Cathy Ames

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Evil-doer
Full Name	Catherine Ames (birth name) Catherine Trask (married name)
Alias	Kate Albey Kate Trask Catherine Amesbury
Origin	East of Eden
Occupation	Prostitute Brothel owner
Powers / Skills	Manipulation Deception
Hobby	Using her beauty to get what she wants. Using and destroying people.
Goals	Drive her Latin professor to suicide. Rob and kill her parents. Murder her employer and take over her brothel (all succeeded). Escape from her husband and children (failed).
Crimes	Murder Assault Theft Arson
Type of Villain	Psychopathic Femme Fatale

“	They thought they were so smart. They looked at me and thought they knew about me. And I fooled them. I fooled every one of them. And when they thought they could tell me what to do—oh! that's when I fooled them best.	„
	~ Cathy Ames bragging about her gift for manipulating people.

“	Eat me. Drink me.	„
	~ Cathy quoting Alice's Adventures in Wonderland while drinking poison.

“	Alice doesn't know. I'm going right on past.	„
	~ Cathy Ames' last words or thoughts as she commits suicide by drinking poison.

Catherine Ames, also known as Kate Albey and Kate Trask, is the main antagonist of John Steinbeck's novel East of Eden. She is the wife of main character Adam Trask, and the mother of his sons Cal and Aron.

Steinbeck wrote East of Eden as an allegory for the Bible and intended Cathy/Kate to represent both Eve and Satan.

In the 1955 film adaptation, she was played by late Jo Van Fleet, who won an Academy Award for her performance. In the 1982 TV miniseries adaptation, she was portrayed by Jane Seymour, who also played Genevieve Teague and Duchess Gertrude in Smallville, Debra Connor in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and Rachel Argyle in Ordeal by Innocence.

Personality

Steinbeck characterizes Cathy as a "psychic monster" with a "malformed soul". She is an evil woman who manipulates and destroys people for her own amusement and profit. She is a master of bending people to her will, especially men.

She conceals her true nature with her physical beauty and a practiced facade of innocence and kindness, but a few characters are able to see her for who she really is by looking into her eyes, which Steinbeck describes as cold, emotionless and "not human". She also reveals her true nature when she gets drunk, which is why she never touches alcohol.

Biography

Cathy caused harm to everyone she came in contact with from a young age. When her parents catch her fooling around with two boys, she accuses them of trying to rape her and takes pleasure in watching them being punished. A few years later, she drove her Latin professor to suicide by toying with his affections. When she turns 18, she robbed and murders her parents and runs away from home.

She briefly took up with a whore-master named Mr. Edwards, but he realizes she is using him and gives her a savage beating, leaving her to die. She is found by farmer Adam Trask and his brother Charles, who take her in and nurse her back to health.

Charles sees through Cathy, but Adam falls in love with her and asks her to marry him; she says yes in order to gain protection from Mr. Edwards. One night, she drugs Adam to sleep and has sex with Charles. She gets pregnant soon afterward with twin boys; it is left ambiguous whether Adam or Charles is the father.

After the boys, Cal and Aron, are born, Cathy tells Adam she is leaving him, and shoots him in the shoulder when he tried to stop her. She changes her name to Kate Albey and started working at a brothel. She endears herself to the madam, Faye, who eventually names her the chief beneficiary of her will; Kate then murders her with poison. She takes over the brothel, which she turns into a den of sexual sadism.

When Adam shows up at the brothel to take her back, she laughs at him and tells him the boys are not his. Adam visits her again a few years later after Charles died to give her money he had left her. Puzzled and angered by his kindness, she accuses him of trying to control her.

She shows him pictures of several important figures in the community at her brothel, and denounces the human race as hypocrites; she declares that she "would rather be a dog than a human". Adam finally realizes that she is a monster, and leaves, declaring that he pities her. When the boys are old enough to ask about their mother, Adam tells them she is dead. Several years later, Cal learns that his mother is still alive and operating a brothel.

He visits her, and she is immediately uncomfortable with his goodness and professed love for his father. She spitefully tells him that he is just like her; he replies that she is simply afraid, and leaves. At about this time, two of her employees find out what really happened to Faye, and Kate frames them for murder. Some time later, Cal brought Aron to see Kate. Aron is repulsed by her, and flees in horror. Her son's rejection made Kate finally confront who and what she is, and she loses the will to live. She signs all her possessions over to Aron, and commits suicide by drinking poison.

Trivia

• Cathy is suggested by Steinbeck to be asexual, the book saying that she doesn't feel sexual attractions to others and uses sex only to manipulate people.
• She is one of the most complicated characters in the book. For most of time, she is extremely cruel, greedy and committing evil deeds just for the sake of them. However, she occasionally shows remorse for her actions and it's implied that she suffered mental illness from her youth, given her lack of social skills, constant fear of people and seeking sanctuary in imaginary world. The author himself stated that he's not sure what kind of person Cathy is, saying that no one will actually be able to understand her.
  • Her testament is also a very often subject of readers' discussion. No fan is sure whether she gave all of her money to Aron out of guilt, or was she trying to corrupt him with her money.
• Cathy's name change into Kate symbolically shows how she cut herself away from Trask family, as all members of the family have names starting on A or C. Cathy was still using her real name when she married Adam, but changed it after she shot him and left him.
• Cathy was based on Gwyn Conger, Steinbeck's second wife.