A month or so ago, I became interested in the frequency of online discussion of the short story “Cat Person,” which was published in the New Yorker in 2017. It was not unusual for my social media algorithm to present me with awkwardly phrased, yet ardent, teenaged literary discourse and attempts at cultural analysis. However, after I was fed the fourth video discussing the virtue or vices, complications, or cultural relevance of Cat Person, I decided I needed to investigate the work for myself.

As Vox summarizes, “The story centers on a 20-year-old college student named Margot who gradually falls into flirtation with an older man named Robert. As Margot and Robert’s relationship develops, and the balance of power between them shifts back and forth, she cycles rapidly between imagining Robert as an adorable naïf who is overwhelmed by her young beauty and sophistication, and imagining him as a vicious and murderous brute.”

Through the commentary littering the platforms where this work is reposted, many women appear to share in the fickleness, hesitation, fear, and confusion of the main character, Margot, in her emotionally tumultuous flirtations with Robert. Margot is sophisticated, yet naïve; she is a character who has evoked both empathy and resonance, pity, and even scorn towards her immaturity and occasional cruelness.

Cat Person is distinctly unsophisticated. It is a slow moving story, ordinary, perhaps boring and definitely a little awkward to read. But what the story lacks in literary value it seems to make up in its relatability. Cat Person appears to capture a distinct reality for many women: the obfuscated lines between the desire of a person and desiring the feeling of one’s own desirability, the fear and vulnerability involved in romance for heterosexual women, and the overwhelming concern of remaining polite, preserving an image of self-possession and nonchalance even in the face of great discomfort or danger.

Above all else, Cat Person centers Margot’s unadulterated, uncensored monologue, the details and nuances of which have resonated with female audiences tired of the superficiality and exteriority of many female characters. In a tweet, Talia Lavin speaks to the unique intimacy of Cat Person, “I guess for me, I liked the interiority, how eerily true it felt. I’ve read so much fiction about the ‘unknowability’ of women and so little about the fearful unknowability of men.”

However, Cat Person was met with some frustration among audiences, particularly among male readers. An account on Twitter dedicated, with tongue-in-cheek, to publishing male responses to Cat Person has gained about 5,000 followers. Margot is frequently described as “judgmental”, “egotistical”, and “shallow”, often blamed for the emotional consequences of her own reckless engagement with this older man. One tweet describes the story as “WASP-y, bland, post-high school garbage”, and interestingly enough, while I personally was moved by Cat Person, I found myself agreeing with a number of these criticisms leveled against Margot’s character.

I don’t believe that Margot should be painted as a blameless victim of Robert, who himself is allegedly intended to be some perfectly disgusting emblem of the patriarchy. I don’t suggest that Margot’s character is untainted by her privilege, carelessness, and unfair judgement, or that Robert doesn’t possess a number of admirable traits himself. And I don’t believe that the crux of Cat Person is to portray, like many critics suggest, an account of a woman “victimized” by an unpleasant encounter with a man. The hazy moral quality of Cat Person itself is what I believe allows it to be so largely relatable. It is not a story of an assault, nor of a predatory relationship. It is a look inside the subtleties of a pervasive power imbalance within romance between men and women. While the experience of an isolated uncomfortable romantic encounter is by no means one that is strictly female, the continual feelings of otherness, fear, and confusion in romantic endeavors with men is what sets Cat Person apart as a story which speaks to a female experience. After her encounter with Robert, Margot imagines herself recounting the dreadful story to an imaginary future partner. She pictures that “… the two of them would collapse into each other’s arms and laugh and laugh” only to cut the daydream short by stating, “but of course there was no such future, because no such boy existed, and never would.”

Cat Person’s ambiguity in what it speaks to is crucial in understanding the ardent reactions which it has elicited. In a “post-feminist” age, the black and white narratives of female victims and male abusers may perhaps be joined by stories such as Cat Person, which highlight instead subtler manifestations of misogyny which are frequently dismissed or overlooked. Through the nuance and candor of Cat Person, those who feel as though their experiences of objectification and otherness which are not “important enough” to be voiced alone, can be heard.