[2] Steinbeck depicts Cathy as small-breasted, delicate, blonde and beautiful, with “oil-soaked” skin that gives her a “pearly-light” and a sense of allurement.

[2] Her beauty and charm fool most of the people she encounters, but a few characters detect her true nature by looking into her eyes, which Steinbeck describes as cold and emotionless.

[3] Cathy is described as having "small, stubby round feet with fat little insteps that almost resemble hooves", enhancing her satanic imagery.

She uses her precocious sexuality to manipulate and destroy men; she frames two young boys for attempting to rape her, and drives her naïve Latin professor to suicide by toying with his affections.

Finally fed up, Mr. Edwards gives her a savage beating and leaves her to die by the roadside in rural Connecticut.

As Adam nurses Cathy back to health on their family farm, he succumbs to her beauty and resolves to marry her.

She reveals her motives for the first time, admitting that, from a young age, she took pleasure in using people: “I could make them do whatever I wanted...when I was half-grown I made a man kill himself.

In a letter to family friend Allen Ludden, Steinbeck states that “Kate is a total representative of Satan”.

[11] As noted by John Timmerman, Steinbeck demonstrates the devil allegory through repeated snake-like imagery used to describe Cathy.

In an academic article from The Explicator, Rebecca Barnes compares Cathy to Pandora in that her “broken box brings disaster” wherever she goes.

[15] In the novel Cathy harms or destroys every life she touches: she murders her parents, drives her Latin teacher to commit suicide, shoots her husband, poisons her benefactress, and sadistically abuses (and later blackmails) countless men as a prostitute.

He writes that Cathy fears losing control in any way; for example, she refuses to drink because alcohol brings out her true nature.

[16] In her essay “No Sanctuary”, Sarah Aguiar writes that Cathy's actions are due to a perversion of human virtues such as compassion and love.

In 1982, Jane Seymour received a Best Actress Golden Globe award for her portrayal of Cathy Ames in the ABC mini-series adaptation of East of Eden.