Of mice and men

Steinbeck portrays Curley’s wife in multiple ways. In the first appearance of ‘Mice of Men’ he described her symbolically using a metaphor; ‘the rectangle of sunshine in the door way was cut off’. This is already foreshadowing to the reader that Curley’s wife is trouble, for example the metaphor Steinbeck used to describe her can be referred to as light and darkness. In this case Curley’s wife representing the darkness presenting her as destructive further in the book, an example of her being destructive further in the novella is when she threatens to get Crooks ‘Lynched’, when he asked her to leave his room. Steinbeck goes into more description of Curley’s wife; he describes her as having ‘full rouged lips’ and ‘heavily made up’. ‘Rouge’ being a very rich red and also ‘rouge’ being a French word, this makes it obvious to the reader that Curley’s wife doesn’t engage in doing laboured work like the other men on the ranch. He also described her as having ‘red finger nails’ and her shoes had ‘little bouquets of red ostrich feathers’ This shows to the reader that Curley’s wife clearly likes the whole theme of red and is well groomed. She also is playing a part of being a temptress, this being because her appearance mostly involves the colour red (red finger nails) which is usually said to be a seductive and also destructive colour. Another way Steinbeck describes her, is in her clothing. Her clothing symbolises her as a dangerous nature (red ostrich feathers) towards the men. On the other hand Steinbeck makes Curley’s wife seem rather promiscuous and flirtatious, for example; when she was addressing the men about where her husband, Curly was her body structure changed as she ‘put her hands behind her back and leaned forward on the door frame so her body was thrown forward’, she also talks to the men in a ‘nasal’ and ‘brittle’ tone. This shows that Curley’s wife is not only craving for attention from the ranch men but someone to confide in.
This takes us back to the