Representative of the temptress, the Eve who ruins the
halcyon environment of the Eden-like pond and surrounding greenery, Curley's wife is
pathetically lonely after having had to abandon her dreams of being a movie-star--"I
tell ya I could of went with shows."
Out of this
loneliness, much like the loneliness of the bindle stiffs themselves, Curley's wife
comes around the bunkhouse. However, she holds a power that the men do not: she poses
as the temptress with
full, rouged lips and wide-spaced eyes, heavily
made up. Her fingernails were red. Her hair hung in little rolled clusters, like
sausages. She wore a cotton house dress and red mules, on the insteps of which were
little bouquets of red ostrich feathers. 'I'm looking for Curley,' she said. Her voice
had a nasal, brittle quality.
...She put her hands behind
her back and leaned against the door frame so that her body was thrown
forward.
When George tells
her that Curley has not been there, she flirts with
him,
"If he
ain't, I guess I better look some place else," she said playfully....She smiled archly
and twitched her body.
After
this, George expresses his assessment of her and tells
Lennie,
"I
seen 'em poison before, but I never seen no piece of jail bait worse than her. You
leave her be."
Curley's wife
uses her power as the wife of the son of the boss to be cruel and to
intimidate,
"I
seen too many you guys. If you had two bits in the worl', why you'd be in gettin' two
shots of corn with it and suckin' the bottom of the glass. I know you
guys."
When she asks Lennie
about his bruises and Lennie just says that Curley had his hand caught in a machine, she
laughs and says,
"O.K. Machine. I'll talk to you later. I like
machines."
"I'm glad you bust up Curley a little bit. He
got it comin; to him. Sometimes I'd like to bust him
myself."
She later uses her
sensuality to threaten Crooks,
"Listen, N--....You know what I could do to you
if you open your trap?...I could get you strung up on a tree so easy it ain't even
funny."
and to control
Lennie,
She
looked up at Lennie, and she made a small grand gesture with her arm and hand to show
that she could act. The fingers trailed after her leading wrist, and her little finger
stuck out grandly from the rest.Lennie sighed
deeply.......she ran her fingers over the top of her
head. "Some people got kinda coarse hair," she said complacently...."Feel right aroun'
there an' see how soft it
is."
An attractive woman whom
Candy says "has the eye" and George calls "jail-bait," Curley's wife is seductive,
cruel, and intimidating. Her behavior, born of her terrible aloneness, acts as the Eve
in Steinbeck's world of men. For, it is she who spoils the dream of George and Lennie,
a dream first expressed in the peace of the Eden-like clearing with the
pool.
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