The men in the novel treat the women as negative and domesticated people. Curley’s wife wears a ‘cotton house dress’ which symbolises that she belongs in the house and shouldn’t be allowed out. Also, when Lennie hallucinates he pictures Aunt Clara who he describes as a ‘fat old woman’ in a ‘huge gingham apron’. These negative words suggest to the reader that Aunt Clara was not a nice person. On the other hand, she was a maternal figure to Lennie (in his hallucination she gains respect when she is called ‘ma’am’) which shows that some goodness in women does exist. However, Aunt Clara never actually appears in the novel, suggesting that she is insignificant and that maybe because she is a woman, she doesn’t need to be mentioned and has no purpose? Also, the boss’ wife isn’t mentioned which may suggest that her character isn’t necessary and insignificant.
Steinbeck has used his descriptions of Curley’s wife’s appearance instead of her personality to portray her. ‘She had full rouged lips and wide-spaced eyes, heavily made up. Her fingernails were red.’ This suggests that she makes herself look pretty to feel good about herself, as beauty is the only power she has. She is very out of place because she isn’t dressed appropriately for the ranch. It is as if she is living her ‘American Dream’ of being a Hollywood film star, although in reality she is living a miserable life on the ranch with no friends or any other women. The repetition of the dominating colour red indicates trouble, danger and love. It is symbolic of a woman with loose morals (as in the expression ‘a scarlet woman’). However, there is no evidence to prove that she is in fact sexually promiscuous.
In a letter from Steinbeck to Claire Luce (who played the part of Curley’s wife), Steinbeck say that Curley’s wife was ‘a nice, kind girl and not a floozy’. This is very debatable and very much depends on what is meant by a ‘nice girl’ and ‘floozy’. A nice girl would suggest a pleasant, kind woman but a floozy, on the other hand, is a term for an immoral, disreputable and sexually promiscuous woman. When we first meet Curley’s wife, Steinbeck describes her very negatively with a floozy image and other characters describe her in ways that make her seem very ‘floozy’. However, she is a nice girl and she just wants to live her life. She is the only female on the ranch and she craves company. She doesn’t want to cause any harm and she is just lonely and isolated. ‘I get lonely... You can talk to people, but I can’t talk to nobody but Curley’.
The phrase ‘nice girl’ is very questionable because Steinbeck uses the word ‘girl’ instead of ‘woman’. This is repeated in the novel several times: ‘I could live so easy and maybe have a girl’. Curley’s wife is also called a ‘girl’ instead of a woman in the novella. ‘A girl was standing there looking in’, and Curley calls his wife a girl instead of by her name, ‘‘You seen a girl round here?’ he demanded angrily’ and is even called a kid by Slim, ‘Seen the new kid yet?’ This is maybe because a ‘girl’ or a ‘kid’ sounds less important than a woman and suggests that she is youthful, naïve and innocent.
Before we even meet Curley’s wife, she is described by Candy as having ‘the eye’ at other men on the ranch. He even says ‘Well, I think that Curley has married... a tart’. This is a very harsh label and it is used before the reader can even judge the character, so the reader automatically has a negative, unsympathetic view of Curley’s wife straight away. However, the ellipsis shows hesitation or even that Candy doesn’t usually use such a harsh word or maybe because he starts to think whether she deserves such a harsh label.
It is clear that men think women are only there to fulfil their sexual desires and therefore, they think prostitution is totally acceptable. ‘You ought ta come in town with us guys tomorra night’. They treat most women with no respect and just use them for sex. However, they treat Susy (the brothel owner) with lots of respect and the men speak about her in a positive way. ‘We do in old Susy’s place. Hell of a nice place’. This is because she knows what the men want and she says ‘my girls is clean’.
On the contrary, the other brothel owner, Clara, is not treated with the same respect as Susy is and the men make degrading remarks about her house and complain about the entertainment there. ‘Clara gets three bucks a crack and thirty-five cents a shot, and she don’t crack no jokes’. The men don’t respect Clara because she doesn’t fulfil the men’s needs and she is too expensive. This also suggests that the women are used and degraded. Fun name shows that the women weren’t special or unique. The same name may represent the same personality and insignificance?
Curley’s wife gets treated differently to other women and the men don’t use her for sex. This is because they know that she is Curley’s wife and that Curley will get angry if anyone goes anywhere near his wife. Curley is very protective over his wife. ‘You can talk to people, but I can’t talk to nobody but Curley. Else he gets mad’. This shows that Curley’s wife is scared of her own husband, as he has much more power than her. When Curley denies his wife any opportunity to talk to men, it suggests that Curley is very hypocritical because he is allowed to go to the brothel, but his wife is not allowed to talk to ‘nobody but Curley’. This suggests that he orders his wife about and tells her what she can and can’t do, showing that he is the powerful one in the relationship.
In the novel, Steinbeck uses light and dark imagery to show that Curley’s wife brings darkness to life on the ranch. When Curley’s wife enters the room, she cuts off the light. ‘Both men glanced up, for the rectangle of sunshine in the doorway was cut off’. When she dies, there is no more darkness. ‘The sun streaks were high on the wall now, and the light was growing soft in the barn’. In the film, the windows are small, not letting in much light, which also signifies darkness and that the ranch was a miserable and lonely place.
Even though Curley tells his wife not to speak to anyone, she is constantly seeking out the other workers for conversation. ‘What you got there, sonny boy?’ Her body language is deliberately provocative and flirty. ‘So that her body was thrown forward’. This suggestive posture reveals her need to be noticed and to get attention. However, most of the men pay very little attention to her and the attention that she does receive is primarily negative. She doesn’t even receive any attention from her husband who she is constantly looking for and who is always looking for her. ‘I’m trying to find Curley, Slim’. The only time they are in the same room as each other is when she is dead, which is still only for a short time, as Curley is more interested in searching for Lennie rather than being with his wife.
Curley’s wife doesn’t really have any power in the novel. The only power she has is that she is the boss’ daughter in law and that she is white. She uses this power against Crooks, because he is black. ‘Nigger, I could get you strung up on a tree so easy...’ This means she is a defensive woman who constantly needs more attention to make her feel wanted.
George uses very harsh metaphors when talking about Curley’s wife, such as ‘poison’ and ‘jailbait’. The word jailbait shows that George recognises her to be trouble right from the start and he warns Lennie of this. ‘Don’t you even look at that bitch’. This affects our judgement and makes the reader have no sympathy for her or think she is a nice woman. George also says ‘Well, you keep away from her, cause she’s a rattrap if I even seen one’. The word ‘rattrap’ is a metaphor and another harsh label used to describe the only woman on the ranch. The hard sounds of the ‘t’ and the ‘p’ add to the harshness of the word. It shows how George uses such harsh, cruel words to degrade and demean women.
Although throughout the novel, Steinbeck uses the characters to portray a negative image of Curley’s wife, towards the end of the book when she reveals everything about her American Dream and her relationship with her mother, the reader starts to feel sympathy for her. ‘But my ol’ lady wouldn’t let me’. When Curley’s wife tells Lennie that her mother tried ruining her American Dream, the reader starts feeling sorry for her because she got married to Curley to escape her mother and to make her American Dream come true, but it still didn’t come true.
The reader also feels sympathy towards her because she is fully aware that her husband goes to the cathouse, so she is trapped in a loveless marriage. We then realise that she is unhappy in her marriage and that she doesn’t actually like Curley, ‘He ain’t a nice fella’. Curley doesn’t respect his wife, pays other women for sex and never spends time with his wife. This is why she is unhappy and lonely. Readers also sympathise with her because she is ignored by all the men on the ranch and is very lonely. ‘I never get to talk to nobody. I get awful lonely’. She is very isolated because Curley doesn’t really let her speak to other men and she has no other women on the ranch to talk to - this is because it was very rare in 1930s USA to settle down with someone and get married because the men moved around so much and therefore there was always a lack of intimacy and proper relationships forming - so there wasn’t any other wives of other men on the ranch to talk to and share common interests with.
In the film which was directed by Gary Sinise in 1992, the director gives Curley’s wife a larger role than Steinbeck does so that the audience has more sympathy for her than they might have in the novel. Also, in the film, when she is dead, she is still referred to as Curley’s wife and still has no name - there is no sympathy received. Also, in the film, Curley’s wife comes across as very flirty - there is heavy eye contact between her and the men she talks to, she lifts up her dress and thrusts her chest out. This allows the audience to not sympathise with her. Also, the fact the all the men eat together, go to the cathouse together, work together and play cards together shows that it is definitely a man’s world and there is no place for women on the ranch. In one scene, it shows the men working and lifting really heavy bags which is certainly not a woman’s job!
In conclusion, I think that Steinbeck explores a wide range of attitudes towards women. He uses Curley’s wife as a plot device to show how women were degraded and isolated at the time of the novel and he uses Susy and Aunt Clara to show that there are some nice women, even though women were mainly portrayed very negatively throughout the book.
