East of Eden

[Happyinheels]

Oh my goodness! I neeeeeed to find my people to talk about this!

Binge watched the series on Netflix today (off work poorly!).

And wow! How incredible? I’m ashamed to say it’s a classic that I’ve never read so can’t compare it to the book. Anyone read the book and watched the series? How does it compare?

I found myself broken in pieces so many times. And soooo many layers to this saga!

Come my people!!!! Talk to me!

The book is longer. I'd have read that first if I were you.

Thanks for this. agree with all you've said, especially the female evil temptress written with massive misogyny. Even as a young teenager, I hated Steinbeck for this and it made me acutely critical of his codified female characters, when he writes men with such profundity.

Absolutely agree with this. He seems to have them as Madonnas or whores really doesn't he, with no roundedness whatsoever. The male characters are very well drawn but the female characters are very one-dimensional.

I’m glad you’re loving this, I’ve got it lined up to watch over the weekend. For anyone wanting more East of Eden, or debating whether to read the book, try The Book Club podcast with Dominic Sandbrook and Tabby Syret, they cover eoE nicely, but you’ll get breakdowns of loads of other classics that have films/series, too. I’ve listened to loads of episodes about books I've already read, and still love their takes on them.

I absolutely feel they felt the need to soften Cathy and give her a motive so we'd have empathy. And I think part of this was driven by the casting of Pugh. I am a die hard Pugh fan, think she's one of our greatest actors working today, and I think just having her play just a psycho-bitch wouldn't have given her enough to do? So they needed to give her some conflict and motive I guess to give her something to lean into.

I think if they'd have had a more conventionally HOT actress in the part (which is how she is in the book - described as looking like an angel from heaven, men can't take their eyes off her, they go mad for her, kill themselves for her) - would we have needed that complexity?

Imagine Megan Fox in the character. I don't think we'd have a problem believing she could just be a bitch for no reason other than enjoying power? Or a young Scarlett Johansson or even Margot Robbie? Where Pugh I think if she played it that way we wouldn't believe it as the men would just ditch her.

Basically I like what they did with the show but it made it a very different and I guess more modern meaning than the book. The book is in many ways about loss of innocence (Eden) and the battle between good and evil. Basically Cathy is the devil. Not a SA survivor. But this version was good too.

Oh god if you liked Wuthering Heights you'll love East of Eden. Steinbeck was 100% influenced by WH - descriptions of landscapes, multi-generational tales etc. Many similarities. Please come back when you've read it and tell me you loved it. Everyone knows the Grapes of Wrath and Mice and Men but Eden is absolutely Steinbeck's masterpiece (IMO)

In the book there is a beautiful passage where Sam Hamilton remembers as a child in Ireland witnessing a public hanging of a man who had done very, very bad things (we never find out what). And making eye contact with the man whose eyes were just dead inside, a person with no soul. And there is a question about what we as a society do with these people to protect ourselves. At the end of this part he says Cathy has the same quality.

As the book deals a lot with good vs evil I guess it's an accepted part of the premise (as delivered to us by Sam) that some people are just born evil.

I see your point BUT in the book she's not really the protagonist. The second two thirds of the book she barely features other than as a malign force in the background. The main characters are Adam, Charles, Li, Aaron, Cal, and the Hamiltons. Cathy is more like just the narrative thread that connects them all... The TV show made her a much bigger character (because, Pugh) and yes I guess they needed to make her more interesting as she was more prominent.

@LittleJustice @GarlicEverything - in defense of Steinbeck from a feminist perspective. I wouldn't think of Cathy as so much of a character as a catalyst. She's supposed to be motiveless, like Iago. We know nothing of her inner life on purpose - because she basically doesn't have one, she's described as basically not having a soul. We have some more layered female characters with Lisa and Abra but it's fundamentally a book about a group of male characters and that's ok - just like The Joy Luck Club is about women, and that's OK too.

As a feminist I loved the depiction of Li and Adam happily cohabiting and co-parenting and finding joy in domestic work and fatherhood, not finding the need to 'take a wife' to do that stuff. Given the book was published in 1952 that's a pretty thorough smashing of patriarchal stereotypes through the prism of the book and the characters featured.

Sam as well, as a midwife and his gentleness and kindness. So I think there are a lot of redeeming feminist elements if you can get past there aren't many female characters and the main one there is is a monster.

Well the book is inspired by the book of Genesis and she's satan / the snake in the story. So to the extent she's a projection, it's a projection going back thousands of years which Steinbeck casts light on. He's not saying women literally are like this, he's exploring pure good vs pure evil (the pure good is Sam Hamilton) and everyone else in between

Right. And feeds some fucked up corner of the male psyche for evil wimmin.

Indeed, which indicates just how ancient this misogynist shtick is.

She’s a projection of evil onto women so men don’t have to take responsibility for it, which is exactly the same as Eve.

I'm genuinely curious. If you were to write a book on the biblical themes of good vs evil, born vs learned good / evil, nature / nurture, innocence and loss... would you not then include a character who was pure evil to explore that element of the story? And if you did, that character would have to be male?

Or would your view be that these religious themes are outdated and not worth exploring?

I've always found these ideas really fascinating personally. And I think like Steinbeck where I land is that most of us are a bit of everything but every once in a while there's someone out there who is just pure malice, which is why we as a society are fascinated by serial killers.

I think the choice to make the malevolent character a pretty girl makes it more interesting (vs yet another psycho man going round killing women). Also very counter to gender stereotypes at the time of women being innocent virtuous victims. It's still relevant in our discussion around female killers today, seems to be a pretty big split between those who think if a woman commits a crime it's probably because she was abused at some point or coerced by a man, vs those who think some women are just evil.

@MyKindHiker I wouldn’t write a book on biblical themes. For exploration of good and evil I prefer Shakespeare or Dostoyevsky as they’re rather more sophisticated.

Just placemarking. Read the book again a couple of years back and this thread reminded me of the few series. I'm on the second ep. So far it's near enough accurate, though the brothers history was far more violent, I don't think the story would have been helped by portraying that.

I did once watch a very interesting program about The Psychopath Gene. And it would seem that some people are just born with a lack of any kind of compassion or empathy. The conclusion of the program was that if they were brought up in a kind environment they would go on to be a leader of industry if they were brought up in an abusive environment they may well go on to be a mass murderer.

So I kind of challenge Steinbeck's Cathy because she has a completely trouble free childhood and therefore should not have turned out as she did. I guess I just found it really unrealistic and didn't really think much of any of his female characters.

I suppose I was comparing also to perhaps a female author such as Jane Austen who writes men just as well as women in my view. Perhaps male authors are just not very good at writing female characters?

She's not really a character though, she's meant to be a catalyst. Every other character in the book (including Lisa and Abra) we get a sense of their feelings and motivations. For Cathy it's deliberately left empty as she's supposed to have essentially no interior life / soul - she's essentially a personification of evil.

In general though Steinbeck is more interested in telling men's stories and that's... ok? We have many writers who focus on womens' stories and write female characters better than men (Margaret Atwood, Amy Tan), and that's ok too. And some who do both well which is also ok.

As a feminist I'm a bit surprised by what I see is quite a shallow take of 'there aren't enough girls in the book' being a challenge for a feminist reader. If you take the view, as I do, that patriarchy is as damaging for men as it is for women, there is a lot to take from the book - ie: that outside of patriarchal structures and social expectations (reflected in Adam's father, and the military), the men are free to be creative, kind, loving and nurturing. Adam and Li live completely outside the boundaries of a traditional family set up and build a beautiful life, learning that to be 'men' isn't about violence, it's about nurturing, their children and their garden. I find that a really lovely take. The patriarchal world of army and war and the men who use sex workers is shown as corrupt and base.

Pugh was one of the executive producers for the show, so it’s natural for her to want to carve out a bigger role than in the book.

Also I don’t think that evil psychopaths who are just psychopaths with no back story usually work very well in film and tv. It’s difficult for us to accept “just because”.

probably stating the obvious but did Cathy believe that the twins were from different fathers and she knew Aron was Charlie's son and Caleb was Adams. I always thought Caleb was the stronger, kinder character and felt so sorry for him

I saw it the opposite way, she asked Caleb who had been born first , I think in her head she thought seeing as Aron was born first it was Charlie's son, and Calab was Adam's son. They stated earlier on when she gave birth they came from different sacks , so by leaving to Aran she was still being evil towards Adam and Caleb ,

Well we will have to agree to disagree I guess.
I see your point about her being a catalyst, but reducing the book's main female character to a soulless plot device is exactly why it feels so hollow from a feminist perspective.

While Steinbeck gives his male characters loads of psychological depth, trauma, and the actual freedom to choose between good and evil, Cathy is totally denied that humanity—she’s just born a monster because the story needs a snake. Packaging her as this hyper-sexualised, beautiful temptress who drives men to ruin isn't deep; it's just recycling the ancient Eve/Serpent trope.

Writers like Jane Austen prove you can absolutely explore massive, epic themes through realistic, fully rounded characters of both sexes without sacrificing believability. Honestly, the fact that a modern TV show felt forced to completely rewrite her backstory and add childhood trauma just to give her a shred of human motive proves that Steinbeck's original, flat characterisation just doesn't hold up.

Ah I didn’t see Aron as being like Charles at all… I thought Aron was supposed to be like Adam and Caleb like Cathy.
It never crossed my mind about them each being born in their own sack… I mean I registered it when Sam said it but didn’t give it any deeper thought.
So you’re thinking somehow each of them was to a different dad despite being born as twins? Interesting…
I obviously picked up on the query as to who was the actual dad 😆

This was James Dean's best movie imo, Steinbeck is one of my favourite American authors.

Sadly he only made 2 other movies before he died in the car crash....Giant was released the year after his death - 1956. Rebel Without a Cause is considered to be his best work. What a waste 🥲

I LOVED this adaptation! East of Eden is probably one of my favourite novels. The first time I read it I had an almost visceral reaction to Cathy/Kate. I found her so unsettling as a character. Unless there's other proof that Steinbeck was a misogynist (and I don't think there seems to be) I really rally against the cry that Kate is a symbol of his hatred for women. I think it's simplisctic. Obviously there's the biblical theme running, but really in literature how often do we get purely 'bad' female characters? It's more often that in women are confined by the expectation to be 'good', motherly, etc. I really 'felt' her character; danger that she rejects any social norms, plus the pure evil and self service makes for a truly great character addition to a novel of this time.
I think it's a testament to Steinbeck's talent as a writer that he can write a fairly complex female character in that way. Because most male authors can't. It's interesting to see how people have such different readings of it though..and I always felt sympathetic to Cathy at the end of the novel. Like she knew she was 'wrong' and she'd never really be happy. And there was a hint of regret I felt, but I've not read the novel for a while.

I loved the modern adaptation of giving her a backstory of abuse by men, because ultimately, historically that was probably likely. And its definitely more comfortable for a modern audience for there to be a reason someone is bad.