Cathy

Character Analysis

Cathy is Lin's precocious little daughter. We don't meet Cathy and Lin until Act 2 of the play. The first thing we hear from little Cathy (who is played by a man) is a few dirty nursery rhymes, which gives us a clean break from the proper idea of ladylike behavior that women show in Act 1. For example, one of the first things we hear Cathy say is, "Silly Jack, he should jump higher/ Goodness gracious, great balls of fire" (2.1.9-10).

This, and the fact that a little girl is being played by a man, should give us the hint that we're no longer in the same uptight Victorian world as we were in Act 1.

Cathy is a bit of an enigma when it comes to our traditional ideas of gender. On the one hand, she loves to play with toy guns (which we would usually associate with boys). But on the other hand, she loves pretty dresses and likes to dress up like a lady. For example, she claims, "I want my ears pierced" (2.1.208) even though she's just a little girl. But when she pushes the envelope and asks to try on Betty's jewelry, her mother Lin tells her, "You'll get a smack" (2.1.241) if she keeps it up. That's mostly because Lin doesn't want Cathy to be ladylike.

Toward the end of the play, Cathy gets beaten up by a group of young boys called the Dead Hand gang, who tell her that she can't play because she's a girl. The basic problem that Cathy sheds light on is that you shouldn't draw boundaries on behavior based on gender. People are who they are, and it's unfair to try to make them behave according to gender norms. That goes both for Cathy's mother Lin—who tries to make her less girlie—and the young boys who tell her she can't play with them because she's a girl.