Curley's wife: the bitter wife of Curley attempts to seduce the ranch hands; she has a mean streak and is a vehicle for spreading evil
Curley's Wife: Nameless and flirtatious, Curley's wife is perceived by Candy to be the cause of all that goes wrong at Soledad: "Ever'body knowed you'd mess things up. You wasn't no good" (104-105), he says to her dead body in his grief. The workers, George included, see her as having "the eye" for every guy on the ranch, and they cite this as the reason for Curley's insecurity and hot-headed temperament. But Curley's wife adds complexity to her own characterization, confessing to Lennie that she dislikes Curley because he is angry all the time and saying that she comes around because she is lonely and just wants someone with whom to talk. Like George and Lennie, she once had a dream of becoming an actress and living in Hollywood, but it went unrealized, leaving her full of self-pity, married to an angry man, living on a ranch without friends, and viewed as a trouble-maker by everyone.
Curley's wife appears to be a manipulative woman but actually suffers a great deal under her husband, who she married to spite her mother. She is the only female on the ranch, and her interaction with the male ranch-hands causes her to be labelled a 'tart', albeit she seeks what many of the others lack, friendship. She clings to impossible dreams of becoming an actress due to her naivety and tells of her lost opportunities to Lennie. However, her intense unhappiness manifests itself in her cruel treatment of the men underneath her, shown in her threat to Crooks: "I could get you hung up on a tree so easy it ain't even funny." The character remains nameless throughout the story, further adding to the fact that she is treated like Curley's property.
