Still processing East of Eden

I didn't care for or enjoy East of Eden, but I can't seem to get away from it. Evidently there is going to be some television version coming out soon, and I seem to be seeing all of the articles discussing the book and production. I truly don't understand why everyone is so gaga over it. Reading a couple of the articles helped me understand why I had so many issues with the book, though. In my first post about the book (linked above), I had mentioned that I didn't buy Steinbeck's assertion that some people are just born evil nor did I enjoy his tacit mysogony. Even as I wrote that post I knew I wasn't really getting at the crux of the problem. 

Here's what I think ultimately disturbed me the most. Cathy, the truly evil character in the book, is almost a caricature because she is just so evil without any redeeming characteristics. There are also a couple of male characters who are able to "see through" Cathy because they have evil impulses within them as well. It comes across as a like calling to like thing. The ending is this whole set-up of one of the characters coming to terms with the fact he is a complex person with both bad and good proclivities that often war inside him. 

So, the male characters not only get depth, but the rotten things they do are written off because they also do good things as well... and they had father issues, yadda, yadda, yadda. The men always get the pass, the women bear the brunt of it all  It could almost be the main theme of the book. Am I the only one to be exceptionally weary of this trope, especially when wrapped up in the guise of literature?

The other reason I have East of Eden on my mind again is that I just finished reading Sweetland by Michael Crummy. I picked it up because the premise of the Canadian government paying the residents of a remote island in Newfoundland to move to the mainland sounded intriguing. It also had the benefit of being by a Canadian author and I have huge holes in my reading life of books set there. 

There were parts that I enjoyed and found interesting, but much of it just gave me East of Eden vibes... Very few female characters and those that do appear have things happen to them rather than being part of the action (for the most part), odd and emotionally stunted men, men viewing women as merely recipients of sex, and a bizarre fixation on childlike aspects of various women. It was really the teeth that made me actually roll my eyes while I was reading. 

In East of Eden, Steinbeck spends an inordinate amount of time referring to Cathy's tiny teeth. It was odd. But then, in Sweetland, the author spends a stupid amount of time discussing one of the women character's teeth; how they were baby teeth because she never lost them and her adult teeth never grew in. Compared to how much time was devoted to discussing the female characters in general, it was a significant portion of those few passages. 

Am I the only one who finds this weird and disturbing? Why are some men so fixated on child like aspects of grown women? Once again, this grows exceedingly old. It almost makes you think that men (some men, not all men, let's just not start that, okay?) are more than a little afraid of adult, mature women. When do men finally grow up?

And if you really liked East of Eden I am genuinely curious as to what you liked about it.