The Catbird Seat

James Thurber was primarily a humorist, and “The Catbird Seat” is a farce. Its mundane setting—a dull office where efficiency is seen as the master value—is in stark contrast to the machinations of the two main characters in their near burlesque (and largely one-sided) conflict. Much of the comedic effect stems from the degree to which Mrs. Barrows’s behavior offends Mr. Martin. He convinces himself that she deserves death for using folksy sayings, for suggesting that they have too many filing cabinets, and for bewitching Mr. Fitweiler at a party.

The central plot is Mr. Martin’s private war with Mrs. Barrows, and the story’s essential comic tone is demonstrated in the fact that only Mr. Martin knows that he is at war. Mrs. Barrows, the target of his plot, has no idea that she is Mr. Martin’s nemesis. In a different type of story, Mr. Martin’s actions would look sinister and not humorous, but his response to Mrs. Barrows’s ostensible invasion of the office is so ludicrously excessive that the narrative’s absurdity is immediately obvious.

From the beginning, Thurber sets up the conflict as a battle of the sexes. Mr. Martin and Mrs. Barrows serve as foils for each other, but Thurber frequently casts men and women as foils for each other on a macro scale. When Mr. Martin contemplates Mrs. Barrows’s offenses, he remembers the “faults of the woman as a woman” (1). For Mr. Martin, her womanhood grants her innate inadequacies. In turn, she describes him as a “drab, ordinary little man” (5). However, Mr. Martin is so devoted to his department—and to his filing system—that he scarcely seems “ordinary”; in fact, Thurber gives no indication that Mr. Martin has a sense of purpose outside of work. The stakes are farcically high for what is, at its core, a mere workplace clash of temperaments, because Mr. Martin does not have anything else that he obviously cares about.

The two main characters contrast not only in gender but in personality. Mr. Martin is efficient and quiet. Mrs. Barrows is, according to Mr. Martin, chaotic and noisy. Mr. Martin is devoted to the company and his system. Mrs. Barrows—again, according to Mr. Martin—charms Mr. Fitweiler at a party and slides into a position that she never deserved. Mr. Martin is sober and reserved, while the boisterous Mrs. Barrows attends parties and drinks. Mr. Martin simply wants things to stay the way they are, and she is an obstacle to this desire. Their characters do not understand the other’s needs; in Thurber’s fictional worlds, men and women rarely understand each other.

Framed against the theme of the battle between men and women, “The Catbird Seat” could be interpreted as an authorial thesis that male-created systems are more efficacious than those created by women, and, in this context, the story’s conclusion would suggest that a committed man will triumph over a committed woman in a contest of wills. However, such a reading is superficial at best and neglects Thurber’s trenchant irony. As the two main characters are foils for one another, the rigid dichotomy between their personalities exemplifies Thurber’s comedic exploitation of stereotypes. The story is a pointed riff, playing on a patriarchally gendered model of the cosmos dating to antiquity: masculine order versus feminine chaos, masculine civilizing heroism subduing an unruly feminine wilderness, the rational masculine mind conquering the irrational feminine body. Thurber takes this time-honored schema and puts an exponent on its defects. Mr. Martin’s traditionally masculine qualities—a logical temperament, a propensity for order, superior executive foresight—are so inflexible and gratuitous that they become pathological. His unchallenged sense of order yields a psychological stagnation, and blandness becomes one of his defining features. The stereotype, to an extent, paradoxically becomes inverted: Mr. Martin appears submissive while Mrs. Barrows appears domineering. He cannot stand that Mrs. Barrows would threaten his rigidity with her life and color. The nature of Mr. Martin’s victory is purposely anticlimactic. Once Mrs. Barrows is gone, Mr. Martin returns to work and resumes his normal pace.

Various interpretive frameworks are possible. If one focuses on Mr. Martin’s victory over Mrs. Barrows, the story can be read as the victory of sensible men over unstable women. It is also possible, however, to read Mr. Martin as a boring “fool” who has nothing to live for except his dull job. When he conquers his nemesis, he celebrates with two glasses of milk and then returns to work. He is the protagonist, but he is not a hero.