Credit: Netflix

James Dean did such an amazing job of adapting East of Eden on screen that John Steinbeck’s novel has been mistaken for a much smaller story than it is. Let us take you back to 1955, when Elia Kazan gave Dean his first leading role and, if that wasn’t enough, earned him a posthumous Oscar nomination and won Jo Van Fleet ‘Best Supporting Actress’ for Cathy.

However, the 1955 film only adapted the latter portion of Steinbeck’s 1952 novel, and unfortunately, it cut out much of the Trask family’s earlier history and reduced the Hamilton family’s role.

Which is a bit mad when you consider the size of the book; hence, Netflix had to interfere. Steinbeck was not writing a simple family drama with a tragic son at the centre, which, to be honest, is what a lot of people think to this day. The man was building a much bigger story about two families in California’s Salinas Valley, using the story of Cain and Abel to explore rivalries that keep passing from one generation to the next. Fun fact: The Hamiltons were loosely based on Steinbeck’s own maternal family.

Now comes the rather delicious historical wrinkle. Zoe Kazan, Elia Kazan’s granddaughter, is the writer and co-showrunner behind Netflix’s seven-episode adaptation, and she has been very open about wanting to return to the material her grandfather’s film left aside.

Florence Pugh is playing Cathy Ames in the upcoming Netflix series with Christopher Abbott as Adam Trask, Mike Faist as Charles Trask and Hoon Lee as Lee. All seven episodes arrive on Netflix on October 1st.

So, what is East of Eden actually about?

The novel starts with Adam and Charles Trask, two brothers growing up under a father who does not hand out affection evenly, and, well, it is easy to imagine how that goes. Charles is the angrier of the two, while Adam trusts people too easily, even when he probably shouldn’t. Now Charles already resented Adam long before Cathy’s appearance, but once she entered Adam’s life, the brothers’ old bitterness turned into something far worse.

Cathy changes the direction of Adam’s life and eventually takes the story west to California, where the Trasks become tied to the Hamilton family and, before long, the next generation is bearing the weight of generational rivalry. Adam’s twin sons, Cal and Aron, grow up without the full story of what happened before them, but ignorance does not spare them from the damage their parents left behind.

That is where the book gets its dark element, although Steinbeck does leave one door open. His idea of timshel, often translated as “thou mayest”, is much simpler: your family can shape you, but it does not have to decide who you become.

Why is Cathy Ames such a huge role for Florence Pugh?

Cathy is where this new adaptation could earn its keep. Steinbeck is very hard on Cathy, and he gives readers almost no reason to warm to her. She does terrible things, often without much remorse, which has made her one of the book’s most debated characters. Zoe Kazan, however, has said Steinbeck’s own working journals show that his view of Cathy became less fixed while he was writing, moving from the idea of a “monster” towards something he recognised in himself.

But don’t worry, the Netflix series is not going to give Cathy a nice redemption arc, and thank goodness for that. Kazan has said she wants to give the character humanity without excusing what she does, and that is much harder than making a villain sympathetic if you think about it. Pugh has to let us understand Cathy without sanding down the parts that make her scary, which sounds far more interesting than another exercise in prestige-period suffering.

Now, what makes Pugh such a strong contender for this role? The Midsommar actress has handled difficult literary women before with emotional maturity, which is why Cathy does not feel like an odd fit. In Little Women, she gave Amy March a sense of self-awareness that made you understand her even when you did not agree with her, while The Wonder put her in another period story. Cathy is a much harsher character than either, though, which makes the role all the more interesting.

More than anything, Netflix now has the chance to pick up where the James Dean film left off. And as for Pugh? If her past work is anything to go by, Cathy could be one of her most interesting roles yet.