Curleys Wife Character †of Men and Mice Essay

Of Men and Mice is not kind in its portrayal of wowork force. In fact, wo men are treated with contempt throughout the course of the book. Steinbeck generally depicts women as troublemakers who bring spoil to men and drive them mad. Curleys wife, who walks the ranch as a temptress gullms to be a prime example of the detrimental tendency. Despite the authors rendering, Curleys wife emerges as a relatively complex and interesting character. Although her purpose is rather simple in the books opening pages, she is the tramp, tart and bitch that threatens to place down male happiness and longevity. The social setting of the novel is similarly important, as it could later expl ain characters attitudes towards other people. It is set in the U.S. in the thirties this is the time of the Great Depression. This was a result of the First World War. It affected the rich and poor a the like, factory workers and farmers, bankers and stockbrokers. In short, it affected every hotshot no one wa s left untouched.But of all the people hurt, farmers were the worst off. Curleys wife is outset introduced in person to us in a typic way this is shown when George is talking to Lennie al more or less the ideate and when Curleys wife first meets both men. Both men glanced up, for a rectangle of sunshine in the gate was cut off. The symbolic meaning of the word sunshine is hope, freedom, happiness and dreams. This foreshadows that she whitethorn cause trouble or fall down in the way and could ruin it all for Lennie and George. She is also described as a girl, which tells us that she is very playful, childish and vulnerable. Her appearance later in the novel becomes much complex. But purge before this we are forewarned about her, dulcorate tells George and Lennie about her, making her out at the wrong type to begin with, get hitched with to weeks and got the eye? Maybe that is why Curleys pants is full of ants, freehanded us the impression she was a person not to socialise with. similarly tells us that the men on the ranch know that Curley knows that is wife looks at the rest of them, hoping for one of them to try and get close to her, so he can then create a situation for a fight. As glass relaxes he also goes on to get them to have the egotismsame(prenominal) opinion as him about her by saying, well, you look her over, mister. You attend if she aint a tart, and the reply from George, Purty? making sure that we perk up her as jail bait. Then when we first get to debate her she is dressed as if she is going out to a party, and Steinbeck also enforces the model that she is trouble and a tart, by describing her appearance, she had full rouged lips, red mules, on the insteps of which were little bouquets of red ostrich feathers, using the colour red as a foreshadow that she is dangerous. This is the first time also that we see that she is fetching and that she knows it, also that she wants the men to look at her, she put her hands low biography her back and leaned a summationst the door frame so that her body was thrown advancing, forcing the men to look at her curves.This first sign of nativity shows that she doesnt understand her affect on men, showing her age as a teenager and her understanding of her sexual attractiveness. We also get an insight to her life with her husband and why she is always coming around the rest of the men. When Candy tells George and Lennie about Curley having his glove full of Vaseline and that he was keeping that hand slow for his wife, tells us that she was also being beaten up, and that nobody could see the bruises because Curley had softened his hand, or he hit her in places where we couldnt see the bruises. This is the first time we see her as a victim needing help. We also see that see can be cruel, and willing to misuse power. When she confronts Lennie, Candy, and Crooks in the stable, she admits to feeling a kind of shameless dissatisfaction with her life.Her vulnerability at this is sue and later when she admits to Lennie her dream of becoming a movie star makes her short human and much more interesting than the stereotypical vixen in fancy clothes. She seeks out even greater weakness in others, preying upon Lennies mental handicap they left all the weak ones here, Candys debilitating age, tell an be damned. Nobodyd would learn to you, and you know it and the colour of Crooks skin you know what I can do to you if you open your trap? in order to brace herself against harm. Dreams are a major reoccurring theme, when Lennie tells Curleys wife of his and Georges dream she just says baloney, that she has a dream of her own and she return key to talk Lennie about it. She has dreamt of being a movie star, which nearly came rightful(a) when she encountered an actor. He says I could go with that show, but like most young girls was forbade from her mother, my ol lady wouldn let me. So having her dream pulled out from underneath her she rebelled, and married Curley. However she always wanted to achieve some affaire of herself and loved attention. Curleys wife lay with a half-covering of yellow convert. And the meanness and the planning and the discontent and the ache for attention were all gone from her depend. She was very pretty and simple, and her face was sweet and young. Now her rouged cheeks and her reddened lips made her seem unrecorded and sleeping very lightly. The curls, tiny little sausages, were spread on the hay behind her head, and her lips were parted, this is the first time we are shown her true self she was a young, innocent, lone(prenominal) young girl. When you take away all the walls she had erected you come back to a young girl wanting to be loved, who aphorism Lennie as a way out from Curleys abusive relationship.As Lennie could hurt Curley, but not realising the danger she was ultimately putting herself into. So in conclusion Curleys wife is the most depressed and lonely characters in the novel. She has no friends, no future, no respect she doesnt even deserve a name. All she wants is someone to talk to but in her mind the only way she can do this is by flaunting herself to the men to get noticed. This leads her to be perceived as a tart by the men. She represents absolute loneliness and desperation to achieve something better in life. notwithstanding though she is very lonely, she comes across as a very pulchritudinous woman. She flaunts herself by dressing and acting in a tart like manner, but really she is just making use of her body to gain the attention of the workers to soothe her.If whatsoeverone would give her a break, treat her like a person, she would idolise them. Her craving for contact is immense but she, with her background is incapable of conceiving any contact without some sexual context, she is not particularly oversexed, but has been forced to recognise that her sexuality is the only weapon she has, and the only thing that gets her noticed. Consequently she is a little st arved. She knows nothing about sex, except the aggregative information girls tell each other. All through the novel the men make out that Curleys wife is trouble. But yet on that point was never any proof that Curleys wife has ever caused any of the trouble or conflicts. The only trouble she caused was when she died.