Constructing the self through memory: Cat's Eye as a novel of female development

In church, Elaine feels perhaps the greatest pressure to conform under the watchful eyes of Grace. At first when Elaine notices the pictures of Jesus surrounded by children of all different colors who look at Him with the same worshipful gaze Elaine has directed toward Grace, she feels included, taken in. Yet she also senses a problem with society's desire to privilege what is white over that which is colored. As the Sunday school class watches slides in which knights with very white skin battle evil, Elaine sees through this illusion, so to speak, noticing the light switches and the wainscoting beneath the projected image. And on White Gift Sunday, Elaine is disturbed because the gifts are "made uniform, bleached of their identity and colors....They look dead."(27) The color white in both circumstances is important, for it introduces a racial element that is reinforced not only by Elaine's identification with ethnic and racial minority figures, but by the association of Elaine with the color black throughout the novel, an association that will be discussed in more detail later. As Toni Morrison notes in Playing in the Dark, characters of color are often used to define, through their difference, the implications of whiteness.(28)

The individuals portrayed in Elaine's painting "Three Muses" all share with Elaine an outsider status in Toronto. She includes these figures in her portrait because as a child, not only is she treated kindly by each one, but she identifies with all of them in their alienation from the dominant culture. First, she sees in her father's associate from India, Mr. Banerji, a creature like herself, "alien and apprehensive."(29) She notices his chewed nails, the misery underneath his smile, the pressure he feels living in a society so foreign to him. Like Elaine, Mr. Banerji is never totally accepted in Toronto. After suffering through years of racial discrimination in the university's promotional system, he finally returns to India.

The second muse is Mrs. Finestein. Elaine enjoys baby-sitting for her son, Brian, since he is uncritical, unlike her friends. But when Grace and Carol point out that Brian is a Jew, revealing their prejudice against the people they call the killers of Jesus, Elaine fears her own ability to protect the child and stops baby-sitting. Still, she feels there is "something extra and a little heroic" about Brian because he is a member of a group that has suffered under Hitler's rule.(30) She later feels the same dimension of heroism added to her own character when her painting "White Gift" is attacked at the art show by a conservative middle-class woman outraged by its blasphemy.

The third figure with whom Elaine identifies is her teacher, Mrs. Stuart. Elaine enjoys Mrs. Stuart's class much more than Mrs. Lumley's. Instead of indoctrinating the students about the superiority of British culture over the culture of the colonies, Mrs. Stuart, a Scot, stresses the positive aspects of foreign lands. Mrs. Stuart, an exile herself, gives Elaine hope, for she offers her images of wonderful foreign places where she may be able to escape the stifling atmosphere of Toronto.