Characterization Of Women In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

John Steinbeck’s novella Of Mice and Men is a tale of two itinerant workers trying to achieve a shared dream in the dust bowl region of the United States during the Great Depression. In the decade preceding, the 1920s, women had gained rights and defied societal standards, but were still not considered as equals to men. As the decade turned, this inequality remained, perhaps worsened by the Great Depression. The severe economic recession rendered many working class men jobless, and therefore powerless as they were no longer supplying their household income. The only way they could have exerted ‘power’ and maintained their position in society was to assert dominance over women through derogatory behavior that was widely accepted (history). This

For example, Candy is old and only has one hand, Crooks is coloured, Lennie is handicapped. In contrast, Slim is the ‘...prince of the ranch…’ (34), meaning he is at the top of the hierarchy on this ranch. Slim is also the only man who Steinbeck does not show to be disrespectful of women, hence strengthening the thesis: ‘socially weak men disrespect

The singular prominent female character in the story is portrayed as an object, rather than a person. Steinbeck displays her as an object by never directly naming her, instead only referring to her as ‘Curley’s Wife’. This reduces her to Curley’s property, and the effect is heightened by the fact that Curley never refers to her as anything other than ‘my wife’, as if she is an object belonging to him. His immediate reaction to her death is not one of sadness, but one of anger towards Lennie, as if Lennie has destroyed a valuable possession of his. Curley turns his wife’s death into a situation with himself as the center of attention: ‘...“I’ll kill the big son-of-a-b*tch myself. I’ll shoot ‘im in the guts”...’(95) His reaction is disrespectful towards his wife, as he immediately seeks revenge, perhaps with his pride at best interest, judging from his constant use of the personal pronoun ‘I’. This shows that Curley does not respect or value his wife as anything other than an asset to his social status. She is merely an object in his eyes.

In summary, John Steinbeck in Of Mice and Men explores how socially weak men disrespect women using multiple forms of dialogue with the characters either directly speaking to Curley’s wife, or speaking about her behind her back. Steinbeck also explores how socially weak men disrespect women using