Aside from our Blessed Mother Mary, no woman is perfectly innocent and pure. I know this intellectually, but have a problem emotionally: I feel that all women are always good and true and beautiful. For example, I completely believed the women accusers of Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh, even though I admire these imperfect justices and do not deem the deeds to be disqualifying in themselves in the broad scheme of things. I pretty much cannot get mad at or hold a grudge against a woman. I could count on my ten fingers the amount of real fights I have had with my five daughters and six sisters over the last sixty years. In our Magnificat Home boarding homes for women I have dealt with hundreds of women: borderlines, sociopaths, psychotics, and other. I never really felt victimized or angry. Women have accused me of theft and sexual abuse to the police and the state but I can't carry a grudge. I am the polar extreme from a misogynist: when I fall off the boat into sin it is towards idealization of woman and gyno-idolatry: inordinate craving for feminine approval and intimacy. I come by it honestly as I have always been surrounded by and close to holy, generous, virtuous, beautiful women. My defining challenge has always been to attain the Christlike virility of sobriety, strength, purity, tenderness, reverence and generosity for all women.
Eve as Prototype
In spiritual direction, I once confided an inordinate, adulterous attraction and was startled as the priest erupted into a rant that women are evil, seductive, and to be distrusted at all times. This priest was a holy, wise and influential man. In this situation the woman was entirely innocent; I was the one with the problem. Yet, the priest did have a point: consider Eve.
Her decision to take the fruit was the original sin. After that she tempted Adam. She was herself not wounded by Original Sin so it was a free decision, like that of Lucifer, unlike the rest of us who are compromised by sin not of our own making. Yet, she was duped by a superior intelligence, Lucifer. Additionally, she was alone, vulnerable, unprotected by Adam who was a no-show. So even Eve was in some sense herself a victim. How much more are all subsequent women (excepting Mary) both victims and culprits in the Drama of Sin.
Femme Fatale and Cathy/Kate in Netflix' East of Eden
The allure of the femme fatale in film noir is that she is piercingly beautiful, potentially or actually evil, and possibly innocent, vulnerable and good. This paradox is flamingly portrayed in the new Netflix 7-episode series on John Steinbeck's East of Eden.
(Moral hazard: the movie has much too much brothel nudity, mostly repulsive. You will not watch this with your children or grandmother.)
Amazingly, this version is the creation of Zoe Kazin, granddaughter of Elia Kazin who won the Oscar for director of the classic 1955 movie version with James Dean (best actor.) The novel, of course, centers on two generations of Cain-and-Abel brothers. This version retains the novel's general structure around the two sets of brothers but re-gestalts it around the anti-heroine wife/mother/whore/madam Cathy/Kate.
This succeeds spectacularly because of the breath-taking performance of Florence Pugh as the femme fatale. She entirely dominates the movie. The intensity, range, and depth of her acting equals or exceeds that of James Dean which is one of the greatest in movie history.
To start, she is herself breathtakingly beautiful: the camera and viewer cannot get enough of her. Her face manifests, every second, a panorama of emotions: sadness, evil, vulnerability, tenderness. But the movie character developed here is herself complex, deep, nuanced. In the novel and movie she is simply evil. But this series shows her childhood in which she was herself abused. It shows how she reacts to the undesired attention of men, from a very early age. And so, we develop a sympathy for her: she is the victim of men: her father, her teacher and so on. There are flashes of tenderness and vulnerability. But she is...pure and solid...a psychopath. She is effectively void of conscience or empathy. But she retains a humanity, a fragility. I can think of no comparably nuanced and profound a betrayal of a true psychopath, a thoroughly evil person.
Recent Events
It is striking that our news lately has been filled with similar dramas of women who are at once victim of and collaborator in evil.
Lindsay Clancy
This is an extreme case: she was clearly suffering deep emotional illness, whether or not she was technically in a psychosis. She did kill her own children. To what degree is she a passive victim or a free agent. The legal issue is difficult enough; But the underlying moral, philosophical one is even worse. At the end, we just do not know. But it is a graphic example of woman, mother, as victim and perpetrator.
"Jane Doe" at Cornell
An equally confused event. Did she at some level consent? She seems to have deliberately gotten intoxicated and indulged in multi-partner sex. In that was she was a collaborator and possibly in some degree an initiator. And yet, as the event proceeded she was viciously violated. The perpetrators, themselves intoxicated, seem to have participated in varying degrees. My JAG lawyer son who spent three years prosecuting such cases in the army tells me such cases are immensely difficult to convict. The political histrionics and even litigation are not helpful. All involved are underwater in guilt and shame. Contrition and pardon...the reception of and granting of Mercy...are the only hopes.
Christa Pike
She brutally tortured and killed her victim. There is an argument that she deserved (yes: retribution) the death penalty. Yet her own background included multiple childhood rapes, attempted suicide, negligent alcoholic parents, and more. She did not deserve to sit and wait for 35 years...cruel and unusual punishment. She did not deserve to be executed and survive...cruel and unusual punishment. Arguably, in the overall scheme of things, she is as much a victim as a villain...before and after her crime.
Jeffrey Epstein "Victims"
We continue in a relentless, indignant crusade of empathy for the victims of this now dead man. To be sure, they were victims. They were young, immature, vulnerable and skillfully seduced by powerful, attractive people. But they were not entirely innocent, passive victims as in real child abuse. They were all post-pubescent: physically, psychologically, intellectually developed women. They were overall not poor, hungry, desperate for food; but middle class. They were all attractive, which makes them high-status in their bourgeois, adolescent world. They were ambitious: lured on by promises of career and wealth. Many of them freely recruited friends and even sisters. No one put a gun to their head. They were themselves consensual and complicit. It is past time to end this pity party.
Conclusion
At the end all we can do is pray. We look to the Mercy of Christ.
Pray for these culprit-victims: Lindsay, Christa, "Jane," and the Epstein girls. And even the soul of Epstein himself.
Pray for ourselves. We are all vulnerable to impurity and evil of various sorts. Even as we are destined to join Mary, Virgin and Mother, in lives of purity, generosity, and courage. In reception of and dispersal of the Divine Mercies!
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