not really be "a tart" but simply a lonely, abused woman who married Curley without thinking. Her overtures to men are probably not sexual in nature, but made simply to get some attention. Curley seems to ignore her and her reputation as "a tart" makes the men in the bunkhouse also ignore her.

Whit says to George that it "seems like [Curley's wife] can't keep away from guys." Curley's wife is regarded as trouble by all of the men, not just Whit. She is referred to as a "tramp", a "bitch" and a "tart" - her physical description, described as "heavily made up" and lips painted red, certainly supports this belief. In particular, her actions likewise get the men into trouble by her attempts to find friendship with the men. She, like many other characters in this novel, craves company and friendship, but this is misinterpreted. Especially with her conversations with Lennie, she shows herself to be incredibly vulnerable, and to have a dream just like other characters in the story. Her treatment at the hands of the men and her husband help the audience to feel pity at her situation, whilst at the same time she does not help herself by her actions.

One of the first things we notice about Curley's wife in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men is that she is not given a name of her own. She is simply referred to throughout the novel as "Curley's wife." By referring to in terms of her relationship to Curley, Steinbeck is emphasizing that she is to be viewed as one of Curley's possessions rather than as her own person. This demonstrates the strict control Curley maintains over his wife.

Our first insights into Curley's wife's character are given to us by Candy as he talks with George and Lennie. The old man tells them that she is "purty" and that after only two weeks of marriage, "She got the eye." He elaborates: "I seen her give Slim the eye … An' I seen her give Carlson the eye." From Candy's description of Curley's wife, we learn she is physically attractive, a newlywed, unhappy in her marriage, and flirtatious with the men on the ranch.

We are first introduced to Curley's wife when she asks a group of ranch workers if they have seen her husband. Steinbeck describes her face as "heavily made up." From this, we can infer she is concerned with her appearance and strives to look her best. She comments on how the men treat her differently when they are alone than they do when they are in pairs or groups, which suggests that she makes a habit of flirting with the men on the ranch. Crooks asks her to leave and says that the men do not want any trouble. She replies, "Well, I ain't giving you no trouble. Think I don't like to talk to somebody ever' once in a while? Think I like to stick in that house alla time?" From this exchange, we learn she is restless, lonely, and tired of always being in the house.

Candy says Curley's wife "can move quiet" because she "had a lot of practice." His words suggest Curley's wife is quite experienced at being sneaky and getting around undetected, which once again hints at her flirtatious nature and possibly also suggests promiscuity.

Throughout the novel, there are many more direct and indirect quotations which further illustrate the aforementioned characteristics of Curley's wife. In short, she is physically attractive and strives to look her best; newly married, but unhappy in her marriage; flirtatious and insecure, as she is always seeking the attention of the men on the ranch; restless; bored; and lonely.

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.

When George tells 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 Lennie,

"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. 

A good example of indirect characterization for Curley's wife is found in the conversation between George and a minor character called Whit.

George dealt and Whit picked up his cards and examined them. "Seen the new kid yet?" he asked.

"What kid?" George asked.

"Why, Curley''s new wife."

"Yeah, I seen her."

'Well, ain't she a looloo?"

"I ain't seen that much of her," said George.

Whit laid down his cards impressively. "Well, stick around an' keep your eyes open. You'll see plenty. She ain't concealin' nothing. I never seen nobody like her. She got the eye goin' all the time on everybody. I bet she even gives the stable buck the eye. I don't know what the hell she wants."

Most of the men have the wrong impression of Curley's wife. They think she is promiscuous and unfaithful to her husband Curley. Whit's description shows she is very young. He calls her a kid. Although Whit may not give a true picture of Curley's wife's character, he does give a good impression of the way she behaves. She is always being flirtatious with the men. She dresses in ways that could be considered provocative. It is because she is an inexperienced "kid" that she is creating the wrong impression among the men, including George, who warns Lennie to stay away from her because she is "jailbait," because she is trouble.

Curley's wife also characterizes herself indirectly as having a cruel streak when she frightens Crooks in his room by suggesting that she could have him lynched just by telling the other men that Crooks molested her. She characterizes herself indirectly when she is revealing her dreams of Hollywood stardom to Lennie in the barn, shortly before he accidentally kills her. She is a dumb, totally inexperienced high-school dropout with her head full of illusions from watching movies and reading movie magazines. 

Curley's wife is a sad individual. She is so lonely until she portrays herself as a flirt, one who is seeking attention. She flirts with the men because she lives an isolated life. She has no female companions. There are only men around. The ranch hands are the only ones she can talk with:

Curley's wife (as the boss's son's flirtatious wife, she is not identified by any other name) wanders around the ranch searching for some human contact. She is stereotyped by the men as a "tart." Indeed, she plays the vamp, which enrages her jealous husband.

She is so desperate for attention until she reaches out to Lennie, a mentally unstable man. Reaching out to Lennie proves that Curley's wife has no friends. Why would she reach out to Lennie if she had a life of her own?

George calls her poison. He warns Lennie to stay away from her:

George tells Lennie to avoid her, calling her "poison" and "jailbait."

No doubt, Curley's wife spends most of her time alone. Curley is so busy running the ranch until she is left alone with time on her hands. She flirts to get attention. She has needs like any other woman would have. Obviously, Curley is not meeting her needs. She seeks approval from the only people around her. This just happens to be ranch hands--rugged type characters.

Curley's wife craves attention. She had dreamed of being a movie star, but that dream did not become a reality:

But she is pathetically lonely and once had dreams of being a movie star. Both she and Crooks crave company and "someone to talk to."

When Curley's wife finds Lennie all alone, she reaches out to him for attention. She does not realize that Lennie is not mentally able to make right decisions. When she desires for Lennie to let go of her hair, she begins crying out for help. Lennie is just trying to get her to keep quiet. He breaks her neck accidentally. George was so right about Curley's wife. She teased Lennie, asking him to feel of her soft hair. Then she desired to get away from him. Lennie was just trying to get her to be quiet.

Curley’s wife is very young. One of the men refers to her as “the kid.” She is called “jailbait” several times. “Jailbait” can only mean a promiscuous underage girl who can get men sentenced to prison on a felony count of statutory rape. She is overly made up and overly dressed for the ranch setting, suggesting that she looks like a young girl who is trying to look older and sexier. When she is telling Lennie about herself in the barn, she reveals that she almost ran away from home with a man when she was only fifteen and then married Curley to get away from her mother. She is probably only sixteen. Why would Curley marry such a young girl? Well, he obviously has an inferiority complex because of his small size, and he could conceivably feel inadequate with a mature woman. (He may even be inadequate with his adolescent bride!)

Steinbeck created Curley’s wife. He must have made her extremely young for a purpose. Her immaturity would explain why she is so flirtatious and so restless. Her mother couldn’t control her, and now Curley can’t control her either. All the men regard her as potential trouble. Specifically, they think one of the farmhands will get sexually involved with her and then either Curley will kill him or he will get sent to prison for statutory rape—or even rape, if she should decide to tell the story that way.

Lennie is characterized as being obsessed with petting small, soft animals and always killing them by petting them too hard. He is more likely to be attracted to a young girl than an older woman, and Curley’s wife is sufficiently naïve and indiscreet to flirt with a retarded giant in an isolated setting, although she knows he kills little animals and has maimed her husband. The fact that she is still quite young and undoubtedly has the build of a frail adolescent girl explains why Lennie could break her neck so easily. An older woman would not get so close, would put up more of a fight, and would not be so fragile.

There are many references to an incident in Weed in which Lennie was accused of attempted rape. The female involved is always referred to as a “girl,” never as a young woman. She could have been even young than Curley’s wife. When George sees Curley’s wife’s dead body, he suddenly understands that Lennie is developing a sensual interest in young girls, and that he is just as capable of killing them as he is of killing the little animals he handles.

“I should of knew,” George said hopelessly. “I guess maybe way back in my head I did.”

George realizes that Lennie is a menace to society and that he himself is guilty of the death of Curley’s wife because he is responsible for Lennie. He helped Lennie escape from the lynch mob in Weed, but he is not going to help him escape again. That is why he steals Carlson’s pistol. He intends to kill his friend from the time he leaves the ranch to meet him at their prearranged rendezvous by the river.

In Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, Curley's wife (she is never given a name in the work) brings about the downfall of George Milton's friend Lennie Small. Steinbeck does not spend a lot of time describing her, but the brief descriptions he does give tell us just sort of woman she is.

Early in the novel, she is described as having "the eye", which indicates that she is sexually attracted to other men, even though she is married to Curley. George describes her as "a tart", a slang term which also suggests that she is sexually tempting, and declares that "She's a jail bait all set on the trigger", another figurative expression that indicates that she is woman who is both sexually charged and dangerous to any man with whom she might become involved.

Readers of the work should also note the way that Steinbeck makes her speak. Consider the following example: "All the guys got a horseshoe tenement goin' on. It's on'y about four o'clock." Such language reveals that she is not much more sophisticated linguistically than the men who work on the farm.

Steinbeck characterizes Curley's wife in the ways that have been described in the previous two answers. Much of his characterization is through her own dialogue, particularly in the scene in which she verbally abuses and threatens Crooks and in the scene in the barn in which she confides to Lennie about her aspirations to make something of herself and to take advantage of her attractiveness while she is still young. In the scene with Crooks she seems vulgar and vicious, while in the scene with Lennie she seems naive and vulnerable.

Steinbeck relied heavily on dialogue throughout this novella because he intended to adapt it into a play to be produced in New York. When he does write in straight prose, however, he displays his ability to write as effectively and as beautifully as any American author. This can be seen in his description of Curley's wife after Lennie has accidentally killed her.

Curley's wife lay with a half-covering of yellow hay. And the meanness and the plannings and the discontent and the ache for attention were all gone from her face. She was very pretty and simple, and her face was sweet and young.

What made Steinbeck a great writer was that he shared with other great writers, including Shakespeare and Dickens, an affection and sympathy for humanity in all its shapes and forms. He understood that people can't help being what they are and that life is a struggle for all of them.

Steinbeck uses other characters’ descriptions of Curley’s wife and things she does and says to characterize her.  She does not have a name.  The fact that she talks to Lennie shows that she is lonely.

Many of the characters in the story are outcasts in some way. Curley’s wife is marginalized because she seems to be one of the few women on the ranch and because she is pretty.

When George and Lennie arrive at the ranch, Curley has just been married “a couple of weeks” and his wife lives “in the boss's house” (ch 2).    She is never given a name, so her identity is linked with his.  Most of the men think she’s a flirt or worse, and they do not respect her.

Everyone tells George that Curley’s wife is “purty” but “she got the eye,” meaning she has a wandering eye for other men.  Candy even calls her a “tart” (ch 2).  Whit describes her to George.

"She ain't concealin' nothing. I never seen nobody like her. She got the eye goin' all the time on everybody. I bet she even gives the stable buck the eye. I don't know what the hell she wants." (ch 3)

George asks if there is any trouble since she has been there.  Clearly, he expects it.  Curley’s  wife is lonely and has no friends on the ranch.  She spends all her time looking for him, because it gives her an excuse to talk to other people.  Curley will get mad if anyone talks to or looks at his wife.

Curley’s wife is good looking, and she does care about how she looks.  She is described as “heavily made up” and she wears red nail polish (ch 2).  She seems flirtatious.

She wore her bright cotton dress and the mules with the red ostrich feathers. Her face was made up and the little sausage curls were all in place. (ch 5)          

She tries to talk to Lennie, and console him when his pup dies.  When he says George doesn’t want her to, she gets mad.

"Wha's the matter with me?" she cried. "Ain't I got a right to talk to nobody? Whatta they think I am, anyways? You're a nice guy. I don't know why I can't talk to you. I ain't doin' no harm to you." (ch 5)

Clearly she does not get to talk to many people.  Since Lennie is slow, she does not feel threatened by him.  He’s also alone, so she feels like she can talk to him, and “her words tumbled out in a passion of communication” because she so rarely gets to talk to anyone.  She tells Lennie how she met an actor who said she could be in a show.  She had dreams too.

Unfortunately, Curley's wife's dreams are ended when Lennie tries to touch her hair, and accidentally kills her too.

Everything we learn about Curly's wife is through her words, her actions, and how other's view her.

Actions: At first glance she seems very outgoing and promiscuous. This is shown as the men call her a "tart". She is described as having a full figure and rouged face, indicating that she was pretty. But she is the only woman on the ranch. She is married to a man who is more interested in controlling her and proving himself that having a caring relationship. She is seeking attention through actions.

How other's see her: The men on the ranch avoid her not necessarily because they do not like her, but out of fear of Curly. They view her as trouble. Again, this is not because she herself is trouble, but because she will bring trouble to her. Her actions are flirtatious but they hide her inner loneliness.   

Her own words: Curly's wife is not overly intelligent. A prime example that shows this is as she is telling about the talent scout who told her she could have been in movies. As she retells the story to Lennie she believes she could honestly have been a Hollywood Starlet, but the reader understands (a point of dramatic irony) that this was a line being fed to her.

Curley's wife is an interesting character. For one thing, she is never named; rather, she is known throughout the book as "Curley's wife." This clearly shows to what degree she is associated with her husband and has no persona of her own, as far as the other characters are concerned.

Steinbeck himself wrote that he intended Curley's wife to be a sympathetic character, a "nice girl," and not the tramp the other men assume her to be. She is undeniably lonely, making excuses to hang around the bunkhouse "looking for her husband." She desires companionship but gets nothing but scorn and derision from the men.

Like the other important characters in the story, Curley's wife is a victim of broken dreams. Her dream is to be a movie star, to earn some recognition for herself. Instead, she is reduced to dressing and acting inappropriately for her environs, and ultimately, dies at the hands of Lennie. Finally, in death, she is described as pure and beautiful.

Steinbeck presents Curley's wife in a complex manner over the course of the novella, Of Mice and Men.

Curley’s wife is defined in the early part of the book as simply looking for Curley.  In Chapter 2,  her sexuality captures Lennie's attention. Steinbeck uses this as part of her character, especially evident in the way she seeks to hold the mens' attention on the ranch.  In chapters 4 and 5, Steinbeck develops depth to Curley's wife.  In the absence of any substantial happiness, she is driven by the need to be noticed. It is almost as if her desire to be noticed by someone, anyone, will make up for the gaping misery that is her life.  

Curley's wife acquires depth when we see how unhappy she really is.  Her life on the ranch is the source of her misery. In her last moments in chapter 5, it becomes clear that as a teenager, she hoped to be in “pitchers" and believes that she can still “make something” of herself.  In the hopes of feeling validated, she confides in Lennie and when she shows him how soft her hair is, offering it to his touch, her neck is broken.

Steinbeck's exploration of Curley's wife reaches its most powerful as he describes her dead body.  While the actual death takes place very quickly, Steinbeck strikes a distinct note of reflection in his writing style. He uses images of nature to communicate the passing of life. Details such as “The sun streaks were high on the wall by now, and the light was growing soft” are complemented with “the air was dusky.”  These details show how Curley’s wife, one who sought to stand out so much, has blended into the natural setting. This is enhanced with the description with the dead body.  Steinbeck talks about how her natural beauty was amplified because “all the meanness and all the plannings and the discontent and the ache for attention were all gone from her face.”  Death is shown to be the ultimate equalizer, a force that reduces all life’s clamoring.  In doing so, Steinbeck's exploration of Curley's wife transforms her in death to something more than she could have ever been in life.

In John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, Curley's wife is a static or flat character: she does not change throughout the story. She drives the plot forward, but is not well-developed in this story of two drifters who dream of making enough money during the Great Depression to buy their own home.

Curley and his wife are newly married. Curley has brought his bride to his new home, situated on his father's ranch. He is very jealous and insists that his wife stay away from the men—and that the men stay away from her.

Curley's wife's character is not deeply developed: she is not even given a first name name. And she is not an example of someone disenfranchised by the devastated economy in the 1930s in the U.S. She has nice clothes and enough to eat. Her only problem is that she is bored. In her loneliness, she ultimately ends up talking with the ranch-hands.

George has been very clear that Lennie needs to stay away from Curley's wife because they have already had some problems with Lennie and girls. Lennie doesn't mean any harm, but he is mentally challenged and is sometimes too rough. They find themselves on the ranch after running away from the town of Weed because Lennie frightened a young girl trying to feel the soft fabric of her dress.

Curley's wife is described as having a "roving eye," meaning that she checks out the men, perhaps flirts:

"Purty?" [George] asked casually?

"Yeah. Purty...but—" George studied his cards. "But what?"

"Well—she got the eye."

"Yeah? Married two weeks and got the eye? Maybe that's why Curley's pants is full of ants."

The swamper goes on to tell George that she's a "tart." (This may mean she is a prostitute or promiscuous woman.) Later, Curley's wife comes "looking for her husband" in the bunk house and Lennie is enthralled by her.

"Gosh, she was purty." He smiled admiringly. George looked quickly down at him and then he took him by an ear and shook him.

"Listen to me, you crazy bastard," he said fiercely. "Don't you even take a look at that bitch. I don't care what she says and what she does. I seen 'em poison before, but I never see no piece of jail bait worse than her. You leave her be."

Towards the end of the story, Curley's wife's fate is sealed when she comes to the barn and sits down to talk with Lennie. Lennie tries to avoid speaking with the woman, but she will not leave him alone.

"No sir. I ain't gonna talk to you or nothing."

..."Why can't I talk to you? I never get to talk to nobody. I get awful lonely...I get lonely," [Curley's wife] said. "You can talk to people, but I can't talk to nobody by Curley. Else he gets mad. How'd you like not to talk to anybody?"

Lennie, again, is impulsive and too strong. She lets him stroke her hair, but when he won't let go, she is frightened of Lennie; he becomes afraid that she will get him in trouble with George. In an effort to quiet her, he kills her by mistake.

Curley's wife's presence in the story is not meaningful to the way the ranch works, but it does become a decisive element in costing Lennie his life, and George a place to settle for a while. The final tragedy that befalls the men comes because Curley's wife won't stay away from the men.

I think that the question might be more effective in discussing how Steinbeck presents different images of Curley's wife.  This helps to illuminate how human beings can represent different aspects to their being.  The first images we get of Curley's wife when Lennie and George first see her is one of a vamp, a woman who uses her own "sexing up" conception to her own benefit.  Another image seen of Curley's wife is one of outright cruelty.  The way in which she verbally abuses Candy and Crooks is one filled with venom and a sense of wrath.  The images of a cruel vamp would be offset with one of a painful denial of dreams when she talks to Lennie about the pain in her life and how she wishes she could have been in "pitchers."  This image, brought out in her conversation with Lennie, is a poignant one, an image that enables the reader to see another side to Curley's wife.  This is representative of the novel, in general.  George has to do things in the novel where different personas are revealed, while Lennie is shown to possess different aspects of his personality.  In much the same way, Steinbeck creates many different situations where multiple images of Curley's wife are revealed.

In Of Mice and Men, women are nameless and only seem to cause trouble.

Early in the book we learn that the reason George and Lennie are on the movie is that Lennie got into an altercation with a woman, and they had to run.  Lennie is child-like and has no inhibitions, and apparently he tried to touch her dress and she panicked.  People assume Lennie is dangerous and going to assault a woman.

When the boys reach the ranch, the only woman mentioned is Curley’s wife.  That’s it, that’s how she is labeled in the book.  She has no name.  She is described as a tart and a tease.

The first mention of Curley’s wife is that she is pretty, and when they first see her, she is sticking her head in.

Her face was heavily made up. Her lips were slightly parted. She breathed strongly, as though she had been running. (ch 4)

George is worried that Curley’s wife is only out to make trouble, but we later learn that she is also lonely.  She seems to have no friends and no one to talk to, and the men are suspicious of her.

"Wha's the matter with me?" she cried. "Ain't I got a right to talk to nobody? Whatta they think I am, anyways? (ch 5)

In the end, Curley’s wife is the catalyst for Lennie’s destruction.  He accidentally kills her, but it isn’t her fault.  She was lonely, and just wanted someone to talk to.

Curley's wife is presented as one of the "powerless" in the book, situated at the low end of the social heirarchy. She appears in the scene that takes place in Crooks' room in the stable, which signifies her status as being similar to the Lennie, Crooks, and Candy - figures who are disabled and disempowered in one way or another.

Candy is one-handed and old. Crooks has a crooked spine and is a minority. Lennie is mentally handicapped. Curley's wife is also a minority and has little physical strength. 

If there weren't so many of these characters, we might see them as outsiders. Since there are four of them, we almost have to say that these characters for a group of socially powerless and literally powerless people.

The most conspicuous point about Curley's wife is that she does not have a name. The fact that she is nameless is significant, because this implies that she does not have an identity apart from Curley. In this sense, she is not significant at all. She counts for little, apart from trouble. 

Second, Steinbeck portrays her in a negative light. In a conversation among the men, they confess that she is attractive, but she is dangerous. She has the eye, they say, which means that she is looking for companionship with other men. Because she is married to the boss's son, she can get the other men in trouble. The point is that men have to be careful of her. Here is the dialogue.

George cut the cards again and put out a solitaire lay, slowly and deliberately. “Purty?” he asked casually.

The first point to keep in mind is that Curley's wife is not given a name. This shows the marginalization of women in the book. Curley's wife is, therefore, understandably lonely and alienated from everyone on the ranch. She does not even love Curley. This is all the more surprising, because they are newly wed. According to the text, they have been married for only two weeks. Here is what Candy says: 

Married two weeks and got the eye? Maybe that’s why Curley’s pants is full of ants.”

This quote also shows that Curley's wife dislikes Curley so much that she wants a relationship with another man. We do not know how true this is, but in the least she is not satisfied with being married to Curley. Moreover, she does cultivate a friendship with Lennie in the book. 

Finally, we can't really blame Curley's wife. Curley is a cocky and arrogant character that no one on the farm likes or respects. The only reason why the men tolerate him is because he is boss's son. 

Curley's wife's ability to dream is one way that Steinbeck uses her to communicate the general view of people in Of Mice and Men.  

Curley's wife is similar to many of the characters in Of Mice and Men because of her dreams.  She dreams of being in "pitchers."  She has visions of herself as a successful actress.  These dreams motivated her to leave home as she perceived her mother as unsupportive of her hopes.  In experiencing the joy in dreams, Steinbeck also shows how painful it is for dreams to remain unfulfilled.  Curley's wife enters into a rather loveless marriage with Curley and must wrestle with the reality that her dreams will never come true. When she pantomimes to Lennie an acting gesture with her wrist and hand, it is the last time she is able to fulfill her dreams.  Curley's wife lives with the pain that she is unable to see her dreams come true.  She portrays the general view of people who are unable to see their hopes materialize.

In this way, Curley's wife is no different than other characters in the novella. Crooks is similar to her in how he dreams of companionship.  Candy experiences the same pain she does when he realizes that he will not be able to accomplish his dream with George.  When George sees the dead body of Curley's wife, it is clear that his dreams will remain unfulfilled.  Steinbeck uses Curley's wife to convey an emptiness in existence when dreams die.

Curley's wife in many ways illustrates the death of hope and dreams whereas George and Lenny represent the hope that dreams give them.

In chapter 5, she tells Lenny that she "coulda made somethin' of myself" when she was younger. She had had two opportunities to escape Salinas. Firstly, when she was fifteen "a show come through an' I met one of the actors". However, her mother would not let her leave with him because of her age.

On another occasion, she met a man "in pitchers" (movies). They went to "the Riverside Dance Palace" together and "He says he was gonna put me in the movies. Said I was a natural. Soon's he got back to Hollywood, he was gonna write to me about it." However, she never got the letter and "always thought my ol' lady stole it". She confronted her mother about stealing the letter and, when she denied it, married Curley the next day.

The irony is that neither of these actors seem honest and both probably took advantage of her. Marrying Curley, however, represented an end to her dream of being "in the movies an' had nice clothes". All that is left from her dreams are the "mules with red ostrich feathers" which she wears on the farm and make her seem out of place.

She "ain't never told this to nobody before" and this seems her only truly honest moment, mere moments before Lennie kills her

In Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, Curley's wife is a misunderstood character. She is a flirt and is characterized by the male characters as a "tart", but she does have dreams and goals.

She wanted to surpass the humble life that she had. She dreamed of being a star. She wants to be an actress.

Steinbeck portrays Curley's wife as an isolated, lonely woman who is flirtatious and desperately seeks attention. Curley's wife is a physically attractive woman who regrets marrying Curley. Her husband is depicted as a hostile, insecure man who tries his best to prevent her from sleeping or flirting with any of the workers. As the only woman on the ranch, Curley's wife has no one to relate to and is constantly dismissed by the workers when she attempts to start a conversation. The men on the ranch fear that they will lose their jobs if they even speak to Curley's wife and refer to her as a "tart" and "jailbait."

Although Steinbeck portrays Curley's wife as a sympathetic, lowly character, he also reveals that she has a mean streak in chapter four, when she threatens to have Crooks hanged. Steinbeck suggests that Curley’s wife would ruthlessly wield authority if she was given the opportunity. In the next chapter, Curley's wife laments her decision to marry Curley and reveals her dream of one day becoming a movie star. Tragically, she cannot defend herself when Lennie begins roughly petting her hair and eventually dies during the struggle. Overall, Curley's wife is a lonely, unhappy woman who desperately seeks attention from the other men on the farm and regrets marrying Curley. She also lacks a voice and is vulnerable to Lennie when he begins to panic.

Most of the characters in Of Mice and Men are social misfits of one sort or another. They have been excluded from society for a variety of reasons, such as race or disability. One only has to think of Crooks and Lennie to see examples of this.

Despite being married to the boss's son, Curley's wife is also something of an outsider, as she's the only woman on a ranch full of men. With no friends or family around, Curley's wife gets incredibly lonely at times, which is why she's forever hanging around the workers' dormitory looking for a chat—anything to relieve the boredom.

Ultimately, this boredom leads to her tragic death. After having a conversation with Lennie, the big guy starts touching her hair (in a non-sexual manner). Initially, Curley's wife lets him, but when Lennie holds on too tight she starts to panic and lets out a scream. In response, Lennie puts his hand over her mouth, and in the ensuing struggle, he accidentally kills her by breaking her neck.

The tragic fate of Curley's wife highlights the dangers faced in this society by those who, for one reason or another, don't belong. This applies as much to Lennie as it does to Curley's wife.