How Does Steinbeck Create Sympathy For Curley's Wife

Explore the ways that Steinbeck creates dislikes and sympathy for Curley’s wife in “Of Mice and Men.”

In “Of Mice and Men” Steinbeck presents Curley’s wife as a complicated and often misunderstood character whose conflicting actions cause the reader to alternate between feeling of contempt and empathy for her character. At the beginning of Steinbeck’s novella she is portrayed as a flirtatious character whose attention seeking behaviour disrupts the ranch men’s working lives; her character has no issue in abusing her limited power to intimidate and bully the men, however as Steinbeck reveals more of her history, her behaviour is explained and the reader begins to feel pathos for her character instead of dislike.

The first time the reader is introduced to Curley’s wife it is indirectly as it comes via Candy who is very negative towards her character. Candy suggests Curley’s wife is a promiscuous woman, “I think Curley’s marries… a tart.” who sleeps around even though she has only been married for two weeks. Steinbeck shows a sexist society as Candy is very judgemental and derogatory abut Curley’s wife. As Steinbeck writes form the men’s perspective the idea of sexism and lack of respect for women is strong, on being told Curley has a wife George’s first …show more content…
Before this scene Steinbeck had mostly used the ranch member’s point of view to describe her, however here he uses a more neutral third person so all the previous bias against her character has been eradicated. Throughout the novel it was implied by Steinbeck that Curley’s wife was a very manipulative and scheming woman by the ranch men as she was an apparent threat to their jobs and thus their future happiness. Yet here she is described as “simple” showing that she is not as scheming and nasty as the men saw