Cat Person

Much of the conflict in the story rests on the fact that Margot and Robert are strangers. Margot does not know anything about Robert other than assumptions that she can draw based on his appearance and her limited interactions with him. In this, there is both infinite possibility and absolute assumption: That is, Robert could be anything, but all Margot has to go on are the impressions he makes as well as her own personal biases.

Roupenian addresses this aspect of modern dating in an interview with Deborah Treisman: “In the early stages of dating each interaction serves as a kind of Rorschach test for us. We decide that it means something […] but, really, these are reassuring self-deceptions.” (Treisman, Deborah. “Kristen Roupenian on the Self-Deceptions of Dating.” New Yorker, 4 Dec. 2017).

The conflict of the story, therefore, rests on the ways that Margot deceives herself about Robert. She wants him to be better than he is. She wants him to be sensitive, so she deceives herself into not seeing all of the red flags in every interaction with him: him kissing her on the forehead, repeatedly talking about (and then denigrating) her youth, buying her things, putting her into situations (like the bar) where she becomes dependent upon him. In Margot’s quest to be mature and to understand adulthood, she rebrands Robert’s problematic behaviors as the qualities of a sophisticated adult man instead of those of a petulant man-child who targets much younger women.

However, the narrative distinguishes who Margot thinks Robert is from who Robert actually is, mostly through the use of the third-person narrator. The narrator follows Margot, even speaks in the same unfolding way that Margot might speak, but the narrator is also distinct from Margot herself. This use of the third person creates a disconnect between the reader and Margot that would not be there if, for example, the story took place in the first person. The reader might see aspects of themselves in Margot, but they are not meant to embody Margot. Because of this disconnect, the reader is encouraged to believe that Margot’s perspective is not universal. That is, the reader is encouraged to ever-so-slightly doubt that what Margot believes is reality is not, in fact, reality.

Because Margot is a young woman, society is unlikely to believe her. Roupenian may assume that the reader will not believe her young female protagonist, and to give the story an air of authority, creates distance between Margot and the narrator. A question arises as to whether this tactic plays into or plays with (and therefore rubs against) the sexist social tendency to disbelieve young women, although perhaps it is meant to do both at once.

Through the use of voice, Roupenian creates a narrator connected to yet distinct from the protagonist. The narrator’s voice mimics Margot’s youth as well as the “Rorschach test” in dating that Roupenian describes, where things have meaning because we have decided that they do. There is a kind of layering that occurs throughout the piece, as though the narration is constantly unfolding. This is accomplished through the use of longer, more drawn-out sentences that are broken up into smaller clauses via commas; this creates the feeling that the narrative represents an accumulation of material.

The conditional is present throughout the piece. Conditional statements “[discuss] known factors or hypothetical situations and their consequences. Complete conditional sentences contain a conditional clause (often referred to as the if-clause) and the consequence” (“Conditional Sentences.” Grammarly.com). In “Cat Person,” they lend to the uncertainty that Margot feels about Robert and seemingly about life itself: She is not sure which of her reactions to trust. Robert could, at once, be the love of her life and also a potential kidnapper or abuser: Both are equally viable possibilities, according to Margot’s understanding of the world. This accumulation of material resembles the way in which a person might take in an object: layer upon layer at a time, noticing something and then going back to analyze that element over and over again.

Dialogue contrasts with this accumulation of exposition, and breaks up the narrative flow. While the expository and descriptive paragraphs tend to be fairly long and unfolding, the dialogue is short and often rapid-paced. There is a quick back and forth between characters—Margot and Robert, Margot and her stepfather, Margot and Tamara—that resembles the “scaffolding of jokes via text” that readers are told about but never get to see (Paragraph 7).

Unlike the accumulation of expository description, the dialogue is usually short and almost authoritative, something from which the characters can neither escape nor retract. Here the narrative more clearly reveals Robert—separate from Margot’s lens—as well as Margot herself. The narrative shows how Margot wants to be seen, instead of the way that she fears she is seen by everyone else.

Part of Robert’s appeal, after all, is that Margot believes he sees her in ways others do not: She wants to be interesting, an extraordinary new thing. This is, perhaps, accurate, although Margot does not seem to understand the emphasis Robert places on thing. That is, Margot does not understand the objectification at the root of Robert’s interest in her, an objectification described and portrayed by the modern realist genre and fourth-wave feminism. Robert’s objectification demonstrates the ways in which patriarchy—sometimes subtly and sometimes not—structures society.

Part of what Margot is working against are her own internalizations of gender norms and patriarchal assumptions about femininity, which affect how she perceives Robert. Importantly, she gives him—and never herself—the benefit of the doubt, over and over again, even after he has proven what kind of person he is. Even when she sees him in the bar that he earlier refused to go to and her friends escort her out of, Margot feels as though she is being ridiculous; she doesn’t seem to consider that he is out of place in a bar full of college students. It is not until Robert’s final text message that Margot can no longer ignore his misogyny. Roupenian leaves the audience hanging without Margot’s response. Objects, after all, are rarely allowed to respond.