She also acts flirtatiously in front of the other ranch workers. Through her physical appearance and her own actions, Candy’s description of her seems very accurate. Our negative feelings towards her begin to change when she enters Crooks’ residence. Curley’s wife enters asking for Curley and receives cold hearted responses from the men; she then goes on to talk about her loneliness and isolation, and then begins to start verbally attacking the men and aims the reason for doing so, towards Curley. After Crooks asks her to leave, she threatens him, she says “listen nigger, you know what I can do to you if you open your trap?” she discriminates him and puts him down, so she feels in power.
The author uses different adjectives to describe to the reader the appearance and personality of Curley’s wife. The fact that Steinbeck refers to her as “A girl” may show her immature desire for attention, and the fact that she wore mainly red symbolizes blood and danger which also hints to the reader that she is a mesmerizing but dangerous woman. Curley’s wife was “heavily made up” which suited the description that Candy gave to George – a tart. However, this may symbolize that she is wearing a mask and is not showing her true persona, and we find that later on in the novel she truly reveals herself to Lennie. This enforces the idea that unlike Lennie, she is a complex character in the novel.
The red dress is crucial in this respect, because it's what causes the attention. The red dress is why they see her , its passion, desire, and attitude. "I want it too tight, I want to wear it until someone tears it off me" (lines 3,4). Addonizio surrounds the speaker with images of everyday life. The speaker confesses, describing how it will make her fell as though she is the only woman on earth.
This further suggests her need to overcompensate in her image as an attempt to impress the ranch workers and her husband. The reader may infer that Curley’s wife succeeds in her attempt for their attention when slim addresses her as “good-lookin” in a friendly manner, however we notice George stays constantly wary of her and treats her with a similarly brusque air “well he aint now.” Steinbeck uses this short and abrupt sentence to perhaps highlight George’s intolerance of her, and her dangerously flirty personality. Steinbeck prefigures the death of Curley’s wife, later in the novel, also through his physical description of her. This is shown through use of the colour red in her; “rouged lips”; “little bouquets of red ostrich feathers” and “red mules” perhaps meaning her association with the colour red holds connotations of danger and death. Her death is also prefigured in the very first introduction of her entering the bunkhouse “the rectangle of sunshine in the doorway was cut off” Steinbeck presents the sunshine as being part of Curley’s wife’s’ ‘dream’ and perhaps being used as a metaphor for the freedom and happiness she longs for, however when the light is “cut
Candy also says “Curley’s married . . . a tart” which shows how Steinbeck wants to present Curley’s wife which is in a very crude manner. The word “tart” which shows the impression and effect Curley’s wife has on other workers on the ranch.
‘She had full rouged lips and wide spaced eyes, heavily made up,’ which suggests that the author wanted us to presume the worst of her before she’d even spoken and we set ourselves up for her to be a character we feel a lot of resentment for. The fact that her ‘finger nails were red,’ along with ‘red mules’ and ‘red ostrich feathers’ shows us how Steinbeck’s use of colour goes well alongside her sexual appeal. The colour red is used in two ways. One is a strong representation of love or a form of attraction, the other is the inner appeal of sexual preference and seduction. The intention of making the reader perceive her early on as a ‘tart’ foreshadows that something later is going to happen and there could be trouble.
Throughout the novel we see her in different ways, feeling fake to innocent and weak to provocative. I am going to be looking at the different ways the reader sees her and whether this effects our empathy for the character of Curley’s wife. Curley’s wife is first introduced in an interesting, yet possibly misleading way; ‘a girl was standing there looking in. she had full, rouged lips and wide-spaced eyes, heavily made-up. Her finger nails were red.
When we first meet Curley’s wife, Steinbeck makes her appear very flirtatious and dangerously beautiful. Steinbeck does this by giving her features that are very atrocious but yet lures you such as ‘full, rouged lips’, ‘red fingernails’, and ‘red mules’. The word ‘red’ symbolises many associations with sex, lust and seduction. Another quote that would question the reader would be, ‘She’s a jailbait.’ From this quote alone, it evokes the reader of suspicion that she could be the ticket to jail as well as being an object that would foreshadow later in the book. In addition to the previous paragraph, we also know that Curley’s wife is a married woman, a possession of Curley’s.
“’She got the eye goin’ all the time on everybody… I don’t know what the hell she wants’” (51). Curley’s Wife is treated with acrimony by the workers on the ranch. When she walks into a room looking only for conversation, she is treated with accusations, spite, and antipathy. All of this is because the ranch workers believe she is a “tart,” always looking for someone to cheat on Curley with. However, she later explains to Lennie that all she wants is
Candy, like Crooks, also tried to reach out, yet he does it by trying to defend Crooks. Crooks and Curley's wife get into a climactic altercation, and Candy, acting on his loneliness, angrily discloses that they aren't "afraid of getting canned...because they got their own land". (Steinbeck 79) This reflects his reaching out because he put himself on the line for a man he had just met. Before the altercation with Crooks, Curley's wife uses her appeal to reach out. In a desperate attempt to make small talk with the men, she states