I am woman....hear me roar.....
9 years ago
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Women
Women in the novel are not always as fully realized as the main male characters. The great exception is Adam Trask's wife, Cathy, later Kate the brothel owner. Clearly Kate's evil is meant to be of biblical proportions. Can you understand what motivates her? Is she truly evil or does Steinbeck allow some traces of humanity in his characterization of her? What does her final act, for Aron Trask, indicate about her (well-hidden) emotions?
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Cathy alias Kate is the personification of evil and hate and all bad things rolled up into one person. She was not treated badly as a child so her evil is just her and what she choses to be. She hated men but was also not limited in her cruelty to her mother and Faye and the girls who later worked for her. I didn't see any humanity in her except being afraid to be found out. As for her leaving her wealth to Aaron...I am not sure what her motives were: to not be forgotten, to hurt a son she never really loved (she didn't know how to love), or to get her last dig at Adam and Cal.
As for Kate, she is a piece of work. Of course she is drawn to the extreme but WOW. But is she truly evil? No. We were all created with the potential to be both. She made all the wrong choices but in the end I think she starts to see that she missed something as you see her start to squirm around Adam and Cal as they awaken her to what she missed and also show her they are not afraid of her.
I think she willed everything to Aron partially as her last dig at Adam and Aron but I think she also had some affection for him as she watched him in church and saw a likeness of her, only embracing virtue instead of sin. I think that deep down she may have realized that she could have been different and that it made her deeply uncomfortable since she had never allowed herself to be even a little bit swayed by conscience.
One of my favorite parts of the book says, “Perhaps we can’t understand Cathy, but on the other hand we are capable of many things in all directions, or great virtues and great sins. And who in his mind has not probed the black water? Maybe we all have in us a secret pond where evil and ugly things germinate and grow strong. But this culture is fenced, and the swimming brood climbs up only to fall back. Might it not be that in the dark pools of some men the evil grows strong enough to wriggle over the fence and swim free? Would not such a man be our monster, and are we not related to him in our hidden water?”
I know that might make people uncomfortable to believe that potential is in all of us, but we all have dark thoughts, and we all have the potential for greatness and we all fight the battle between the two and choose what we will nurture in this life and what we will stifle.
Ugh. She is so rotten.
I found it interesting throughout the book how he showed that certain people could look at her and know.
They could see in her eyes who she was and what her intentions were.
A lot of us have met people that made us feel that way.
I remember seeing someone walk across the road once as a teenager. My friend an I were driving home and it was dark outside. We saw this person cross the street and I got the most evil feeling. I felt darkness.
As we passed them I said, "Did you feel that?" and Jenny said, "Was that the devil?" at the same time. It was so creepy.
I think so many people that live that kind of life carry that darkness around with them.
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