Of Mice and Men question

Curley's wife is so lost, lonely and so insignificant that Steinbeck does not even give her a name. She spends the novel trying to find company under the guise of looking for her husband. Curley is in fact an intensely abusive person with a major case of small-guy complex. The irony is that while she pretends to be looking for Curley, she is actually trying to avoid him. The men on the ranch fear Curley's wife. Curley's wife is so lost and so disaffected that she has no emotional room for empathy.