All due credit goes to actress-turned-filmmaker Zoe Kazan for presenting Netflix’s seven-part “East of Eden” miniseries in a way that nearly everyone can enjoy. It eschews the pratfalls of many modern adaptations of classic works in trying to shoehorn in contemporary woke causes either through thematic license or casting choices that stretch the suspension of disbelief (transgender actors and cultural appropriation being some of the prime offenders).
In interviews, Kazan — whose grandfather Elia directed the original 1955 adaptation of the John Steinbeck novel, starring James Dean — said she set out to create a “very faithful adaptation” of the 600-page magnum opus.
“[I]t was very important to me to find textual support for everything I was doing,” she told W magazine. “Any places I imagined a little beyond the page, I needed a doorway to walk through that felt accurate to the book and its intentions.”
The result is a version much more faithful to the text than that of her grandfather, which cut out roughly the first two-thirds to focus entirely on the sibling rivalry between two younger members of the Trask family, in what is an unsubtle retelling of the biblical story of Cain and Abel.
There were, however, a few minor tweaks to the new remake in order to polish over the narrative’s rougher points.
Kazan said she “had to really kill some darlings” (writer talk for making tough editorial decisions) by cutting back a major storyline involving the Hamilton family, whom Steinbeck had modeled after his own grandparents. The hardworking Irish stock offer a foil to central character Adam Trask, a self-described “lazy” man who inherited his wealth through ill-gotten means.
“It really pained me to let go of the Hamilton family storyline, but I hope that the spirit of some of that is in the rest of the series,” Kazan told People magazine.
More problematic, however, may be some of the changes to the novel’s central antagonist, Cathy Ames, the estranged wife of Adam who leaves him to become a successful brothel owner.
Cathy is not shy about betraying those who trust her the most, including her own family members, in the worst possible ways.
“There was a time when a girl like Cathy would have been said to be possessed by the devil,” the book’s narrator explains.
Steinbeck reportedly based the character on his own first wife, Carol Henning, whom he left to marry a nightclub singer, according to The Guardian.
The author’s own misogyny and bitterness notwithstanding, the character of Cathy also plays an important part in the book’s Genesis allegory as the embodiment of “original sin,” noted Marie Claire magazine.
But Zoe Kazan’s version opts to humanize her, putting her front and center in the plot with a riveting turn by “Little Women” actress Florence Pugh.
Cathy is given a more sympathetic treatment in the remake, including a backstory involving sexual abuse as a child. She also embodies a proto-feminist rejection of gender-role subservience in turn-of-the-19th-century society. She explains that her scandalous abandonment of her children in order to become a sex worker was driven by a need for financial autonomy in the only way available to women at the time.
While some have praised the effort to turn her into a rounder, more fully developed character — the result of which is an undeniably intriguing and psychologically complex performance by Pugh that is destined for future awards-season glory — others have criticized the revisionism as upsetting the balance of moral ambiguity that is essential to understanding some of the other characters’ motives and development.
“‘East of Eden’ is not a book about women,” wrote The New Yorker’s Alexandra Schwartz in arguing that Cathy’s evil is her defining quality for a reason.
“It is a book about men and their troubled bonds to one another,” Schwartz added. “In it, Steinbeck set out to retell the Biblical story of Cain and Abel—what he called, in a letter to his editor, ‘perhaps the greatest story of all.’”
The new version effectively swaps ambiguity for amorality by putting a kinder, gentler touch on the concept of “original sin” and a whole host of other sins (including — spoiler alerts ahead — parricide and a botched DIY abortion).
In a world in which we find ourselves grappling with unheard-of issues like a mother’s right to kill her children, Cathy’s literary makeover is certainly the most socially relevant approach, perhaps even adding a new layer of malevolence to the dry, dusty pages.
Nonetheless, it is a sign of the times that the most fundamental biblical morals cannot carry the story without added nuance and subtext, as a sort of modern-day Manichean heresy. Perhaps it is the most Christian thing of all to seek out the humanity in Cathy, effectively wiping away the original sin as Jesus himself did.
Still, the Steinbeck purists out there, if there are any, would be rightfully concerned by how it shifts the entire weight of the story, and we must take pains not to empathize too much with Cathy at the risk of losing our own moral compasses.
