[5] Furlong-Clancy explains that the artist is allowing the viewer to decide whether this is a "small hiatus in conversation or a social visit tinged with awkwardness.

[6] Cassatt does not allow either woman to "become mere additional prettiness, a form displaying feminine beauty, or even illustrating female social intimacies.

[6] Pollock notes that Cassatt's decision to cover the visitor's face with a cup of tea is ironic and "a daring move on the painter's part.

"[6]: 86 Broude argues that Cassatt uses the painting to address the changing and challenging ways in which French and American societies viewed gender and femininity.

[4] According to Broude, The Tea carries "ambiguity of meaning and mood and intention, a challenging resistance to any singular or conventional interpretation, which becomes more evident and more problematic for early-21st-century viewers.

"[4] Broude challenges viewers to consider all the complexities and possibilities of The Tea, asking if the painting is "a sentimentalized but essentially straightforward view of women's traditional place within the rites of bourgeois domesticity?

[1] Loughery explains that these feelings arise from Cassatt's depiction of "the too-imposing silver tea service thrust towards the viewer, the odd absence from view of the woman the two guests are speaking to, the raised teacup that obscures (muzzles?)

"[4] While many art spectators have a "reductive interpretation" and "essentialist view" of the artists' work, not considering the "ambivalence" of their paintings, Broude challenges viewers to consider the complexities.

[1] For instance, compared to the work of American-British author Henry James and American artist William Merritt Chase, Loughery says that Cassatt's painting is "a good deal more mysterious, or at least less conventional, in its space and composition than numerous other genteel genre scenes.

"[1] Furlong-Clancy also draws a connection between The Tea and Gustave Caillebotte's Luncheon (1876) which also depicts a bourgeois home full of expensive "silverware, glassware, and dining and entertaining formalities.

[7] For example, Baignères wrote that even though "the facial expressions are completely neglected... the young woman seen at an angle in the foreground is well modeled in the light, with neither gimmick nor repoussoir.

[7] Moffett notes that from "a purely academic point of view" Paul Mantz's description of the piece as "poorly drawn" is not warranted and "seems surprisingly capricious, but perhaps his strong admiration for such earlier artists as Delacroix prejudiced his interpretation of Cassatt's realistic Impressionism.