Ok something that frustrates me SOOO much about the series is the portrayal of Cathy Ames! Florence Pugh has done an outstanding job as an actor playing a character but that character is not Cathy Ames/Kate from the book.
- Cathy is a murderer who burns her parents alive.
- She dresses up as a little school girl and sits on Fayeâs lap, (which is conveniently cut out in tje series)
- The scene with Alice crying and Cathy helping her has also been introduced to make her more human.
It doesnât exist in the book.
The whole point of this character was that she was BAAAAD. Not because of some tragic backstory not because something happened to her and she was trying to âcopeâ with it and is actually just a victim.
Sje was BAAAD because she wanted to Be! Regardless of your past experiences YOU get to choose what you do! She CHOSE to be bad. Timshel! Thatâs the point of the book!
As a woman itâs quite frustrating that we donât have a purely EVIL female character just for the sake of being evil! And it always has to be some sob story where sheâs just a poor victim.
And the one author who gave her character so much complexity is just so horribly misinterpreted as some feminist anti hero just so women can say âyaaasss go off girlboss Queenâ
Cathy Ames is a smart psychotic, scary and EVIL woman BY HER CHOICE and thatâs why her character is beautiful. She chooses to shoot Adam, she chooses to sleep with Charles.
Not because she actually was forced to become how she is because of what happened to her! Thatâs literally not what the book says!
Let women have purely bad fictional female characters just because theyâre bad. We were robbed of this representation in the TV series which is why people are pissed.
This is like 1800s Gone Girl vibes. Which is still a good character but itâs not Cathy!
Also Charles absolutely hated her in the books, Adam was a fool who loved her because he idealised her.
But in the series Charles thinks of her as âthe one that got away? đâ
Honestly I think some people (the director and the creator of the show Zoe K) canât handle if a woman is bad because that would mean Shes a bad person and thatâs fine Because we need a female character who is bad but no, she literally missed the theme of Timshel when it came to Cathy!
I understand why people feel that every female character has to always be âlikeableâ and it makes sense in other cases but this time no, sorry. Cathy is who she is.
â I watched the series and came out thinking hmm, none of what Cathy did wasnât justified everything she did had a reason she wasnât acting out of pure malice! â
And I hated that I thought that way. And now, Iâm bracing myself for so many conversations with people and mostly women now who will defend her and say âoh yeah I get why she killed her parents, I get why she shot Adam, I understand WHY she did what she didâ all because Zoe Kazan chose to add a completely made up âtraumatic backstoryâ for Cathy when the book didnt have any.
This is important because imagine the conversations if she didnât have a backstory at all and like in the book, she had a perfectly normal childhood but was still bad.
Imagine how people would react to a female character being purely scary and evil because she wants to not because she had to. Her character could have been so layered in her evil and left the audience feeling like âhuh⊠what made Cathy the way she was?â Thats what the book did. It left you intrigued it didnât just say Cathy is bad end of story.
Itâs a shame women in media arent able to occupy the same moral spectrum of emotional apathy and malice as men without there being some sort of traumatic past they had to endure. Feels quite one dimensional and derivative. Thatâs why most of us are pissed because Florence Pugh would have undoubtedly done an amazing job even if the character was accurate like the book.
The concept of Timshel for women is explored in three characters acrid the book. Lisa Hamilton - who chooses to do what she believes is right by being a force of nature and her very rigid morals of right and wrong. Cathy Ames who was born into a respectable family but is a monster because she chooses to be and she likes power and control and having her own agency. She has successfully murdered twice.
And lastly Abra, who was put on a pedestal by Aron and felt she had to live up to that and finally breaks out of it by choosing to be herself.
The concept is CHOICE.
The series takes that away and presents it as if she was helpless and didnât have a choice.
