My thoughts exactly. Cathy had very few choices in life, and it seemed to me that she just wanted to be left alone (and to a be a dominatrix, which Steinbeck seems to think is the epitome of evil, lol). The part where he writes that Cathy, as a ten year old girl “seduces” TWO fourteen year old boys is disgusting. He really writes the boys as the victims in that situation. I almost stopped reading the book at that point because I knew anything else he wrote about Cathy was going to be through the lens of a pedo apologist.