How Is Curley's Wife Portrayed In Of Mice And Men Essay

In ‘Of Mice and Men’, Curley’s Wife is the wife of Curley who is the bosses son. Curley's Wife is a beautiful woman who constantly shows off her beauty to the men on the ranch. She dresses inappropriately for a woman married to the boss's son. She is always looking to be the centre of attention.   As the men are working on the fields all day Curley’s Wife has nothing to do but hang around. Her own way of solving this problem was to become flirtatious. This meant talking to the men more and wearing more makeup to get their attention.   Curley’s Wife is portrayed through her appearance, conversations with other characters, and what other characters say about her. Curley’s Wife’s appearance and actions around the ranch workers portrays her to be trampy. She is “heavily made up”, has a red cotton house dress on, “full rouged lips”, red slippers with ostrich feathers, and “her hair hung in little rolled clusters”.   This means she is making an effort to impress the ranch workers in the barn. She needs to be heavily made up to look attractive to get the attention of the ranch workers. Curley’s Wife asks about where her husband is Curley. George tells her that he is not in here. “Oh” . . .   she replies. This proves that she is never with Curley and that she is always looking for a conversation with the ranch workers. She asks Slim the exact same question (have you seen Curley). “Well you ain’t tryin’ very hard. I seen him goin’ in your house.” He replied. This shows us that that Curley’s Wife wasn’t really looking for Curley and was just using that for an excuse to go into the barn. Curley’s Wife is shown to be trampy by many of her actions and her appearances in the novel. To the men on the farm she is considered as a "tart", a woman trying to escape her husband. The men try to avoid her sexual powers for fear of losing their jobs; but the selfish woman cannot see that. This portrayal of Curley’s Wife is linked with her loneliness because this is how she got away from it...