Of Mice and Men Main Question Essay

The question we are focussing on throughout the whole essay, which is the main theme, is whether Curley’s wife is a victim in the story or a tramp. The two different sides of Curley’s wife are hard to determine in Steinbeck’s ‘Mice and Men’, as she tends to swap roles from time to time. At points in the story we have reason to believe that that she is a victim, from the way she feels about Curley and her unattained future, which I will explore further on in the essay. I will also put across my points on how she can be a corrupting tramp by exploring her physical appearance, body language and other characters opinions of her. From Steinbeck’s letter we can see that she couldn’t really trust anyone from a young age because every time she trusted in anyone she got hurt. This shows her innocent side. There are not many points in Steinbeck’s letter that show that she is a corrupting tramp as he tends to mainly focus on her innocent side and he goes through all the times she got hurt and why she got hurt. I will now go on to explain my points in further detail. In this section I will explain how Curley’s wife could be an innocent victim in her life and in the eyes of others. She is the victim of the ‘American Dream’, her desire to go to Hollywood and be an actress, which was a dream that she could not fulfil because of her mother denying her to leave at such a young age. On page 125 she proves that she really could have been an actress by the text stated ‘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’. This small quote shows how talented she could have been and it makes you feel heartbroken that she couldn’t fulfil her dream. From then on she has been crestfallen and cannot trust anyone, this shows her innocent side. She was told by a man that he could put her in the movies; she was thrilled as she wanted to be a famous actress and be sexy like Jean Harlow and Marilyn Monroe but when her mother said she couldn’t go she opted for an easier option to get out of where she was by marrying Curley. She says in the text on page 125 ‘I don’t like curley, he aint a nice fella’ which proves that she was forced to get married to him as it was the last option. Because Curley was the easiest and possibly the last option, he didn’t actually love her and just wanted to use her. She knew this and even though he treated her badly, she couldn’t leave him as she did love him. Even if she didn’t she had nowhere else to go so she was basically trapped in her own home. Her life with Curley is miserable which makes her even more upset about not being able to fulfil her dream and have freedom. In the story she confesses to Lennie the one thing that she’s never confessed to anyone, that she doesn’t actually like Curley and that she can’t escape for fear of what might happen. You can see from this that she just needs someone to talk to as she is so lonely and can’t really confide or talk to Curley about anything. The people on the ranch give her the same amount of respect that Curley does. When they call her or see her around the ranch they don’t associate her with her own name, to them she’s just Curley’s wife and they call her ‘Jailbait’ and ‘Good looking’. You can tell she gets frustrated by having no one to talk to when she gets angry on page 123 and says ‘What’s the matter with me? Aint I got a right to talk to nobody? Whatta they think I am anyways?’ In the story we don’t even find out what her name is which shows how much attention she gets for her looks instead of her personality which is where she wants most attention. From this we can see that she just wants someone to talk to. On the other hand there are main features we can see in the text that describe her to seem like a corrupting tramp. Looking at the way Steinbeck describes her physical appearance we can see how at first impressions she would come across as sluttish. For a start, he describes her outfit. On page 53 when she first appears the first impression would definitely come across as tramp- like as he says ‘She had full rouged lips and wide spaced eyes, heavily made up. Her fingernails were red. She wore a cotton dress and red mules. On the insteps of which were little bouquets of red ostrich feathers’. The dress and feather shoes give us a glance of how she wants to accentuate her body and her legs and its almost like she’s trying to prove that she could be a famous model and have pictures taken of her if she’d have had the chance to. The colour of the dress and shoes are red which propose danger as we usually approach red as a threatening colour. So from the start we can she that she is going to be trouble for George and especially Lennie due to previous circumstances with him and a girl. Her hair is described as ringlets like ‘sausages’ which is good use of foreshadowing as Lennie is described as an animal, and food is used as bait for animals therefore she literally is ‘Jailbait’. She wears lots of makeup to accentuate her facial features; this is another reason why she could be a corrupting tramp. The first time she walks into the ranch she leans against the door and leans forward to show off her body to Lennie and George, on page 53 Steinbeck states ‘She put her hands behind her back and leaned against the door frame so that her body was thrown forward’. With her accentuated make up and clothing she fails to receive a notice for her feelings and for her emotions and they only concentrate on the way she looks which tells George from the start that she is going to be trouble as she throws herself forward too much for attention. In the way she speaks you can hear the sexiness and huskiness of her voice, as described on page 53 when Steinbeck says ‘Her voice had a nasal, brittle quality’ which shows us that she wants to entice people or entrance them. To conclude I think it is important to include the death scene where Steinbeck describes her as being free and innocent after her death. He describes her in a child like form and finally being beautiful and achieving everything she needed to achieve because she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. This really finalises my decision for her being innocent because it shows that she really wasn’t ever, or didn’t ever mean to be, a corrupting tramp. Her excuse for wearing slutty and provocative clothes could be because she wanted love and affection which she couldn’t get from her own, broken relationship with Curley. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it wasn’t her fault. My conclusion is that I think she is innocent because of previous points that I have made and stated.