In Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye, an unconventional theory is given about time. The protagonist, Elaine, describes time as being “not a line but a dimension” (Atwood 3) and something “You don’t look back along but down through like water” (3), where events are “like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another” (3) and nothing ever disappears in it. In the novel, Elaine is forever haunted by memories of Cordelia, a childhood friend who she was both adored and tormented by. Despite not having any contact with her for several decades, Elaine continues to see Cordelia in every female she encounters in her life, causing her to have trust issues with her daughters, strangers from work as well as herself. In Cat’s Eye, Cordelia is proof that “Nothing [ever] goes away” (3) in time.
To begin with, Cordelia affects the way in which Elaine views her own daughters. When they reach the age of nine, Elaine begins to fear that she may hate them, as not only was it at this age that she herself met and was terrorized by Cordelia, but because she also sees Cordelia in their every action. For instance, when her daughters begin to respond with “So?”(268) to her, Elaine suddenly sees, not her children, but Cordelia in accurate detail, as if she is standing right in front of her, and is reminded about how “Cordelia did the same thing, at the same age” (268), with “The same folded arms, the same immobile face, the blank-eyed stare” (268). This mirrors the way in which, whenever Elaine would provide excuses for why she did not want to go out and play during her childhood years, Cordelia would simply reply with a discerning “So?” (268). Because of the parallelism she sees between the words and actions of both Cordelia and her daughters, Elaine is incapable of trusting her children and has a strained relationship with them, due to the way in which she was treated by Cordelia in the past. Moreover, Elaine suspects that “Maybe... [her] daughters are doing this sort of thing [bullying] themselves, to someone else” (Atwood 159) because their behaviour, in her opinion, is identical to Cordelia’s. While “Most mothers worry when their daughter reach adolescence, [Elaine] sigh[s]…with relief” (159) when her children enter their teenage years as she no longer sees Cordelia in them. This is because after the ages of twelve and thirteen, Cordelia was no longer a physical part of Elaine’s life, having moved elsewhere and changed schools. However, the fact that Elaine sees her two daughters as Cordelia at one point in such great detail, when neither of them have even the slightest connection to her past with Cordelia, proves that, while time acts as a means for her to temporarily forget about the events in her life, they never truly go away in her mind.
In addition, Elaine sees Cordelia even in the female strangers she encounters through her work as an artist. For instance, when a female reporter questions why she always paints women instead of men during an interview, Elaine immediately “catch[es] [her]self picking at... [her] fingers” (121) out of nervousness. Here, Elaine’s behaviour mimics the way in which she used to cope by “gnaw[ing] the cuticles off from around… [her] fingernails” (153) back when Cordelia had “so much power over [her]” (153) and would endlessly interrogate her. For instance, as a little girl, Elaine remembers being relentlessly questioned upon picking up a piece of paper off the ground by Cordelia, who would criticize every little thing, “What was the thing we saw you pick up? ... What sort of paper?... Why did you pick it up? ... What did you do with it?” (245). The way in which Cordelia would question the young Elaine mirrors the way in which the reporter continuously asks the present day Elaine, “Do men like your work?” (120) “Why do you paint all those women then? ... Why do you paint?” (121). Because the reporter’s questions resemble those of Cordelia’s to her, Elaine continues to feel progressively uncomfortable around her, and ultimately begins to hear words coming out of the reporter’s mouth which are not being said. This voice tells her, “Your clothes are stupid. Your art is crap. Sit up straight and don’t answer back” (Atwood 121). The voice Elaine hears in her head, which she believes is coming from the female reporter, mirrors the way in which Cordelia would continuously deprecate her during her childhood, using phrases such as “You are... [such] a stupe!” (170). While the reporter does not directly attack her artistic style, Elaine still feels threatened and is unable to trust her, due to the fact that the reporter’s questions and the voice supposedly coming out of her sounds too much like Cordelia to her. Here, the reporter’s words act as a trigger from which Elaine is sent back to her past with Cordelia. It is a sign that for Elaine, Cordelia is still deeply present in her mind at all times. While Cordelia herself has not physically been in Elaine’s life for the past thirty years, whenever a female does anything remotely similar to what Cordelia used to do to her as a child, Elaine is thrown back into her past memories of her childhood friend. The fact that Elaine reacts in such a negative manner to the reporter in both physical and emotional terms, an individual who is in no way connected to her past with Cordelia, proves that nothing ever goes away in time, no matter how much time has passed. For Elaine, it is Cordelia who never goes away in time and is instead brought back to life in her mind time and time again.
Last but not least, Elaine sees Cordelia in herself and thus thinks that she “know[s] too much to be good” (207). For instance, the adult Elaine has an experience where, when she tries to leave a drunken woman on the streets after helping her up off the ground, the woman tells her that “you don’t love me” (207). Instantly, this causes Elaine to connect the way in which she treats the drunken lady to the way she was treated by Cordelia during her childhood years. During her friendship with Cordelia, there was an incident where Elaine was abandoned by her in the cold. Because these two actions are similar in Elaine’s eyes, she fears that she is becoming increasingly like Cordelia, an individual who “made [her] believe [she] was nothing” (Atwood 268) as a child. As a result, when Elaine attempts to leave the drunken woman and hears her words, she sees Cordelia in herself, and begins to conclude that she herself is “vengeful, greedy, secretive and sly” (207), traits Cordelia possessed during their childhood. The apprehension Elaine feels about turning into Cordelia, despite having helped the woman up initially, is reflected in one of her paintings, titled Half a Face, which features Cordelia’s entire face with a another face behind her covered with a white cloth. In this painting, “Cordelia is afraid of [Elaine]... because in some way [they] changed places” (304), indicating that Elaine, as the artist, no longer believes that Cordelia is the one who should be feared. Instead, Elaine believes that it is herself that people should be frightened of, and this thought causes her to be unable to trust herself. The fact that Elaine takes an intoxicated woman’s simple words to heart and as a result sees herself as Cordelia, when the two have had no contact with each other in several decades, proves that nothing truly goes away in time. Rather, all that is needed is a trigger, which, in this case, is Elaine’s abandoning of the drunken woman and the woman’s words directed towards her. This inevitably sends the protagonist into another flashback, bringing back several memories of her and Cordelia and proving that time does not erase anything.
In Cat’s Eye, Cordelia is proof that nothing disappears in time. Instead, memories and events are hidden away in Elaine’s mind, stacked on top of one another, only to resurface again when she interacts with females and connects their behaviour with that of Cordelia’s. This causes her to have trust issues with all the women in her life, as she is never able to get over the comparisons her mind makes between Cordelia and every other female she comes into contact with because these memories never go away. For instance, because of the parallelism Elaine observes between the actions and words of both Cordelia in the past and her daughters in the present, Elaine is reminded of the ways in which Cordelia would talk to her, as she sees Cordelia in her daughters. In addition, because the reporter’s questioning style is similar to that of Cordelia’s, Elaine remembers the way in which Cordelia would interrogate her about everything she did as a child, as she sees Cordelia in the reporter. Moreover, because of the resemblance Elaine sees between the actions of her leaving an intoxicated woman alone on the streets and Cordelia leaving her all alone in a park as a child, Elaine reminisces about the way in which she was abandoned by her so-called friend, and subsequently sees Cordelia in herself. Thus, the fact that every interaction with a female, including herself, leaves Elaine thinking about Cordelia, when they have not seen each other in years, proves that no matter how much time passes in the novel, nothing ever goes away. Instead, all that is required is a trigger, which will send Elaine into her past with Cordelia, from which there is no escape.