Wasted Ambitions

     In the middle of the Depression, having big hopes and dreams was a hard. Curley's wife in Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck understood this statement; she was rejected countless times. Although at the beginning of the novella, she seemed simplistic and shallow, Curley's wife became more complex. She had dreams of being in movies, but her motivation was actually quite simple; she wanted independence and respect.
     The workers of the ranch tried to tell her that Curley's hand had been broken by a machine, but she had not been fooled; "What you think you're sellin' me?" she had accused. Curley's wife seems dim, but in actuality she is intelligent when situations boiled down to logic. She doesn't want to be seen as a dainty and fragile house wife, because she feels like she has a much greater capacity for purpose than just cooking and cleaning.
     Though Curley's wife is a beautiful woman, she puts herself on display because she wants to be admired. She continually mixes respect and attention. Because of the time period she lives in, the idea of her being treated like a person, instead of an object, seems impossible to aqcuire. Curley's wife does not want to be a "tramp," or a "tart," but she "ain't wanted anywhere else." She doesn't feel content, because she is always being passed around, whether it be from man to man, or from place to place.
     Everything this woman has ever strived towards seems to slip through her fingers. Though Curley's wife "don' like Curley," she married him in the hopes that he would take her someplace. At first, she believed he had bigger ambitions than he actually turned out to have. Instead of walking down the red carpet, she got stuck at his father's ranch, seemingly at the end of her road.
     Although Curley's wife has had dreams of "bein' somebody," she also has the true desire to just be seen. She wants to be seen as a woman, but as a real person, also. She wants to gain enough respect so that she doesn't have to depend on anyone else but herself. Her future always depended on someone else, and she became tired of it. She felt lost in the idea that she would never have the admiration that she wanted from others, and through that came her own self-descruction.