She also talks very flirtatiously with the men as she says things ‘playfully’ showing she has no interest of finding her husband as she intended to do in the first place. When she is about to leave she says ‘Nobody can’t blame a person for lookin’’ which has a double meaning. It can be interpreted as you can’t blame a person for looking which would mean you cannot blame her for looking for Curley and you cannot blame a person for looking and admiring her.
Also, when she enters the bunkhouse she says ‘I’m lookin’ for Curley’ which is a lie because she is only saying that to flirt and talk to the men. We can tell that because when Slim says he has just seen Curley heading toward their house, she immediately becomes apprehensive and heads away because she does not want to be seen flirting with the men. The men know that she is a threat to them, you can tell when George says ‘I seen ‘em poison before, but I never seen no piece of jail bait worse than her’. This shows that he knows she is a threat to him and to the other men by endangering their position on the ranch by being Curly’s wife.
Further on in the novel we see her as a vindictive character. When she enters Crook’s room she acts very malicious. She insults the men when she says ‘They left all the weak ones here.’ This is really hurtful mainly because the men are different Candy is old and is excluded from the men because he has no more use and is not fun to the men anymore; Crooks is excluded because he is black and in the 1930’s people were very racist, and Lennie is excluded because he’s simple and does not have any fun and does not really understand the men themselves.
She keeps on insulting them by saying ‘Sat’iday night. Everybody out doin’ som’pin…. Standin’ here talkin’ to a bunch of bindle stiffs-a nigger an’ dum-dum and a lousy old sheep- an’ likin’ it because they ain’t nobody else’ here she is very upset because she know were the men went which means that the relationship between Curley and his wife is very bad because he rather go to the bruffeles than stay in with his wife which means that there relation needs more intimacy as well. Here she is acting very selfish too because she is putting all the anger she has on them
Later on when Crook’s stands up for Lennie she acts extremely racist towards him by saying ‘I could get you strung up a tree so easy it ain’t even funny’ which show that people in the 1930’s were extremely racist towards black people. She also uses the fact that she is a young pretty girl in the 1930’s and could accuse him of some crime if he does not behave the way she wants him to
Soon after this we see he as a victim a young nice girl just trying to live her lonely life we see her like this when she says ‘I don’t like Curley. He ain’t a nice fella’ here she admits that she is not happy with her marriage and then later on she says ‘well I wasn’t gonna stay in no place where I couldn’t get nowhere or make something of myself……So I married Curley. By these two quote we can easily tell that she married only because her dream didn’t come true and she was still willing to chase it we can also tell that she married Curley because he was the first man who showed any interest at her after her big disappointment so she married him because she thought that by doing that she would get more freedom and happiness than living with her mother
She also acts very motherly while talking to Lennie ‘don’t you worry non he was jus’ a mutt’ she says this after she discovers that Lennie killed his mutt and is very disappointed because now George will not let him tend the rabbits, she also says that she will cover up for him and that it is no big deal because he can get another one easily
She also shows that she is lonely and misunderstood when she says ‘Aint I got a right to talk to nobody? Whatta they think I am anyways?’ this show that she has lived her whole life on the ranch not talking to anybody only her husband and she like all young people like to walk around and talk to people but the only way she can do this is acting tartly so that people would pay attention people are scared to talk to her only because she is the wife of the bosses son.
Also she is very unhappy because her dream has never came true ‘he says he was gonna put me in the movies’ she has lived and relied on this dream always and has been trying to live it by dressing nice and caring about her looks, she only married Curley so she would have more freedom to fulfill it and it has never came true.
I think that John Steinbeck was successful to present Curleys wife as a nice girl because the floozy inside her was only something like a mask she had to wear all day so she would get the attention she wants and needs and something that as soon disappeared as soon as it came when she died
