Unprecedented financial pressures, and an ever-increasingly aggressive public culture, along with social, moral, and spiritual fragmentation is leading to overwhelming stress, intolerable interior isolation, and even quiet despair for millions of people around the world. In Western society, it is not uncommon to find an individual who feels alone despite being surrounded by a sea of people - and herein lies the oddity of loneliness, of isolation, and of being Othered. Widely praised authors Harper Lee and John Steinbeck highlight this paradox in their writing by illustrating original storylines in which many characters not only experience abstract exclusion from a social group (resulting in their being placed at the margins of society where
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In the works To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men, gender constructs the literary Other through the experiences of Curley’s wife and of Scout, two characters who may seem considerably different at first, but share more commonalities than meets the eye (one is a young, unconventional female in a time of stressed southern femininity and the other dies at the hands of a mentally handicapped man); however, both characters play essential roles in conveying the authors’ purposes in addressing social standpoints by portraying the objectification and stereotyping of women through their physical appearances, isolation, and interactions with other …show more content…
She plays the role of a woman who focuses almost entirely on her physical appearance, the unfairness of having to be cooped up all day, and her being labeled a “tart.” For example, after Curley’s wife runs into George while looking for Curley, George says to the other men in the bunkhouse, “ ‘She’s gonna make a mess. They’s gonna be a bad mess about her. She’s a jail bait all set on the trigger. That Curley got his work cut out for him. Ranch with a bunch of guys on it ain’t no place for a girl, specially like her’ ” (Steinbeck 51). Also tying into this statement is when Curley’s wife asks George and Lennie if they know where her husband is, and the narrator states,“She had 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 dress and red mules, on the insteps of which were little bouquets of red ostrich feathers” (Steinbeck 31). The appearance of Curley’s wife is demonstrative of her child-like persona - wearing excessive amounts of makeup reminds the reader of a little girl playing with her mother’s makeup. Additionally, her curled “sausages” of hair are reminiscent of the locks of a young and innocent girl. Ultimately, the way in which Curley’s wife’s physical
In the works To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men, gender constructs the literary Other through the experiences of Curley’s wife and of Scout, two characters who may seem considerably different at first, but share more commonalities than meets the eye (one is a young, unconventional female in a time of stressed southern femininity and the other dies at the hands of a mentally handicapped man); however, both characters play essential roles in conveying the authors’ purposes in addressing social standpoints by portraying the objectification and stereotyping of women through their physical appearances, isolation, and interactions with other …show more content…
She plays the role of a woman who focuses almost entirely on her physical appearance, the unfairness of having to be cooped up all day, and her being labeled a “tart.” For example, after Curley’s wife runs into George while looking for Curley, George says to the other men in the bunkhouse, “ ‘She’s gonna make a mess. They’s gonna be a bad mess about her. She’s a jail bait all set on the trigger. That Curley got his work cut out for him. Ranch with a bunch of guys on it ain’t no place for a girl, specially like her’ ” (Steinbeck 51). Also tying into this statement is when Curley’s wife asks George and Lennie if they know where her husband is, and the narrator states,“She had 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 dress and red mules, on the insteps of which were little bouquets of red ostrich feathers” (Steinbeck 31). The appearance of Curley’s wife is demonstrative of her child-like persona - wearing excessive amounts of makeup reminds the reader of a little girl playing with her mother’s makeup. Additionally, her curled “sausages” of hair are reminiscent of the locks of a young and innocent girl. Ultimately, the way in which Curley’s wife’s physical