Who is really responsible for Curley's wife's death? Of Mice and Men - Steinbeck

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Draft 1        English        Amy Helm 11R

 

Who is really responsible for Curley’s wife’s death?

When someone dies 99.9% of the time you feel sad and mourn for that person. However when Curley’s wife was killed no one mourned, no one was sad. This is because she never gave anyone cause to care for her.  I think there were several contributors to her death including Curley, George, Lennie, Slim, Crooks, and the world around her and herself.

        Initially I would like to focus on her. She was rude, offensive and incredibly conceited. This is shown in section 5. Though she realises that Lennie is unintelligent and not listening to her she is desperate to talk and we hear how isolated she feels; this also represents the fact that she only dresses the way she does to get the attention that she needs significantly.

Curley’s Wife lived in a male-dominated surrounding, where there was not much compassion to Curley’s Wife. She also had no family apart from Curley, and so many members of the community did not grieve her loss. Also, she was perceived as having it coming to her because of her outrageous flirting with the workers at the ranch. And as a woman, at that time she has no rights therefore she has to rely on her looks to get anywhere.

‘Well, ain’t she a looloo…she’s purty.’ ‘…Her face was heavily made up…she put her hands behind her back so that her body was thrown forward.’

At that time women were not regarded as people just trophies for their husbands. This allows the husbands to treat their partners anyway they like, something Curley takes advantage of, as does the film producer.

Film work was one of the few types of work you could get as a woman, it was every girl’s dream, but it was often only a scam to take advantage of young women.

When Lennie tells her that he's not allowed to talk to her, in section 5 she cries again with plead ‘What's the matter with me?’ Then adds ‘Seems like they ain't none of them cares how I gotta live’. We then find out more details of her life, that a man who ‘was in pitchers’ said that he was ‘gonna put her in the Movies’ and would write to her as ‘soon as he got back to Hollywood’. The letter never came, and Curley's wife believed her mother stole it but it comes apparent that there was never likely to be any letter. Her naivety got her to believe that she was a glorious actor.

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Also John Steinbeck has significantly not given Curley’s wife a proper name. She is referred to as his property for example  ‘Curley’s horse’. Maybe she doesn’t deserve one, that when she married Curley she got a name. This reflects on her dream of equal rights for women. She is a very lonely person; she has no one to talk to except the men on the ranch who don’t really listen to her. So to make them listen to her, or pretend to in most cases, she dresses provocatively to get attention. She seems to get left out of the conversations ...

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