In her loneliness, Curley's wife is lured to the idea of
marrying Curley and leaving her life in Salinas, but in reality she does little other
than perpetuate the same kind of fate to which she was headed in her hometown. For
instance, when she was fifteen, she met an actor who came with a show through Salinas
and offered to let her travel with him, apparently so she could be an actress; however,
his intentions were probably to exploit her. Then, she met another man who took her to
the Riverside Dance Place, saying he would put her in the movies. Although he promised
to send her a letter, Curley's wife did not receive it; however, she believes that her
mother took the letter when it arrived in the mail. She tells
Lennie,
Well,
I wasn't gonna stay no place where I couldn't get nowhere or make something of myself,
an' where they stole your letters. So I married Curley. Met him out to the Riverside
Dance Palace that same
night.
Now, Curley's wife is
perhaps even more isolated that she was in Salinas, for there are no other women with
whom she can be friends, nor are there any men looking for her as a single woman at the
dance hall, and there is little for her to do on the ranch. Trapped, she comes around
the bunkhouse in the hopes of finding some companionship, but since there are only the
men who work for her husband's father, she is met with aggression by her tempting
appearance and actions, and distrust as the wife of the boss's son. Sadly, the
ranch becomes a veritable dead-end for her, and Curley's wife is fated to be isolated
and lonely, and worse-dead.
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