In chapter two of Steinbeck's novella Of Mice and Men, the old swamper Candy describes the main characters on the ranch including Curley's wife. She comes up in the conversation between George and Candy after Curley comes into the bunkhouse looking for her. Candy describes her as pretty but also flirtatious and even possibly promiscuous. He says she's "got the eye," meaning she is often around the men on the ranch trying to talk to them. Candy uses the terms tart, tramp and floozy to refer to her.
A little later she comes into the bunkhouse looking for Curley. Ironically, the two always seem to be looking for each other but are never in the same scene together until chapter five when she is found dead. Her characterization is sexually charged. She is young but seductive in appearance:
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 house dress and red mules, on the insteps of which were little bouquets of red ostrich feathers.
She tries to flirt with and even to tease George and Lennie as she flaunts her body in the doorway. At this point the reader may simply consider her the "tramp" Candy says she is. Her personality is outgoing in a provocative sort of way but she is also a bit "apprehensive" about Curley. Later, however, we learn that she is essentially lonely and craves attention because Curley neglects her and probably even mistreats her.
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