I read ‘The Cat Person’ posted on New Yorker sometime back and it’s a story you feel compelled to read in one go. I liked it because it was contemporary, realistic and feminist. In spite of its American setting/backdrop, it had a universal appeal. The theme was loud and clear – The power imbalance between older men and younger women dating each other.
It also highlights the concept of consensual sex – how there can still be elements of emotional molestation and superiority and subjugation, falling heavy on female assertiveness.
There were layers of following sub-themes too –
- Dynamics of coercion
- the highly manipulative and self-delusionary phase of early courtship,
Margot is scared of being judged by her boyfriend. She is aware of the storm that would follow if she breaks up with him on the grounds of bad sex. To her horror, the guy does not take the rejection on a casual note and abuses her verbally, pestering her, flooding her phone with mean messaging! No matter how much we advance in this constantly changing landscape of technology, space and astronomy, our fundamentals of a happy survival remain flawed, which starts with the relationship with the women around us.
A young woman in the age of her so-called independence, belonging to the era past feminism and modernism, still feels savaged and besotted by the technology and her relationship with a man.
Other facts about “Cat Person” by Kristen Roupenian –
Cat Person went on to get more than 4.5m hits and become the most-read piece of online fiction the New Yorker has published and has also been prosecuted as part of a ‘man-hating liberal agenda’ by many on social media.
Roupenian’s short story collection – ‘You know You Want this’ has won Roupenian a reported $1.2m advance and is being adapted into an HBO series. The stories work in the theme of – ‘the extent to which men rejected by women hate women, and women rejected by men hate themselves.’
Read the story here –
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/11/cat-person
Suggested Reading –