Analysis Of Cat In The Rain By Ernest Hemingway

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Ernest Hemingway, an American writer, is one of the pioneers of the modernist movement in literature. He was born in Chicago in 1899 and he is characterized for being known as a virile man, but his stories and characters reflect personality of a sensible human, even though at first sight his characters doesn’t seem so. His style of writing requires reading his stories more than once just to get through the layers and find the true meaning of his words. His two short stories, “Cat in the Rain” and “Mr. and Mrs. Elliot”, portray the intimacy of marriage, and the relationship between a man and a woman in that time. Both stories have a married couple that face the gender and sexual difficulties, and what is expected by society for them to behave …show more content…

(Donaldson 172) With all this female movement and change in society, Hemingway was inspired to write his stories, at first sight his female characters are perceived as a typical woman of the 19th century, submissive to his masculine man, but if you go through the layers, you realized that is a woman trying to become a new modern woman and to be free. “And I want to eat at a table with my own silver and I want candles.” (316) The woman in Cat in the Rain has always been obedient to his husband, but now it’s time for a change. She doesn’t want to live the same life she is used to and she also wants feel loved by him. She is ready for a transformation in her life, “Don’t you think it would be a good idea if let my hair grow out?” (316), she says to her husband on the expectation of having her own identity and being table to decide her own choices. Later, he replies: “Oh, shut up and get something read,” (316), treating her with indifference, like she a little girl instead of an adult. In Mr and Mrs …show more content…

Another reason that may have inspired Hemingway to write this type of stories was because of his troubled youth. His mother used to dress him as a girl so he could pretend to be his twin sister. So because of the insecurity he had growing up he passed this insecurities to his characters and his fascination of genders identities. (Kennedy 192). For Cat in the Rain, it may appear that the man is an indifference husband with difficulties of sharing his emotions towards his wife, which make him look masculine. Nonetheless, by making her dress as a boy and showing not interested on her in a romantic atmosphere, it seems that he may have sexual preferences for men. For the other story, Mr Elliot is a lawyer who pretends to be a poet, by paying his success. They both travel from one city to another just to show off that they have travelled around Europe. They have dinner with friends whom they all seem to admire his poetry and they all enjoy this false pretentious appearance. Nevertheless, in reality he is just a man that got into bed with a woman until he was 25 years old and he has sexual problems with Mrs Elliot, due to the fact that might as well also be

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