Curley's Wife

This is my second year teaching Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” and I am having a very different reaction to it than I did last year.  Last year, I thought it was great how the kids recognized the themes of having a dream and friendship.  This year, I am grossed out by the misogyny that runs through it.  Like really grossed out.  Maybe it is because I have just finished grading three out of four class sets of chapter questions and Curley’s wife has been referred to as a hoe, a tramp and a skank-ass bitch.  Ouch.  Doesn’t she tell us again and again in Chapter Four that she’s just lonely?  Just tired of sitting in that house?  Flirty and needy I can see, but skanky?

Just some good ole boys....

As I spend too much time thinking of this, I think of the fact that she doesn’t even have a name.  Students in my class kept asking me “Miss, what’s her name?” and I would reply that Steinbeck didn’t give her a name.  So they named her themselves: Lola and Cinnamon were in the running.  Why doesn’t she have a name?  Why are the only other women mentioned in the book prostitutes?  That Susy was a fun gal and kept a clean house we are told. Susy, who has no dialogue, is given a name and Curley’s wife is still just Curley’s wife. And yes, I am sure running a cat house and brokering women for their bodies would indeed make one a fun gal.  Aunt Clara shows up as a hallucination at the end, but when she does, she derides Lennie and tells him he’s not worth anything. 

Maybe it is all the stuff on the outside of the classroom that is piling up and forcing me to see this with new eyes.  All the celebrities and politicians being called out again and again for harassment, for abuse, for rape.  For being disgusting and abusive to women they had power over.  Maybe it is the #metoo that went around, because it was everyone and it was everywhere.  It was my friends, it was your friends, it was us.  Maybe this is why I see Curley’s wife with new eyes this year.  I see her as the young woman we have all been: trusting, naïve, and compromised. 

I did ask my classes to ponder what life was like for women if this book was reflective of society at the time.  They quickly answered that it wasn’t good, but they also quickly said that things are so much better now.  That we are all equal now.  And inwardly, I cringe because I know things they just haven’t experienced yet.  There is so much I want to say, so much I want to show them, so much I know that they don’t.  However, I am paid to teach English and not show them how the world is still so flawed.  But I also think that as a teacher, part of my job is to teach kids to be better humans.  We have had too many incidents at school the past few months for me to think that my job ends with vocabulary and essay writing.  So I let them lead the conversations they want to have and I will give them general things to talk about, but sometimes the weight of the things I don’t get to say gets really heavy.

One more week of this book and then we will tuck it away for another year.  George, Lennie and the gang will all be silent until next year’s juniors crack the spine.  However, I am not so sure I can close Curley’s wife up with them though, I think she has something she needs me to say.