Elaine Risley

Title Analysis: In the novel, Elaine, the main character, has a cat’s eye marble from her childhood that she holds dear and keeps safe. She used this marble to look at the world in another perspective. “I can see people moving like bright animated dolls, their mouths opening and closing but no real words coming out. I can look at their shapes and sizes, their colors, without feeling anything else about them. I am alive in my eyes only.” (Atwood 157) Elaine viewed the world in a more philosophical way when looking through the cat’s eye. She compares people to puppet’s and their words as unimportant. Basically, these people, in Elaine’s world, have nothing to offer. Seeing these people as dolls and not as humans also lets her feel no kind of

Role/function:

a. narrator of Cat’s Eye

b. protagonist of Cat’s Eye

2. Changes:

a. Tomboy as a child

i. “I have never seen so many girls’ clothes in one place.” (Atwood 53),

b. “feminine” when introduced to trio

i. brainwash her into thinking that if she did not act in the way that they wanted, she was not a girl at all ii. “I worry about what I’ve said today, the expression on my face, how I walk, what I wear, because all of these things need improvement. I am not normal, I am not like other girls.” (Atwood 130)

3. Conflicts:

a. Trio vs. Elaine

i. “They’re there at recess, and in the cellar at lunchtime. They comment on the kind of lunch I have, how I hold my sandwich, how I chew. On the way home from school I have to walk in front of them, or behind. In front is worse because they talk about how I’m walking, how I look from behind.” (Atwood 131) ii. neurotic behavior such as peeling skin to the point of drawing blood and biting her lips.

b. Other women vs. Elaine

i. “…But still I feel outnumbered, as if they are a species of which I am not a member. “ (Atwood 94)

4. Resolutions:

a. Forgiving Cordelia

i. “I reach out my arms to her, bend down, hands open to show I have no weapon. It’s all right, I say to her. You can go home now.” (Atwood

Elaine and Cordelia become friends again in high school. In these years, Elaine finds that she can now exert power over Cordelia. Through Elaine’s eyes, this is payback for all the years Cordelia did the same to her. Though this is not enough to repress the memories of the pain she was put through. In the end, Elaine returns to the bridge she nearly died at due to Cordelia. She meditates and envisions Cordelia. She then allows herself to let go of the pain and forgive Cordelia.

i. “I know she’s looking at me, the lopsided mouth smiling a little, the face closed and defiant. There is the same shame, the sick feeling in my body, the same knowledge of my own wrongness, awkwardness, weakness; the same wish to be loved; the same loneliness; the same fear. But these are not my own emotions any more. They are Cordelia’s; as they always were. […] I reach out my arms to her, bend down, hands open to show I have no weapon. It’s all right, I say to her. You can go home now.” (Atwood 459)

3. Compare Elaine’s childhood personality and her adult personality.

a. To put it plain and simple, Elaine, as a child, was naïve. Elaine, as an adult, is wiser.

i. “I am just not measuring up, although they are giving me every chance. I will have to do better. But better at what?” (Atwood