached to her observations of the newly vibrant city because she can’t help but think about what the city was like during the war. The fact that Elaine feels like she needs to reconsider the dress for her opening indicates her anxiety that she will be negatively judged by an audience; it’s telling, then, that she compares choosing a dress to developing a military strategy. It’s also poignant that she feels so haunted by Cordelia, and particularly helpful in this instance that she sees her in the behavior of a young girl—whatever her relationship with Cordelia was, it was clearly at its most potent during their childhood.

Elaine’s complicated relationship to other women begins at a young age, as she is sent to a school where gender divisions are strict—the contrast between her relationship with Stephen at home and at school is one of the first keys to this confusing gendered division. Whereas at home the two can play freely without much regard for the categories of boys and girls, at school those exact divisions form the center of social life. The inherent exclusion formed by these categories breeds a sense of secrecy, which occupies Elaine. Her desire for female friends stems from a lack of that very thing, but her fear of some kind of “blunder” points to the sense of awkwardness that Elaine already feels among women. She fears mistakes on her own part, and this sense of internalized shame comes from the strong social expectations placed on young women.

Carol and Elaine’s friendship is defined by contrast. Carol and her family differ from Elaine’s both in their wealth and their relationship to religion, and it is through that difference that Elaine learns that her family is poor. This is also the first time religion is explicitly mentioned in the book, indicating that it takes a secondary place in Elaine’s family, if it has a place at all—this establishes a dynamic of “home” being the space of science, and “outside” being the space of religion. Carol’s decision to gossip about Elaine from the very beginning hints at more sinister impulses hiding underneath this friendship, while the decaying bridge and warnings about bad men in the ravine add a sense of explicit danger, as though one wrong move could lead to devastating consequences.

Elaine seems to define herself primarily in relation to others at this point, so it becomes difficult for her when she has to choose between Carol and her brother. One of the underlying threads here indicates that science is, at this point in time, a distinctively male field, because Elaine sees the “delicacy” and revulsion that Carol displays as plausible and even admirable. The type of relationships modeled here are ones where sameness and similarity matters the most—just as Carol’s parents sleep in matching twin beds, Elaine feels an impulse to agree with and follow after Carol. This impulse to agree maps onto having a sense of the “normal” that a person prioritizes over his or her own instincts.

The closer that Elaine becomes to other girls, the more she compares herself to them and tries to be like them. Elaine consistently seems a little bemused by the activities that the other girls like, and just plays along because she values the friendships. This shows, in part, the psychology of these relationships, which require not explicit demands or threats, but rather more subtle and internalized mechanisms of peer pressure and social norms. A particularly significant moment here is when Elaine realizes that a large part of girlhood social identity consists of doing things like cutting out pictures and then self-deprecatingly saying that one has done a bad job on it. Her decision to choose these girls over her brother and over time in the zoology building makes this the first major swerve away from science and scientific curiosity and into a more vibrant social world instead. Grace defines this world and provides the initial contours for female relationships—because of her beauty and delicacy, she is able to control both of the other girls.

Although the two gifts from her friends are relatively neutral—fairly gendered but not particularly symbolic—the camera and photo album are extremely important. Cameras create semi-artistic images of a person, forcing them to look at themselves from an external perspective. Elaine does not seem to like looking at pictures of herself and does so with particularly critical eyes. It’s also important that she prefers the negatives to printed images, revealing an interest in the theme of inversion and opposites—it shows how easily different realities can hide under the surface.

Grace choosing Elaine over Carol shows the beginning of competition in these friendships, as well as manipulation, though it favors Elaine. Instead of representing life and love, which would fit her maternal role, Mrs. Smeath’s heart symbolizes corruption. When the adult Elaine interjects that she hates Mrs. Smeath, it suggests that Mrs. Smeath’s behavior mirrors the symbolic corruption of her heart. Elaine’s admission also reminds the reader that adults can traumatically influence children.

In this seasonal change from winter to spring, Elaine continues to see any evidence of rubble or devastation in relation to the war. This persistent metaphor both attests to the literal influence of World War II, and serves as a means of either directly foreshadowing negative events to come or just reflecting Elaine’s own cynical perspective. Though she and Stephen still spend time together, the marks of aging and gender divides only grow stronger as Elaine is only allowed to keep company with Stephen and her friends if she keeps totally quiet.

Elaine’s play with Carol and Grace also continues to reflect her ambivalent relationship to them. On the one hand, she desires these relationships, even when they center around Grace and her feminine beauty. On the other hand, she sees herself as different from the other two girls, and that difference leads to isolation when she chooses to climb into the rafters alone. Elaine’s decision reflects her divided character, split between her yearning for intimate female friendships and her more independent, introverted impulses.

This scene introduces the inspiration behind the novel’s title, Cat’s Eye. The fact that the marbles are won through these schoolyard competitions adds a sense both of risk and of commonness to the marbles—Elaine’s prized treasure is something that could be lost at any point, and something that everyone has but that she still wants to keep secret because it is precious to her. This sense of secrecy extends to Stephen as well, who decides to bury the best of his marbles just for the pleasure of the secret. This passage establishes two key images: the cat’s eye marble that Elaine hides in her purse, and sees as a sign of the unknown, and the buried jar of marbles out by the ravine. Because they are out by the ravine, these marbles also add something beautiful to an area that has thus far been described as the place where “bad men” might be.

This summer trip out of Toronto lets Elaine and her family return to their old lifestyle for a while, and Elaine reconnects with her brother—this shows the degree to which the changes in their relationship have to do with social expectations, because their relationship reverts with the disappearance of those expectations. This is true for Elaine’s father, as well, who relishes the return to research. The description of this caterpillar infestation reflects the novel’s relationship to natural catastrophe—there is a sense of powerlessness, but this gets mixed in with admiration.

Elaine’s father seems to have an extremely apocalyptic attitude, one that ties scientific development—in the form of the atom bomb—with the unintended consequence of the end of the world. Humans can spark grand-scale catastrophe, but they cannot control those catastrophes. Elaine’s sense of isolation here is also important, because she seems prone to isolating herself both from her friends, in their absence, and from her family, though they are all there. The experience she has watching her parents refers to how easily a person can feel unseen by others, and how the experience of being ignored or unseen can mess with one’s sense of reality.

Because the reader has already encountered Cordelia at two different stages in Elaine’s life—later in her youth and as a phantom occupying her adult thoughts—this introduction feels particularly loaded. First of all, Carol and Grace greet Elaine much more lukewarmly than she expects, which signal that the arrival of this third person has shifted the dynamics of their friendship. Cordelia herself is described as being unconventional—the pageboy haircut, lopsided grin, and adult handshake—but all in ways that give her more power. From the outset, she disarms Elaine by mixing propriety with a somewhat conniving attitude; telling her that she stepped in dog poop, for example, could be interpreted as polite advice or a warning that Elaine is going to be scrutinized.

The comparison between their two mothers is important, because Elaine begins to develop a stronger sense of what a “normal woman” and “normal family” are supposed to look like by observing Cordelia’s mother and sisters. Elaine starts to form her sense of identity through her conflicts with Cordelia at this point—she admires Cordelia, and that admiration gives Cordelia her power. On the other hand, the novel hints that Cordelia’s family life is not as simple as it seems—at home, she is excluded from her older sisters and made to feel less accomplished than them. The conflicts that arise out of that could point both to the reason for Cordelia’s desire to exert power over her friends, and to the infectious nature that hierarchies and exclusion have—the more one is excluded, the more one wants to exclude others.

The story that Cordelia tells about the dead people here adds another dark layer to the bridge metaphor, which fits with the novel’s sense of layered time. What Cordelia picks up on is that if there is a cemetery upstream, dead bodies very literally would decompose into the water—however, she gives more profound meaning by treating the water as an accumulation of these dead bodies. This adds to the sense that, even if something changes form or appearance over time, it can never fully lose its history.

The pretend meals made of nightshade stand for the dangerous games these girls are playing—on the one hand, there is the whimsy of the fantastical worlds of their imagination, and on the other is the very deep shadow of death. Underpinning all of this is Cordelia’s desire for control and leadership, which manifests in her attempts to shock the other girls.

The rules that develop for girls are strict but universal—they are expected to wear clothing that directly restricts their behavior, because they will be blamed if their underwear shows. This restricts rowdier activities, and the novel hints at the ways in which these rules further divide girls and boys. However, the response among the girls is not anger but rather to respond with cruel humor, turning the rules into an excuse to make fun of their teachers. The cruelty is reciprocal, however, as evidenced by Miss Lumley’s strictness. The girls clearly develop their attitudes in response to their teachers. Furthermore, because Miss Lumley’s cruelty is framed as appropriate punishment, she is teaching the children to blame themselves for certain abuses—if they step out of line, even just in the form of showing fear, she is allowed to punish them physically. This kind of demonstration of power can be easily internalized.

Miss Lumley’s obsession with England clearly speaks to the culture of nationalism that developed around World War II. One of the deepest impacts the war seems to have had on this generation’s psyche was the reinforcement of an international culture that celebrated England and the UK. The etiquette born here, of thrift and avoiding waste, clearly strikes a chord with Elaine, who remembers these events many years later.