IGCSE EDEXCEL
In depth analysis document on Candy, Curley's Wife, Curley and Lennie
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Includes detailed analysis with quotations and context
Curley’s Wife
John Steinbeck: the struggles of women in a misogynistic and patriarchal society and how
the great depression forced them into oppression, loneliness and cruelty
● Women/Discrimination/Objectification/Oppression
John Steinbeck: demonstrate the restrictions placed on women and how they were
perceived by society in the 1930s
unnamed - objectification of women and discrimination by men, lack of identity
only woman on the ranch - represent women trapped in a world of misogyny and men,
power dynamic between men and women
OBJECTIFICATION
“Well, that glove’s fulla Vaseline.” -candy (chapter 2)
- curley talking about his wife in a sexual nature to other men behind her back,
sexually objectified
“tart” “she got the eye” -candy (chapter 2)
- initial impression: flirtatious, sexually immoral, biased opinions, promiscuous and
licentious
- only women on the ranch, doesn’t have anyone else to look at except the men,
unfairness
“jail bait” “rattrap” -george (chapter 2)
- dehumanised, initially introduced as a femme fatale stock character, luring men into
dangerous situations
- language of entrapment, comparison with traps rather than an actual human being,
objectification
CONTEXT:
- grown up in a patriarchal society where it encouraged the notion that women were
made to believe that their worth is derived from physical appearance and
sexualisation, social standards for women and their beauty, supposed to be “purty”
but is labelled degrading terms
SEXUALISATION/TROUBLE
“fingernails were red.” “cotton house dress and red mules”
- red motif: danger/warning, forshadows bloodshed (related to the “trouble she will
bring”/language of entrapment)
- red motif: lust/passion “body was thrown forward” “rouged lips” draws attention to
sensual parts of her body, seductive
- steinbeck emphasises her physical description to exemplify the objectification of
women in the society of the 1930s, in addition to chapter 4 when her lips were
“slightly parted” and she “breathed strongly”, sexualisation of her by steinbeck of
just doing normal things
CONTEXT: patriarchal society in which women were expected to cater to their husbands
needs and remain domesticated and devoted, role of women
- inequality of men, excuses men of not having ‘self control’ and blames women
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