How Does Steinbeck Present Attitudes To Women In His Novel, Of Mice and Men

Steinbeck’s message involves women. According to him, women are unimportant and shouldn’t be involved in working society. Also, that women don’t work and aren’t busy. In the book, most women do not have names, they refer to them in ways such as “Curley’s wife.” This shows that women were thought to not be as important as the men. Then, there is Aunt Clara who has a name, but Steinbeck makes Lennie constantly forget her name. He is saying the same thing as with Curley’s wife that women aren’t important and her own relative can’t remember her name. Women were also thought to be a burden or hold men back from achieving the american dream, or living the life they want to live, for example when Aunt Clara is talking about George in Lennie’s dream. She said, “All the time he coulda had such a good time if it wasn’t for you. He woulda took his pay an’ raised hell in a whore house, and he coulda set in a poolroom an’ played snooker.

Generally, during the course of the novel, women are viewed negatively. They are seen as objects, not real people. For example, throughout the novel, Curley's wife is merely known as 'Curley's wife'. She is never called by her real name. The term 'Curley's wife' implies she is owned by Curley, and not a person with freedom. From this, the reader can tell that Curley's wife lives in an unfair World, in an era of inequality. This suggests Steinbeck

The novel Of Mice and Men written by John Steinbeck is set in America in the 1930’s and it describes the lives of migrant farmers as they go from farm to farm looking for jobs. It also shows the loneliness of the characters and the hard work that they put in. The main characters of the book are Lennie, a man-child, and George, a small man but very powerful character that takes care of Lennie in their journey. Also when they get to the farm they meet the bosses wife who is very lonely and looks for company in the workers. Steinbeck uses characterization to bring his characters to life using various techniques.

The historical views of woman have set a common pattern that influences the expression of thought regarding gender. This is evident in the book “Of Mice and Men”, within the character of Curley’s Wife. She is the only woman on the ranch, it is described to us that she has a flirtatious attitude. They see her as someone who is a source of temptation and evil and give her no voice in the matter. It is shown that they see her as a source of desire and sin by trying their best to avoid her and evade conversations. George even goes to the extent of telling Lennie to stay away from her since she has the potential to create trouble. She has no voice in this and becomes extremely lonely. This is proven when she opens up her past to the new and mentally

‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.’ That line is a really funny saying we have all heard. The truth is that words hurt. So, do stereotypes. The book, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, certainly explores characters that are different than what people make them out to be. In the time period, when this book is set, lots of racism, feminism, and not being that nice to people who were different, were very common in this time era. There are many character’s in the author’s book that were and are misjudged. Because, Lennie and Curley’s wife are not how others perceive them, John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men teaches readers not to judge a book by its cover.

“The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. In the book, Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck there is many examples of stereotyping and labeling. George and Lennie are the two main characters of the book and they both are stereotyped. George watches and takes care of lennie, so he is labeled as a parent figure. On the other hand, Lennie is dependant on George so he is labeled as immature. However, there's much more to the characters than what they are labeled as. Even though the other characters in the book will learn more about George and Lennie throughout the story, they will forever be known for their stereotypes. Steinbeck shows that with stereotyping people look at the world with more judgement.

Steinbeck has written ''Of Mice And Men '' about an adventure of George and Lennie trying to accomplish their American dream's during the Great Depression during the 1930's where thousands of people lost their jobs in the Wall Street Crash making them feel hopeless. George and Lennie come to work at a ranch near Soledad in California. There they meet fellow ranch mates and a woman called Curley's Wife. In this essay I will focus on how Curley's Wife's personality and actions change throughout the novella and who she affect her and other bunkmates throughout the novella. In addition to that I would be showing how Steinbeck creates tension by using Curleys Wife.

How is a woman in an era dominated by men expected to gain attention? Steinbeck wrote the novel titled Of Mice and Men emphasising the male society while displaying American dreams crushed throughout the novel. Whereas, minimal wiggle room for Curley’s wife expands upon her husband’s father’s farm because of its majority being men and her being the inferior sex. Her image demonstrates a sexual figure towards the male workers when Lennie and George saw her for the first time as stated, “She had full, rough lips and widespread eyes, heavily made up. Her fingernails red and her hair hung in curls with a cotton house dress,” whereas red usually provokes people as an attention seeking color from its vividness bringing along attention to her hands

John Steinbeck, an American novelist, is well-known for his familiar themes of depression and loneliness. He uses these themes throughout a majority of his novels. These themes come from his childhood and growing up during the stock market crash. A reader can see his depiction of his childhood era. In Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck shows the prominent themes of loneliness, the need for relationships, and the loss of dreams in the 1930s through the novels’ character.

In John Steinbeck's classic novella “Of Mice and Men” is set in the late 1920’s in Soledad, California. Throughout the book, Lennie Smalls and Curley's Wife are two characters who struggle the most. Lennie is a mentally handicapped man who is too strong for his own good, while Curley's wife is a woman who is barred to any interaction with others, besides her husband Curley. She is often looked over and treated like she is worthless and not worthy of anyone's time. Steinbeck developed many different themes throughout the book by portraying characters differently.

Just like Curley’s wife, many women back then wanted independence but was not given any thus creating an unfair society. This is the exact reason why Steinbeck does not give a specific name for Curley’s wife, instead creating her character as a violent woman who seeks for independence and can only reach it using through using violence. He wants us the readers to think that Curley’s wife does not have any independence, just simply because she is a woman. She does not like to be stuck with people who are at the bottom of the social ladder like Lennie, Candy, and

Steinbeck leads the reader into a false sense of understanding by directing the reader’s sympathy towards Lennie and the destruction of his dream as well as his naïve innocence. At first it seems as though Curley’s Wife plays the catalyst however, as the plot develops and our understanding of her does, we realise behind the hard exterior she is rather a victim of solitude and prejudice within the ranch. Curley’s Wife is used to highlight a variety of ideologies and motifs within the novella. She is also used to emphasise the theme of the impossibility of the American Dream. She is used as a metaphorical device to

“Americans increasingly associate mental illness with the potential for violence” said Rick Callahan in his study entitled More Americans Associating Mental Illness with Violence. These stereotypes are what propitiate inequality with people who suffer from mental diseases. Clare Nullis points out in her article World Health Organization Urges More Attention to Mental Health Problems that “One in four people in the world will be affected by mental health or brain disorders during their lives, but few of them will seek or receive help.” These diseases effect nearly 25% of the world population, and these stereotypes force these people to feel ashamed of their conditions. John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men demonstrates the 1930s problem of poverty and how places around the world neglect those who suffer from mental illness and pass judgment on them because of their disabilities.

People disdain others as a result of being different; they stereotype or put other races in a box which is unfair. In the book Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck, Curley’s wife was the only lady in the ranch and men do not treat her with respect because she is a woman. Steinbeck also introduced Crooks; he felt beneath consideration from the world because the society contempt other races during the Great Depression. Candy was afflicted in behalf of his dog getting perished that he raised for a long time. Characters in the book were mostly lonely by virtue of their race, gender, and having no one to communicate with.

A multitude of characters within Of Mice and Men do not experience genuine justice throughout the events of the book in behalf of being a woman, they are not the most intelligent being, or because they just cannot defend themselves. One character in particular, Curley’s wife, is looked at as an item or property of Curley because of the fact that she is a female in particular but also because of the fact that she is a woman in the time of a male dominated world. She is just a girl who has “rouged lips… wide-spaced eyes…[is] heavily made up… her hair in rolled clusters…[and wore] a cotton house dress” so none of the characters truly took her seriously (Steinbeck 31). She is pushed to the point where she has to “struggle violently under [Lennie’s]