PORTRAYAL OF CURLEY’S WIFE IN “OF MICE AND

MEN”

ANALYSE STEINBECK’S PORTRAYAL OF CURLEY’S

WIFE AS THE LONE FEMALE IN AN ALL MALE RANCH.

Portrayal

Powerful

Lonely

Seductive and

flirtatious.

PowerfulShe is portrayed as powerful because she

threatens to accuse Crooks of rape and get him hanged when he is rude to her.

‘’Nigger, I could get you strung up on a tree so easy, it ain’t even funny.’’

She is portrayed as being powerful as all the men at the ranch stay away from her. The abuse of this

power makes her dangerous. George refers to her as ‘’jailbait’’.

She is shown to be wearing red, which is a colour

synchronised with danger, as it warns people to keep away.

LONELINESS

The one and only reason she married Curley was when she learned that she could no longer pursue her actress dream.

Curley’s wife is only ever known as Curley’s wife. This emphasizes on how little respect females got when this novel was written in 1937.

By the men on the ranch she is only ever seen as a sex object, never as a real person with feelings.

She is a woman… NOBODY will listen to what she has to say.

She dresses seductively as an attempt to re-kindle her dream of being an actress and catching people’s attention. This desperate attempt at recollecting her dreams, and get

out of her current lonely state. Thus making the reader sympathetic towards her.

Curley is always looking for her throughout the novel, which leads us to compare her to a lost object. When the ‘’lost object’’ is finally found, she is dead, and this is the only time Curley is in the same place as her.

FLIRTACIOUS & SEDUCTIVEShe dresses and acts provocatively, and

always wears red, which signifies a sexual feeling.

Steinbeck describes her with1- rouged lips, 2-wide spaced eyes, 3-with red fingernails, 4-wearing a cotton house dress and5- red mules with red ostrich feathers

She dresses seductively to catch the attention of the males on the ranch.

‘’But when she was standing in the doorway showin’ her legs...’’ ‘’She moved closer to him and spoke soothingly...’’. ‘’She smiled archly and twitched her body.’’

These quotes resemble her flirty nature and how she abuses her power and femininity to get what she wants.

Conclusion

Steinbeck has used the character of Curleys wife to reiterate the life for females during the great depression. Although at first she may seem seductive, flirtatious, and dangerous; she isn’t. As the reader goes on through the novel they realize that she is only trying to seek attention. That is not wrong. Steinbeck is also showing us that many marriages during the Great Depression may have ended disastrously.