Of Mice And Men Curley's Wife

In both movie adaptation and novel the social hierarchy of the characters in “Of Mice and Men” is clear. Curley’s wife ranks lower on this social hierarchy than most workers, including Lennie, a mentally-challenged man, and Candy, a old crippled man. The only dominance she can assert is over a black crippled man, but she, unlike Crooks, is not even awarded the respect of being named. While the movie adaptation focuses on the vulnerability and victimization of Curley’s wife and the text focuses on her portrayal as a bitter and seductive temptress, both text portray the inherent sexism of the time period and how women were deprived their dreams and identity. The first exposure the audience has in both texts to Curley’s wife is Candy’s description of

Culturally, the evil eye is a human look that is believed to cause harm to someone, and in my personal life my mother and grandma believe the old superstition that if someone admires someone too much they can cause physical harm to someone, most often in the forms of nausea and headaches. The colloquialism of “the eye” is not only efficient establishing dialogue indicative of the times, but associating Curley’s wife through cultural connotation of the evil eye with ill-intent before she is even properly introduced. This criticism Candy has of Curley’s shows the sexism of the characters in the novel. In Curley’s opinion, nothing else is noteworthy about Curley’s wife besides her appearance and sexual desire for men other than her husband. Curley’s wife is not regarded as a person in Candy’s eyes, and many other men on the farm, but rather as a sexual object with no back story, ideas or personality traits other than loose. As George first encounter’s Curley’s wife in the novel, he shares his first impression of her with Lennie by calling her a “tramp,” that would “ clear out for twenty bucks.” In the movie adaptation, George is still critical of Curley’s wife’