She is also spotted with accessories, for instance the scene in which Lennie kills Curley’s wife, she is carrying a diary, which is a use of symbolism to show that she is lonely and only has a diary to share her feelings with as well as the fact that she longs for some company and friends to share her time, thoughts and feelings with, which is totally the opposite case in the novel as she is described as moving backwards and forwards in the exact same scene and is described as talking to Lennie “soothingly” and her body language is rather alluring as she “moved closer to Lennie and sat beside him”.
The filmmakers do things such as make her carry certain accessories, or wear a different set of clothing and also show in her body language how the character of Curley’s wife is more of a lonely, sad, unhappy, attention-seeking character. This is showed at scenes such as where she goes into the fields to see George and Lennie working, just so she can share some of her rather large spare time, as she has nothing to do and nobody to talk to. She seems like an attention seeker in the film and is portrayed as a rather solitary woman. She therefore has a long talk to Lennie about how she met Curley and that she does not really like him and says:
“He aint a nice fella”
and says this in confidence to Lennie as she has no one to really trust and rely on. The filmmakers are trying to show her as having rushed into marriage as she says:
I coulda made somethin’ of myself”
and believes she still can. She is referring back to how she was going to be an actress in the novel and the film, however, in the film, her voice and posture show that she is a young girl that has missed out on an opportunity and wants to do something with her life, but believes that she has made the wrong decision by going into marriage and does not want to change anything now, because she is too scared and is regretful of the past, for example, not being able to be in the movies. She says she met a guy who“…says he was gonna put me in the movies”
and then says that she
“…never got that letter”
so she married Curley, whom she also met
“…out the riverside palace that same night.”
I personally think that the Director chose to present Curley’s wife as a young ambitious girl, trapped in a life where nobody wants to talk to her, because they seem to misunderstand her, and I think they have done this to make her seem more sympathetic and to respect the equal rights of women and not to be sexist or prejudice in any way.
In one of the last scenes of the novel and film, Curley’s wife enters the barn when she sees Lennie and begins to talk to him. Later in the very scene, Lennie, who unintentionally, without realizing his own strength, kills Curley’s wife after she lets off a scream after Lennie strokes her hair too hard.
Curley’s wife’s true feelings are shown in this scene when she expresses her loneliness to Lennie saying:
“Why can’t I talk to you? I never get to talk to nobody. I get awful lonely.”
This shows the depressing life of Curley’s wife as she has nobody to turn to and her dreams have fallen flat, while she still believes she could make something of herself, but then does not want to go against Curley’s will or upset anyone as she is not mentally strong enough to take a big stand for herself and make something out of her life even though she thinks she could make it in the movies, she is still distressed about her not receiving a letter from a man who claims he was in Hollywood.
The scene in the novel in which Curley’s wife enters the room of crooks, she is extremely rude and refers to crooks as a “nigger” and Candy as a “bindle stiff” which shows the arrogant side of her and reflects her egotistical nature which is shown in the novel. This scene is cut out from the film version and is replaced by the scene in which she meets George and Lennie after George has spent a night out in town and tells him that Curley has broken all her records, which she listens to because he was in a fury. When approaching Lennie, Curley’s wife’s appearance looks much more child-like than described and imagined, as she is not heavily made up, she is not dressed as I had imagined when she was first described and made an appearance in the novel. In this scene she seems very intimately close to Lennie and tries to charm him in a way, as she looks closely to Lennie in the novel to see if she is impressing him by her talent and also makes a small grand gesture with her arm and hand to show she could act, but while doing this, also gives off the sense that she is being flirtatious by being so openly friendly with someone she hardly knows.
It is clear after having watched the film and read the novel that the filmmakers clearly had different intentions of the way they were going to represent the character of Curley’s wife and this could be due to the fact that the Director wanted to show Curley’s wife’s character as a typical young woman of the time. This could be due to the fact that a lonesome woman with no one to talk to in the time of the novel being published would perhaps become a “tart” as suggested in the book by Candy and be overfriendly and playfully teasing. It could also be that the views of a single married woman, with a husband who does not care about her, being surrounded by constant male company are a lot different to woman in similar circumstances today. Today, a woman that is in constant male company would rarely be referred to as a “tart” or even “jail bait” as Candy describes her. Times have changed and so have people’s views and opinions about certain issues, such as the social status of woman within a community and woman in general are thought of a lot differently by average working class men and groups such as the Suffragettes have changed things that we often overlook today.
