Kasey Lutrell
English 11
2 February 2018 The Life of an Objectified Woman
In the novella of Mice of Men, the author, John Steinbeck, creates a character named Curley’s wife. She is a prime example of how women during the 1930’s were treated, they were expected to stay at home and cook and clean for their husbands every single day while their man went off to work. Meanwhile, all this woman wants is love and affection, which she never receives. She has big dreams to move to Hollywood and become a famous actress, which is her idea of the American Dream. Before she even gets the chance to she is brutally murdered by another character named Lennie. He is a very emotionally and mentally disabled man. His best friend, George, and him …show more content…
Anytime this woman tries to talk to anyone, she is clamoured at repeatedly by her husband who is included in the cluster of people who ignore her everyday of her life. The only time Curley wants her attention is when he wants her for a sexual purpose. At one point in the novella, Curley’s wife walks into a barn where she sees Lennie sitting alone, she approaches him and tries to talk to him. He tells her many times that he is not allowed to talk to her or else George will get upset with him. “She knelt in the hay beside him. ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘All the guys got a horseshoe tenement goin’ on. It's on’y about four o’clock. None of them guys is goin’ to leave the tenement. Why can't I talk to you? I never get to talk to nobody. I get awful lonely.’ Lennie said, ‘Well I ain't supposed to talk to you or nothing.’ ‘I get lonely,’ she said. ‘You can talk to people, but I can’t talk to nobody but Curley. Else he gets mad. How’d you like not to talk to nobody?’” Curley’s wife is excluded and not wanted in society because she is a woman. She was craving so much attention that she had no other choice but to go to the mentally unstable character named Lennie, who ends up killing her by shaking her so hard that her neck snaps, her desire for attention completely …show more content…
She never even had the opportunity to launch her career let alone achieve her American Dream. She was never allowed to live or simply breath without someone criticizing her, being the only woman on the farm.When she found Lennie alone in the barn, she took advantage of the opportunity, she just wanted to talk to him about life and about what she wanted more than anything else in the world, “She went on with her story quickly, before she should be interrupted. ‘Nother time I met a guy, an’ he was in pitchers. Went out to the Riverside Dance Palace with him. He says he was gonna put me in the movies. Says I was a natural. Soon’s he got back to Hollywood he was gonna write to me about it.’” She had an opportunity to pursue what really made her happy in life and yet again it was ripped