John Steinbeck : Of Mice and Men.( Chapter Two) Curley's Wife.
was cut off. A girl was standing there looking in. She had 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 lookin’ for
Curley,” she said. Her voice had a nasal, brittle quality.
minute ago, but he went.”
door frame so that her body was thrown forward. “You’re the new fellas
that just come, ain’t ya?”
seem to be looking at Lennie she bridled a little. She looked at her
fingernails. “Sometimes Curley’s in here,” she explained.
playfully.
pass the word you was looking for him.”
person for lookin’,” she said. There were footsteps behind her,
going by. She turned her head. “Hi, Slim,” she said.
bunkhouse, and she hurried away.
Curley’s wife enters the male dominated space that is the bunk room and immediately casts the two friends into darkness. She literally and metaphorically takes away their light presumably we assume, a foreshadowing of her role in the text. She will destroy their intimacy and even their lives. However she is also destroyed herself and she is notably only ‘a girl’ too. I do like the simplicity of the description and the momentum of the detail. We accumulate a picture of this nameless woman as if we are there with George and Lenny reviewing the appearance of this anomalous figure. For Curley’s wife is an anomaly. She doesn’t have a function on this ranch by reason of her sex and her effect on others seems disruptive if not cataclysmic.
The heavily sexualised appearance of Curley’s wife is not of course only dependent upon the consuming and objectifying gaze of the male characters. It is also due to her attempt to emulate those film stars she aspires to become. This falsity therefore is emphasised through the very ‘constructed’ and even theatrical way she is made up. The reader recognises her identity is based on this debased copy cat performance of a film star and I have always wondered about the ‘nasal brittle’ quality of her voice. Why is this detail included by Steinbeck within the narrative, and what are its implications? Guy Clare pointed out to me from his situation as a vet, that her voice is probably nasal as it is unhealthy AND would preclude her becoming a film star as it is harsh and off putting. This seems very plausible and adds pathos to the description as it negates her dream and the novel is of course, all about dreams and their unrealities.
Posted in AQA English GCSE/A Level Snapshots