The new "reimagined" Netflix series "East of Eden" from Zoe Kazan tells the extraordinary story from the John Steinbeck novel of Cathy (Florence Pugh), the mother of the James Dean character in the 1955 movie adaptation directed by Zoe's grandfather Elia Kazan. In that film we only know that Cathy has become the madam of a brothel in town. Steinbeck reportedly based Cathy on his second wife, who was unfaithful to him, and Dean's character Cal may have been based on Steinbeck's second son, John Steinbeck IV.
"I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents," begins the chapter were Steinbeck introduces Cathy Ames, adding,"There was a time when a girl like Cathy would have been called possessed by the devil. She would have been exorcised to cast out the evil spirit, and if after many trials that did not work, she would have been burned as a witch for the good of the community."
Cathy's story is told, beginning at age 10 with her mother finding her partially undressed and lying in a barn with a rope tying her wrists together, and two 14-year-old boys kneeling near her. The boys' defense was that Cathy had orchestrated the event, charging them five cents apiece.
“She’s haunted by it,” Mrs. Ames told the neighbors. “If she could only talk about it, maybe she would get better. But when I ask her about it—it’s like it came right back to her and she goes into shock again.”
Steinbeck writes, "Cathy grew more lovely all the time. The delicate blooming skin, the golden hair, the wide-set, modest, and yet promising eyes, the little mouth full of sweetness, caught attention and held it....she was so fresh and pretty that people walking turned and looked after her when she had passed." At school, her Latin teacher developed an obsession with her, banging on her family's door one night demanding to speak to Mr. Ames, who refused. The teacher then went home and killed himself. Cathy appeared to take the news calmly, spreading a rumor that he was "in some kind of trouble in Boston."
Soon afterwards, just after her 16th birthday, Cathy refused to get out of bed one morning and told her mother she was never going to school again. In bed with her was a book: Alice in Wonderland. Taking off from the "Drink Me" bottle in the book that shrank Alice, she says, “I can get to be so little you can’t even see me....Nobody can find me.”
She soon engineered her escape from the town, setting her parents' house on fire and faking her own death in her father's office, after taking the money from his safe. Attempting to find work as a prostitute, instead the pimp falls in love with her and beats her savagely when she tries to escape. She is rescued by the brothers Charlie and Adam Trask, with Adam nursing her back to health, falling in love with her and marrying her.
Seemingly incapable of feeling love, Cathy attempts a knitting-needle abortion and fails, giving birth to twin boys. Unable to handle motherhood, she shoots Adam to escape and finds her way back into prostitution, becoming the madam at a brothel in Salinas, near the Trasks' farm. Adam tells his sons Aron and Caleb that their mother has died, but Cal discovers the truth and confronts Cathy, now calling herself Kate.
After Adam once more demonstrates to his sons that he loves only Aron, Cal takes Aron to see their mother, causing him to immediately sign up for the military, abandoning his fiancee Abra. If you've seen the James Dean movie, you know the rest, except for what happens to Cathy.
Cathy is given morphine to recover from her injuries after she is beaten, and she continues using it. After a confrontation with Cal: "With her bandaged forefinger she dug out a slender chain which hung around her neck and pulled the chain’s burden up from her bodice. On the chain were strung two safe-deposit keys, a gold watch with a fleur-de-lis pin, and a little steel tube with a ring on its top. Very carefully she unscrewed the top from the tube and, spreading her knees, shook out a gelatine capsule. She held the capsule under the light and saw the white crystals inside—six grains of morphine, a good, sure margin. Very gently she eased the capsule into its tube, screwed on the cap, and dropped the chain inside her dress. Cal’s last words had been repeating themselves over and over in her head."
Cathy is shattered by meeting Aaron, who she recognizes as her son. After the meeting:
Then she remembered. She was a very small girl with a face as lovely and fresh as her son’s face—a very small girl. Most of the time she knew she was smarter and prettier than anyone else. But now and then a lonely fear would fall upon her so that she seemed surrounded by a tree-tall forest of enemies. Then every thought and word and look was aimed to hurt her, and she had no place to run and no place to hide. And she would cry in panic because there was no escape and no sanctuary. Then one day she was reading a book. She could read when she was five years old. She remembered the book—brown, with a silver title, and the cloth was broken and the boards thick. It was Alice in Wonderland.
Kate moved her hands slowly and lifted her weight a little from her arms. And she could see the drawings—Alice with long straight hair. But it was the bottle which said, “Drink me” that had changed her life. Alice had taught her that. When the forest of her enemies surrounded her she was prepared. In her pocket she had a bottle of sugar water and on its red-framed label she had written, “Drink me.” She would take a sip from the bottle and she would grow smaller and smaller. Let her enemies look for her then! Cathy would be under a leaf or looking out of an anthole, laughing. They couldn’t find her then. No door could close her out and no door could close her in. She could walk upright under a door. And always there was Alice to play with, Alice to love her and trust her. Alice was her friend, always waiting to welcome her to tinyness....
Gingerly, she fished the chain out from her bodice, unscrewed the little tube, and shook the capsule into her hand. She smiled at it. “Eat me,” she said and put the capsule in her mouth. She picked up the tea cup. “Drink me,” she said and swallowed the bitter cold tea. She forced her mind to stay on Alice—so tiny and waiting....
Her eyes closed and a dizzy nausea shook her. She opened her eyes and stared about in terror. The gray room darkened and the cone of light [from a lamp] flowed and rippled like water....And her heart beat solemnly and her breathing slowed as she grew smaller and smaller and then disappeared—and she had never been.
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