Curley's Wife Dehumanized Analysis

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck is about two men, Lennie Small and George Milton, who travel place to place, job to job to pay for their dream. They end up on a ranch where they meet many people, including Curley's Wife, the only woman on the ranch. Steinbeck utilizes Curley’s Wife to prove that women didn’t have any chance of acquiring the American Dream because of the sexist society in the 1930’s.
Being the only woman on a ranch full of men seems like a nightmare, even now. Can you imagine doing it when the sexism was even worse than it is now? For example, she doesn’t even have a name. She’s only mentioned as “Curley’s Wife” not once was her name (her actual name) said. “Curley’s wife came around the end of the stall” [pg 86]. “Curley’s

The men on the ranch act like Curley owns her, almost like she has to do whatever he says. “Whyn’t you tell her to stay the hell home where she belong..” [pg 62]. This is dehumanizing because she isn’t a domestic animal that has to stay home all the time that can only go outside when he lets her. She doesn’t belong anywhere but where she wants to be, she doesn’t have to be anywhere she doesn’t want to be. She’s a human,, but I guess that doesn’t apply when you’re a women. Back in the 1930’s, women weren’t equal to men, they weren’t given equal pay when they were allowed to work when the men were off at war, and they were doing companies a favor by working to help them not shut down. “Curley got his work ahead of him. Bet she’d clear out for twenty bucks.”[pg 32]. Comparing her to a prostitute and saying she’ll take whatever is handed to her is objectifying because saying that she’s going to up and leave or do things for twenty dollars is an assumption that she’s just with Curley because of what he can give her. Women now are still treated like this, if we act a certain way that we are a tramp and jailbait because of how we choose to present ourselves. Fortunately they way we act isn’t a representation of who we are inside. Curley’s Wife had dreams and hopes and now she doesn’t really have an identity, she’s considered as a possession rather than a

She had dreams and things she wanted to do with her life that were crushed. She wanted to be in movies, but all that was ruined because of her mother saying she couldn’t. She married Curley out of impulse, and it got her somewhere she never wanted to be. “I don’t like Curley, he ain’t a nice fella. Coulda been in the movies, an’ had nice clothes-all them nice clothes like they wear. An’ I coulda sat in them big hotels, an’ it wouldn’t a cost me a cent because I was in the pitcher.” [pg. 89]. She had her whole life planned out from the minute someone told her she could have made it. Woman’s dreams of making it big have been crushed since the beginning of time because of the fact that they are women. People thinking they can’t make it because of the simple fact that others looked down on them because of their gender. Having others bringing them down because there’s no way that a woman can make it in movies and in pictures in the 30’s. It tore down Curley’s Wife until she was nothing. She probably felt like nothing hence the reason why she felt the need to push herself on anybody who was willing to show her attention, that didn’t end well for her. “And he shook her; and her body flopped like a fish. And then she was still, for Lennie had broken her neck.” [pg. 91]. Even when she was dead, she got compared to an animal. She couldn’t have been compared to anything more graceful because she didn’t die gracefully. When she was alive,