Quotes About Curley's Wife

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.

Whentells 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 ,

"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.