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Aunt Emily Cutrer
Kate is Aunt Emily’s stepdaughter, Jules’s daughter, and Binx’s step-cousin. She is five years younger than Binx, making her about 25 in the story. She has been shy and sensitive since childhood, and it’s implied that she has often had difficulty making friends and feeling comfortable around other people. Binx is one of the only people who really understands her and can make her laugh. Kate also appears to suffer from mental illness of some kind, though the novel does not make its nature clear—the symptoms seem consistent with anxiety or what is now known as PTSD (the term didn’t come about till about 20 years after the novel is set). She sees a therapist named Merle Mink. Every once in a while, Kate comes up with a grand vision for changing her life but inevitably becomes depressed soon after. Kate and Aunt Emily have a contentious relationship; though Emily once took an older sister role in her life, Kate now feels she has surpassed her stepmother and resents her. Kate was once engaged to a good man named Lyell Lovell, but Lyell was killed in a car crash on the eve of their wedding, when Kate was 19. Kate calls the accident’s aftermath the happiest time in her life because she felt so free from people’s expectations of her, though the trauma of this event causes her ongoing distress. After that, she is briefly engaged to Walter Wade but breaks the engagement. Binx casually proposes to her during one of her painful episodes. After Kate recovers from a sedative overdose, she and Binx take a train to Chicago and discuss their future. Eventually, they agree that if Binx gives her lots of guidance and reassurance in daily life, her anxiety will improve, and they can have a good marriage. A year later, Kate’s anxiety appears to be more manageable—she can venture into public alone for small errands—and she and Binx are contentedly married.
Kate Cutrer Quotes in The Moviegoer
The The Moviegoer quotes below are all either spoken by Kate Cutrer or refer to Kate Cutrer. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 2, Section 3
Quotes
“Have you noticed that only in time of illness or disaster or death are people real? I remember at the time of the wreck—people were so kind and helpful and solid. Everyone pretended that our lives until that moment had been every bit as real as the moment itself and that the future must be real too, when the truth was that our reality had been purchased only by Lyell's death. In another hour or so we had all faded out again and gone our dim ways.”
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Chapter 2, Section 12
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One minute I am straining every nerve to be the sort of person I was expected to be and shaking in my boots for fear I would fail—and the next minute to know with the calmest certitude that even if I could succeed and become your joyous and creative person, that it was not good enough for me and that I had something better. I was free. Now I am saying good-by, Merle. And I walked out, as free as a bird for the first time in my life […] I know I am right or I would not feel so wonderful.
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Chapter 4, Section 2
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It was ten years ago that I last rode a train, from San Francisco to New Orleans, and so ten years since I last enjoyed the peculiar gnosis of trains, stood on the eminence from which there is revealed both the sorry litter of the past and the future bright and simple as can be, and the going itself, one's privileged progress through the world. But trains have changed. […] Our roomettes turn out to be little coffins for a single person. From time to time, I notice, people in roomettes stick their heads out into the corridor for some sight of human kind.
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She takes the bottle. "Will you tell me what to do?"
“Sure."
"You can do it because you are not religious. God is not religious. You are the unmoved mover. You don’t need God or anyone else—no credit to you, unless it is a credit to be the most self-centered person alive. I don’t know whether I love you, but I believe in you and I will do what you tell me. Now if I marry you, will you tell me: Kate, this morning do such and such, and if we have to go to a party, will you tell me: Kate, stand right there and have three drinks and talk to so and so? Will you?'”
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Epilogue
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"I've got to be sure about one thing […] I'm going to sit next to the window on the Lake side and put the cape jasmine in my lap?"
"That's right."
"And you'll be thinking of me just that way?"
"That's right."
"Good by."
"Good by." […] I watch her walk toward St Charles, cape jasmine held against her cheek, until my brothers and sisters call out behind me.
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Get the entire The Moviegoer LitChart as a printable PDF.
Kate Cutrer Quotes in The Moviegoer
The The Moviegoer quotes below are all either spoken by Kate Cutrer or refer to Kate Cutrer. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 2, Section 3
Quotes
“Have you noticed that only in time of illness or disaster or death are people real? I remember at the time of the wreck—people were so kind and helpful and solid. Everyone pretended that our lives until that moment had been every bit as real as the moment itself and that the future must be real too, when the truth was that our reality had been purchased only by Lyell's death. In another hour or so we had all faded out again and gone our dim ways.”
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Chapter 2, Section 12
Quotes
One minute I am straining every nerve to be the sort of person I was expected to be and shaking in my boots for fear I would fail—and the next minute to know with the calmest certitude that even if I could succeed and become your joyous and creative person, that it was not good enough for me and that I had something better. I was free. Now I am saying good-by, Merle. And I walked out, as free as a bird for the first time in my life […] I know I am right or I would not feel so wonderful.
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Chapter 4, Section 2
Quotes
It was ten years ago that I last rode a train, from San Francisco to New Orleans, and so ten years since I last enjoyed the peculiar gnosis of trains, stood on the eminence from which there is revealed both the sorry litter of the past and the future bright and simple as can be, and the going itself, one's privileged progress through the world. But trains have changed. […] Our roomettes turn out to be little coffins for a single person. From time to time, I notice, people in roomettes stick their heads out into the corridor for some sight of human kind.
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She takes the bottle. "Will you tell me what to do?"
“Sure."
"You can do it because you are not religious. God is not religious. You are the unmoved mover. You don’t need God or anyone else—no credit to you, unless it is a credit to be the most self-centered person alive. I don’t know whether I love you, but I believe in you and I will do what you tell me. Now if I marry you, will you tell me: Kate, this morning do such and such, and if we have to go to a party, will you tell me: Kate, stand right there and have three drinks and talk to so and so? Will you?'”
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Epilogue
Quotes
"I've got to be sure about one thing […] I'm going to sit next to the window on the Lake side and put the cape jasmine in my lap?"
"That's right."
"And you'll be thinking of me just that way?"
"That's right."
"Good by."
"Good by." […] I watch her walk toward St Charles, cape jasmine held against her cheek, until my brothers and sisters call out behind me.
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