As we dwell further into the novel, it appears she is dissatisfied with her marriage to a brutish man and is constantly looking for excitement or trouble and she wanders around the ranch with the excuse that “she is looking for Curley”.
One aspect that makes us more sympathetic to her and draws us closer to her is the loneliness that consumes her life and her inhibition in finding companionship. When she barges in on Candy, Crook’s and Lennie’s conversation she expresses dissatisfaction for life and her loneliness. Her vulnerability at this moment and later – when she admits to Lennie her dream of becoming a movie star – makes her utterly human and more interesting than the stereotypical vixen in the fancy red shoes. However it also reinforces the novels grim overview. In her moment of greatest vulnerability Curley’s wife seeks out even greater weaknesses in others preying upon Candy’s debilitating age and the colour of Crook’s skin in order to steel her from harm. Her exit also has an impact – “While she went through the barn, the halter chains rattled, and some horses snorted and stamped their feet” – this perceives her as a trouble maker who causes disruption any where she goes. This particular section portrays her as petty and cruel and as a desperate captive of ranch living.
Curley’s wife understands the innate competitive urge for possessing women which tears men apart, and she knows that she is cast as a villain in this eternal game of one-upmanship. In “Of Mice and Men” she is especially comparable to Crooks; both are obviously intelligent and perceptive of themselves as well as others, and both contain a deep bitterness stemming from their mistreatment. Both contain a bleak and accurate insight of the fundamental nastiness of people and they are discriminated and isolated, one because she is a woman and one because of the colour of his skin.
Ultimately though, it appears as though she is frightened of her husband as she sneaks off to her house (her patriarchal prison). It appears Curley’s wife has been trapped by life and however brazen and manipulative she may be, in the novel she is a comparatively powerless figure in the novel and is perhaps an object of the readers’ sympathy, as she has no friends, no future, no respect and is trapped in a stifling and unhappy marriage as well as being marginalized and oppressed by her husband.
Curley’s wife is a pivotal character in Steinbeck’s book. In conclusion, our perception of Curley’s wife when she is presented is totally different to the way we feel towards her at the time Lennie breaks her neck, ending her story in tragedy. We first have a negative perception of her when she is presented, and Steinbeck appears to evoke this using, light symbolically and in his detailed suggestive description of the way she is dressed. Little snippets of information such as her elaborate hair and painted nails appear to stereotype her in a largely predatory negative view. However just before her death we are allowed a glimpse of Curley’s wife true nature when she talks about her unfulfilled dreams, her desire for friendship and her unhappy married life. This reinforces the idea that she doesn’t have the “eye” and only wanted attention and friendship. The theme of loneliness runs deeply through the veins of Curley’s wife and is definitely reinforced in the fact that her name is never revealed allowing her almost to not have an identity of her own, hence or possibly leading to her desperation to be noticed. Her character remains consistent through the text but our perception of her changes as she develops through the novel, her character evolving and her sweeter and more vulnerable side is shown. Our first perception of her as an imposing villain, who all the men at the ranch refer to as “loo loo” and “tart” has completely changed by the time of her death, in which we see her as a victim rather than a villain. At the time of the death of Curley’s wife, we feel empathetic towards her as she dies with unfulfilled dreams (similar to George and Lennie’s dream being unfulfilled) having never reached her full potential, and it appears no friends or her husband is going to mourn her death to the extreme. Although she is the catalyst of the last sections and the reason for Lennie’s death and her own death, we feel empathetic towards her as she died due to a desire for human contact and friendship. Her death signifies the death not just of her dreams but of other important characters in the book whose dreams are also ultimately broken and this lingers in the mind of the reader, long after the novel is read. Overall she is first shown as a negative character and a villain and towards the end her positive features are gradually revealed and she becomes more a victim than a villain. It is a credit to Steinbeck that he is able to reveal the complexity of all humans in his depiction of Curley wife and draw us in right up to the very last page where the story ends in even more unthinkable tragedy. In the end ‘Of Mice and Men’ is a story of broken dreams and loneliness both of which are evident in Curley’s wife and her life signifies the broken dream just like so many of the characters in the book.
