Popular Culture Review 30.1
home . This dramatic license of Hart creates a better storyline because in the novel Adam returns home to Charles before the Ames family is even introduced .
Hart makes another transforming improvement on Steinbeck ’ s work by establishing another effective connection between characters . The respected Bostonian businessman who is secretly a whoremaster , Mr . Edwards , takes his wife and their two young sons to the same revival that Charles and Adam have come to after the former is unable to cure his brother ’ s “ knocker fever ” due to so many ladies of the evening in the area suddenly “ getting religion .” There , Edwards comes across two from his “ stock ,” Jane and Molly ; they also happen to be the particular prostitutes that the Trask brothers have come to town to hire . Edwards frog-marches the women away to a room at a nearby inn , where he commits assault and battery upon them ( most of which appears offscreen ) after they refuse to return to work . Edwards later commits assault and battery upon Cathy , who surprises him�as well as the viewer�by fighting back . Fascinated by both these despicable characters , the viewer does not know whom to root for but watches intently , caught up in the suspense .
Having emerged in the 1970s and being “[ s ] imilar to soap operas , miniseries were serial in form , and focused on intrapersonal and familial relationships , often presented as melodrama . However , while the soap opera continues to be denigrated as low culture , the miniseries , because of its historic content , was seen as upscale television ” ( Rymsza-Pawlowska 86 ). Rymsza-Pawlowska finds the miniseries to share historical gravitas with the novel , tracing major events in the lives of the main characters ( 85 ).
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