What happened to Cathy when she was five? Explaining East of Eden’s dark book change

*Warning: Spoilers ahead and some may find this content distressing*

Florence Pugh’s Cathy alludes to what happened to her when she was five years old in Netflix’s East of Eden without explicitly saying it, but the showrunner has confirmed what we suspected – and it’s a change to John Steinbeck’s novel. 

Steinbeck’s sprawling epic gets an excellent retelling in the Netflix series. The plot details remain intact, spanning multiple generations as it focuses on the Trask family alongside the stories of Cathy and Lee (Hoon Lee). 

But where Cathy is presented as an almost inherently evil figure in the novel, writer and co-showrunner Zoe Kazan offers a more modern interpretation of what makes her the way she is.

Part of that is an incident that happened to Cathy when she was just a child. It’s hinted at in her origin story in East of Eden episode 2, when at the age of five, she’s seen reading Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. 

What looks like a teenage boy whose face isn’t shown walks over and offers her two pieces of candy, and so she follows him into the dark woodlands. Later on in the series, Cathy refers to the impact Alice in Wonderland had on her, more specifically the potion that made the character shrink. 

“When I was a little girl, I imagined that I could grow smaller. So small that the bad things couldn’t find me, and I could disappear,” she says. This is similarly presented in the novel, which reads, “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!”

By the finale, Cathy ends her own life, once again returning to this idea of the potion – only this time, it’s a drink that will kill her. As the poison takes effect, she has a vision of Alice, with the Netflix adaptation making the character the five-year-old version of herself. 

Just before this, Cathy tells the ghostly presence of Adam’s (Christopher Abbott) brother Charles (Mike Faist), “Did I ever tell you about what happened to me when I was five years old? Something happened to me when I was five years old…” 

She sees herself walking into the dark woodlands, causing what looks like a trauma response. But rather than finishing the sentence, she talks once again about reading Alice in Wonderland. 

What happened to Cathy when she was five?

It’s no doubt obvious what really happened to Cathy as a child: she was sexually assaulted. This is something Kazan has now confirmed while talking about how she interpreted Cathy’s childhood when adapting Steinbeck’s East of Eden. 

What’s interesting is how she saw the Alice in Wonderland motif as a form of dissociation. Speaking to W Magazine, she explained this event as it’s described in the novel and how it made Cathy angry. “I cannot help but read it a little differently than Steinbeck’s intention,” Kazan said.  

“Much later in the book, she recalls how, as a child, when she was frightened or alone, she would imagine that she was with Alice in Wonderland drinking this potion and shrinking down. When I came to that as an adult woman, having been through lots of therapy, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s a portrait of dissociation.’”

But Kazan made a point of saying that this doesn’t excuse all of the terrible things Cathy does. This is something some viewers and fans of the book have pushed back on, suggesting the adaptation makes Cathy too sympathetic. 

However, the series drives home the point of “timshel”, meaning “thou mayest,” which represents human free will and the absolute power to choose between good and evil. As much as her trauma has impacted her into adulthood, Cathy still chooses evil many times over. 

“It was very important to me to never excuse anything she was doing, but rather to say, ‘These are all human beings and human beings have terrible things happen to them. What do you do with it?’” Kazan continued. 

“If we think of Cathy as being not human, then we don’t learn anything about ourselves.”

Why the Netflix series made that change to the East of Eden novel 

In the original East of Eden, the incident plays out differently. It happens when Cathy was 10 years old, describing it from her mother’s point of view as she recalls seeing her daughter walk to the nearby barn. 

She called for her and heard no reply, but just as Mrs. Ames was about to walk into the house, she heard a giggle. “Mrs. Ames stood still, listening. She heard soft secret voices and moved quietly toward the carriage house. The double doors were closed. The murmur of voices came from inside, but she could not make out Cathy’s voice,” Steinbeck wrote. 

“She made a quick stride and pulled the doors open and the bright sun crashed inside. She froze, mouth open, at what she saw. Cathy lay on the floor, her skirts pulled up. She was naked to the waist, and beside her two boys about fourteen were kneeling. 

“The shock of the sudden light froze them too. Cathy’s eyes were blank with terror. Mrs. Ames knew the boys, knew their parents. Suddenly one of the boys leaped up, darted past Mrs. Ames, and ran around the corner of the house. The other boy helplessly edged away from the woman and with a cry rushed through the doorway. 

“Mrs. Ames clutched at him, but her fingers slipped from his jacket and he was gone. She could hear his running-footsteps outside. Mrs. Ames tried to speak and her voice was a croak-ing whisper. ‘Get up!’

“Cathy stared blankly up at her and made no move. Mrs. Ames saw that Cathy’s wrists were tied with a heavy rope. She screamed and flung herself down and fumbled at the knots. She carried Cathy into the house and put her to bed.

“The family doctor, after he had examined Cathy, could find no evidence that she had been mistreated. ‘You can just thank God you got there in time,’ he said over and over to Mrs. Ames. Cathy did not speak for a long time. Shock, the doctor called it. And when she did come out of the shock Cathy refused to talk. 

“When she was questioned her eyes widened until the whites showed all around the pupils and her breathing stopped and her body grew rigid and her cheeks reddened from holding her breath.”

Later in the story, Steinbeck also describes Cathy having a sexual relationship with one of her teachers, who ultimately takes his own life after she begins manipulating him. This is also depicted in the show. 

Both incidents are presented in the book as further evidence of Cathy’s supposedly inherently evil and sexually manipulative nature – something Kazan interpreted differently when adapting the novel.

“In the book, there is the implication of two little boys raping Cathy when she’s quite small,” Kazan told Netflix’s Tudum. “There’s also this relationship with a teacher that is definitely an inappropriate way for a teacher to behave towards a student. 

“In the book, Steinbeck really blames Cathy for those things and uses them as evidence of her evil nature. I see it really differently.” In this version, those same experiences, though they don’t excuse Cathy’s actions in adulthood, become part of the explanation for her behaviour.

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Featured image credit: Netflix