Hemingway’s In Our Time-“Cat in the Rain”
1.) Composition History A.) Notes about his life with Hadley (Hemingway’s first wife) hint at a story ready to be written, but abruptly postponed. B.) Hemingway’s earliest notes for “Cat in the Rain” were sketched in late February 1923 at Rapallo, the setting of the story. C.) After visiting Ezra Pound in Chambry-Sur- Montreux, Hemingway finished four pages of a manuscript, giving up in the process, labeling it as “False start Rapallo story possible Fascito Story.” D.) The manuscript establishes elements found in his finished product, such as the hotel, train trip from Genoa, and gives a nickname to the wife: Kitty. E.) A year later he returned to the story with another manuscript of ten pages and identified it as a “First Draft Original Manuscript/ March 1924/ E.M.H.” F.) This was followed by a nineteen-page titled manuscript with another rejected title, “The Poor Kitty.” G.) Finally, he titled the typescript “Cat in the Rain.”

2.) Publication History A.) It is likely the story was completed in March of 1924. B.) There is no immediate evidence that Hemingway submitted “Cat in the Rain” for publication. C.) The setting, the subject matter, and the partial indebtedness to T.S. Elliot are possible reasons why Hemingway didn’t want “Cat in the Rain” to be published right away. D.) Another possible reason why Hemingway didn’t publish “Cat in the Rain” right away was because he had his eye on “The Boni Liveright Book” first mentioned to Edward O’Brian in November of 1923 and Hemingway was saving “Cat in the Rain” for that purpose. E.) “Cat in the Rain” joined “The End of Something,” “The Three-Day Blow,” and “The Battler” from the following winter to be the first four published In Our Time in October of 1925.

3.) Sources and Influences A.) Hemingway wrote a letter to Scott Fitzgerald on December 24th of 1925. He denied any biographical source for the story: “Cat in the Rain wasn’t about Hadley. When I wrote that we were at Rapallo but Hadley was 4 months pregnant with Bumby. 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.” B.) Jeffery Meyers claims that a doctor had told Hadley not to have a child or to abort the one she was carrying. C.) Ezra Pound lent Hemingway a copy of “The Waste Land,” the poem of Eliot’s that most profoundly influenced Hemingway’s fiction.

D.) A woman before her mirror, thinking of her hair and threatening some impulsive act to bestir her supine and cynical companion and finally driven to a neurotic outburst, all derive from Elliot’s poem. E.) “A Game of Chess,” the monologue in Elliot’s “The Waste Land” depicts a conflict between the husband and the wife decision to have an abortion.

4.) Critical Studies A.) John Hagopian noted some of the thematic changes through the scenes in the terms for the husband, the wife and her terms for the cat. In the first scene she is “the American wife,” he is “the husband,” and she refers to the cat as “the poor kitty,” a rejected title for the story. In the lobby scene, she is “the wife,” and there is no reference to the cat. Out in the square she becomes “the American girl,” and speaks of the cat, the kitty, and il gatto. Returning through the lobby she is “the American girl” or “the girl,” and the cat is not mentioned. Back in the room, the husband is named George, she becomes his “wife,” and the “poor kitty” becomes a “cat.” B.) The shift from “wife” to “girl” to “wife” coincide with that from “kitty” to “cat” to “kitty.” Aligning “kitty” with “wife” and “girl” with “cat.” These shifts according to Hagopian point to a crisis involving the lack of fertility and reveals that wanting a cat is really a metaphor for wanting a child. C.) Another critic, Warren Bennett demonstrates the irony of receiving a tortoise-shell cat at the very end of the short story. That cat is no kitty, has not been in the rain, is probably a male given its size, and like almost all tortoise-shell males is sterile. D.) Gertrude White disagrees with John Hagopian’s interpretation that the man in the rubber cape is a condom for protection against the fertilizing rain. E.) According to Gertrude White, the cat in the rain is symbolic “not only of the child (the wife) wants but of the child she is; the child in her which her husband refuses to indulge… in a world that takes no account of one’s nature, one’s comforts, one’s desires.” F.) David Lodge argues that the wife’s sensations as she passes the hotel-keeper and her other cravings are more those of a woman who is pregnant than one who wants to be and cannot.

5.) Additional Comments A.) Both the American Wife and George display tremendous selfishness throughout the short story. The wife is always complaining about something and George just wants her to “shut up and get something to read” (94). The “American way of vacationing” is contrasted with the “Italian way of vacationing.” The Americans want material objects and become bored if they do not get what they want. The Italians on the other hand go the war memorial and honor those who have died. B.) Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory is evident in “Cat in the Rain.” There is something underneath the surface. Her desire for a cat really means her desire to have a child. The man in the rubber cape represents a condom which prevents the American wife from getting want she wants.