Chapter 5 sees Steinbeck give the reader a more developed picture of Curley’s wife’s character. She enters the chapter in a very similar way to her first entrance in the novel

‘She wore her bright cotton dress and the mules with the red ostrich feathers. Her face was made up and the little sausage curls were in place’.

Despite this almost exact description of her from chapter 2, the reader is presented with a different side to this seemingly flirtatious and, sometimes malicious, character. N this chapter Steinbeck allows Curley’s wife character to articulate her feelings of loneliness

‘I get lonely’‘I get awful lonely’

This use of repetition emphasises her isolation and frustration at her not being able to talk to ‘nobody but Curley’ and it is this frustration which continually surfaces as she speaks to Lennie

‘And then her words tumbled out in a passion of communication,as though she hurried before her listener could be taken away’

The word ‘tumbled’ suggests how her need to talk is desperate whilst the word ‘passion’ illustrates the power and intensity of this need to communicate. She has clearly been silences and stifled by her husband. What is particularly striking is that she is used to people walking away from her when she talks and it is this which creates such sympathy for her.

In chapter 5 Curley’s wife is also presented as a gentle and caring character, a far cry from the character who threatened Crooks with lynching in chapter 4

‘She consoled him ‘Don’t you worry none’…She moved closer to him and she spoke soothingly’

The fact that she spoke ‘soothingly’ suggests she has a kind nature and acts in a maternal way when Lennie needed such gentleness.

As the novel progresses, the reader learns that Curley’s wife was very similar to George and Lennie.