Curley's Wife From Of Mice & Men as a Complex Character Essay

Curleys wife. One of the most complex characters in the story. She is an attractive and beautiful young woman. By her appearance it is evident that she is out of place in the ranch, where the people are rough and live danger filled, lonely lives. Whereas she seems to belong more in glitzy and glamorous world, in an easy and out going life. The ranch hands, as seen from the fact that she is given no identity of her own as she is dubbed Curleys wife, objectify her. She is the only woman in the ranch, which isolates her even further since she has no one of similar views and interest to talk to. She is vain, flirtatious and very gullible, which is easily picked up on since she believed out of her own delusions that her mother hid the letter, which told her if she was going to become an actress. This causes her to enter a loveless marriage with Curley, which she believed in self-delusion, was going to provide her a glamorous lifestyle.

Curleys wife does not partake in any of the manual labour of the ranch. She is always seen running around the ranch, dressed fabulously and claiming to be looking for Curley. We see this when we are first introduced to her, ' She had full, rouged lips and wide spaced eyes, heavily made up. Her hair hung in little rolled clusters. Im looking for Curley she said, this shows that she has no place in the ranch and the fact that she dresses so inappropriately for ranch life emphasises her misplacement and how contrasted she is to the ranch. The way she dresses so inappropriately also brings attention to the fact that she is flaunting herself shamelessly around the ranch hands when she is supposedly looking for Curley, she bridled a little She smiled archly and twitched her body, this causes speculations that she only uses Curley as an excuse when in actual fact she wants the ranch hands to swoon over her. She is very flirtatious. We see this when she flirted with Lennie, Lennie watched her, fascinated.Nobody cant blame a person for looking, she said. We are also given indications from Candy earlier in the story of how flirtatious she is, she got the eye.. I seen her give Slim the eye. Curley never seen it. An I seen her give Carlson the eye I think Curleys married a tart, all of this evidence suggests that she doesnt seem to hold a value or respect over her marriage and that she craves the attention of the ranch hands, which doesnt really work in her favour as they condemn her as a tart. Though some of these facts also suggest that she may just be looking for attention from anyone in the ranch because she is lonely.

Curley has a very strange relationship with his wife. There does not seem to be any love in their marriage. And it appears that he married her to show her off, she married him in the false hope of having a fabulous lifestyle, which is the polar opposite of what she has to endure in the ranch. Curley and his wife are always seen looking for each other, evident from a statement from one of the ranch hands, He spends half the time lookin for her, and the rest of the time shes lookin for him. We already know that Curleys wife is using him as an excuse to flaunt herself about the ranch. Curley on the other hand seems to be searching for her all the time out of mistrust, Thinks Slims with his wife, dont he?. Curley seems to see his wife as more of an object that he holds ownership of, we also see this more clearly as none of the ranch hands even use her given name but rather calls her Curleys wife. This adds evidence to speculations as to why she craves attention, she is very lonely and is in a loveless marriage where she gets no respect. We see fully how unhappy and alone she is when she talks to Lennie in the barn. Curleys wife seems almost desperate for someone to talk to, Why cant I talk to you? I never get to talk to anyone. I get awful lonely, emphasising the pent up frustration and isolation that she has had to deal with. Steinbeck seems to make the reader almost want to feel sympathy for her due to her severe isolation, I get lonely.You can talk to people, I cant talk to nobody but Curley. Else he gets mad. Howd you like not to talk to anybody?, again this emphasises her loneliness and segregation from the rest of the ranch life and also highlights Curleys objectification of her, how he only sees her as something he owns and not an individual.

Curleys wife is one of the 4 main misfits of the novel, the other 3 being Candy, Crooks and Lennie. What they all have in common is that they are all is that they are all shunned from the social hierarchy of the ranch in one way or another. Crooks and Curleys wife are isolated from the rest of the ranch, reasons being Curleys wife is the only woman in the ranch and the workers are afraid to talk to her because of Curleys dominating personality and ownership of her. Crooks on the other hand is isolated because of his racial background, racial discrimination was still very high during those times, also he was handicapped because of his crooked spine, the full effect of the racial discrimination against him evident from his pun of a nickname Crooks. Candy is an old man with a severed hand, and being old and useless garnered no sympathy or offer of help during those times. He was isolated because he is seen as someone who is not much good for anything else but to live out his days. Lennie has a mental disability, and people take advantage of that, evident from the way George tormented him in the past. But having uncontrollable strength bode ill for Lennie, because not only was outcast, he was always feared and ridiculed because he always caused great harm with out meaning to and garnering the attention of lynch mobs, as seen at the beginning of the novel when him and George were walking to their new jobs after a narrow escape from a lynch mob.

Curleys wife is one of the most lonely and isolated characters in the novel. Her dreams of a fabulous, picture perfect life was never to be a reality after entering a loveless marriage and an isolated existence in the ranch. But her tragic death was abrupt, her life extinguished by the hands of Lennie. Up till the point of her death, we only saw her pain and depression, but her death was the only release that she could have, as she seemed more alive in her death than she has been throughout the whole novel.