of mice and men dreams essay

• Of Mice and Men

John Steinbeck

• Literature Notes
• Major Themes
• Of Mice and Men at a Glance
• Book Summary
• About Of Mice and Men
• Character List
• Summary and Analysis
• Character Analysis
• George Milton
• Lennie Small
• Curley's Wife
• Character Map
• John Steinbeck Biography
• Critical Essays
• Major Symbols
• Structure of the Novel
• Full Glossary
• Essay Questions
• Practice Projects
• Cite this Literature Note

Critical Essays Major Themes

Introduction

Much like Steinbeck 's short novel The Pearl , Of Mice and Men is a parable that tries to explain what it means to be human. His friend Ed Ricketts shaped Steinbeck's thinking about man's place in the universe. Essentially, man is a very small part of a very large universe; in the greater scheme of things, individuals come and go and leave very little, lasting mark. Yet deep inside all people is a longing for a place in nature — the desire for the land, roots, and a place to call "home." The struggle for such a place is universal, and its success is uncertain.

In sharing his vision of what it means to be human, Steinbeck touches on several themes: the nature of dreams, the nature of loneliness, man's propensity for cruelty, powerlessness and economic injustices, and the uncertainty of the future.

Nature of Dreams

In essence, Of Mice and Men is as much a story about the nature of human dreams and aspirations and the forces that work against them as it is the story of two men. Humans give meaning to their lives — and to their futures — by creating dreams. Without dreams and goals, life is an endless stream of days that have little connection or meaning. George and Lennie 's dream — to own a little farm of their own — is so central to Of Mice and Men that it appears in some form in five of the six chapters. In fact, the telling of the story, which George has done so often, becomes a ritual between the two men: George provides the narrative, and Lennie, who has difficulty remembering even simple instructions, picks up the refrain by finishing George's sentences.

To George, this dream of having their own place means independence, security, being their own boss, and, most importantly, being "somebody." To Lennie, the dream is like the soft animals he pets: It means security, the responsibility of tending to the rabbits, and a sanctuary where he won't have to be afraid. To  Candy , who sees the farm as a place where he can assert a responsibility he didn't take when he let Carlson kill his dog, it offers security for old age and a home where he will fit in. For Crooks , the little farm will be a place where he can have self-respect, acceptance, and security. For each man — George, Lennie, Candy, and Crooks — human dignity is an integral part of the dream.

Having and sharing the dream, however, are not enough to bring it to fruition. Each man must make a sacrifice or battle some other force that seeks, intentionally or not, to steal the dream away. Initially, the obstacles are difficult but not insurmountable: staying out of trouble, not spending money on liquor or in bordellos, and working at the ranch long enough to save the money for a down payment. But greater obstacles soon become apparent. Some of these obstacles are external (the threat from Curley's wife and  Curley 's violence, for example, as well as the societal prejudices that plague each man); others are internal (such as Lennie's strength and his need to touch soft things). For George, the greatest threat to the dream is Lennie himself; ironically, it is Lennie who also makes the dream worthwhile.

In addition to dreams, humans crave contact with others to give life meaning. Loneliness is present throughout this novel. On the most obvious level, we see this isolation when the ranch hands go into town on Saturday night to ease their loneliness with alcohol and women. Similarly, Lennie goes into Crook's room to find someone with whom to talk, and later Curley's wife comes for the same reason. Crooks says, "A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long's he's with you." Even Slim mentions, "I seen the guys that go around on the ranches alone. That ain't no good. They don't have no fun. After a long time they get mean."

George's taking care of Lennie and the dream of the farm are attempts to break the pattern of loneliness that is part of the human condition. Similarly, Lennie's desire to pet soft things comes from his need to feel safe and secure, to touch something that gives him that feeling of not being alone in the world. For Lennie, the dream of the farm parallels that security.

Continued on next page...

Previous John Steinbeck Biography

Next Major Themes

'Of Mice and Men' Themes

The nature of dreams, strength vs. weakness, man vs. nature.

Quentin Cohan is a graduate of Williams College with degrees in both English and History. He covered literature for ThoughtCo.

• Williams College

Of Mice and Men , by John Steinbeck, tells the story of two migrant farm workers in California. By exploring themes such as the nature of dreams, the relationship between strength and weakness, and the conflict between man and nature, the novella paints a compelling and often dark portrait of Great Depression-era American life.

George and Lennie share a dream: to own their own land, allowing them to live "off the fatta the lan'." This dream comes up repeatedly throughout the novella in conversations between George and Lennie as well as with other farm workers. However, the significance of this dream differs depending on which character is discussing it.

To innocent Lennie, the dream is a concrete plan. He truly believes that he and George will someday have their own farm with plenty of alfalfa and rabbits. Whenever Lennie feels scared or worried, he asks George to tell him about the farm and the rabbits. Hearing George describe the imaginary farm comforts and reassures Lennie.

The farm plan is supposed to be a secret, but Lennie accidentally lets it slip during a conversation with Crooks. Crooks rejects the dream immediately. He tells Lennie that people are always making big statements about getting land or going to heaven, but that "[n]obody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It’s just in their head.” For Crooks, there is no point in dreaming—dreams don't offer solace because he is certain that they won't come true.

George has yet another relationship to the dream. For most of the novella, it is unclear whether he truly believes that the farm dream will become a reality, or whether he simply talks about it to keep Lennie happy and to pass the time. At the story's end, however, it becomes clear that for George, the dream was never a potential reality. Up until the instant he shoots Lennie, George is telling him about the farm they'll have one day. In this moment, George knows that Lennie will never see the farm, but still uses the dream to keep Lennie calm; Lennie, on the other hand, truly believes that he will one day be tending rabbits on the farm that George describes. This moment perfectly symbolizes the conflict between George's skepticism of the dream and Lennie's innocent hopes about the dream, as well as the violent power of the former over the latter.

Violence is never far away in  Of Mice and Men 's hardscrabble world, and one of the most important themes is the uneasy relationship between strength and weakness. The theme plays out in the behavior of most of the characters. Curley, a physically diminutive man, uses his position of authority on the farm to assert his dominance over the others. Curley's wife silences Crooks through racial slurs and violent threats, despite being physically weaker than him. And Carlson, one of the ranch hands, shoots the elderly dog owned by Candy, who happens to be an aging handyman himself.

The theme of strength vs. weakness is most apparent in the character of Lennie, a man who is himself both strong and weak. Physically, Lennie is by far the most powerful man on the farm. However, his demeanor is gentle and often fearful—he doesn't want to fight the other men—and he has a mental disability that leaves him dependent on George.

This tension between strength and weakness is highlighted when Lennie, who adores delicate objects and small creatures, interacts with animals. When the novella begins, George and Lennie are sitting by the side of the road, and Lennie is petting a dead mouse (he loves to feel soft materials). Later, Lennie gets a puppy from one of the farm workers. He adores the small creature, but he accidentally kills it by stroking it too strongly. This situation is repeated—with graver consequences—when Lennie breaks Curley's wife's neck while stroking her hair.

Because he fails to understand his own strength, Lennie kills physically weaker beings: the puppy and Curley's wife. These mistakes ultimately lead to Lennie's own death, as George shoots him in an effort to protect him from Curley's wrathful mob. In the dog-eat-dog (or, perhaps more accurately, man-crush-dog) world of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men , strength in the form of mental and emotional toughness is essential, and the weak cannot survive.

The novella begins with a passage describing an idyllic riverbank, where "the golden foothill slopes curve up" to the mountains and the warm water "slip[s] twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight." When humans enter the scene, however, the passage's tone shifts: there is a path "beaten hard by boys" and "an ash pile made by many fires." This early passage demonstrates the uncertain (and potentially harmful) relationship between the natural and human worlds that arises throughout the novella.

The characters in Of Mice and Men work on a ranch—one of the most fundamental examples of humans exerting control over the natural world. Lennie and George's desire to own land again reinforces this theme; their image of success and fulfillment involves dominance over nature.

However, the relationship between man and nature is not as clear-cut as these examples might suggest. Sometimes, humans destroy nature unwittingly, like when Lennie kills the puppy. On other occasions, humans destroy nature for morally ambiguous (maybe even natural ) reasons, like when Carlson shoots Candy's old dog in order to put it out of his misery. Lennie himself reflects some aspects of the natural world, as he seems largely unaware of many social constructs of the human world.

Ultimately, the moment that most blurs the line between the human and natural worlds is Lennie's death at George's hand. The scene asks us to consider whether it is natural for George to kill Lennie for his own protection (to "put him out of his misery"), or whether the killing is an act of societal intervention. The novella's conclusion suggests that the distinction between human society and nature—and between mice and men—is, perhaps, not so great after all.

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• Controversial and Banned Books
• 9 Books From the 1930s That Resonate Today
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• 'Of Mice and Men' Vocabulary
• Polarity and Grammar
• The Title in Composition
• How to Find the Main Idea - Worksheet

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The American Dream

Of mice and men literary analysis melanie amber langness 11th grade.

In the realistically dismal novella Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck sympathizes with poverty-stricken characters that are stuck working towards the hopeless American Dream. He portrays the men and women as human beasts, stranded in a world of limited social roles, intolerance, and endless labor. Steinbeck juxtaposes this realistic depiction of daily life with the character’s focus on a dream world that includes freedom, individuality, wealth, success, and loyalty. His straightforward writing style allowed the story to be widely understood by those caught in the Great Depression’s soul-sucking grasp at the time of publishing, and by anyone from teenagers to adults today. By making a connection with the audience, presenting strong symbolism, and utilizing vernacular diction, Steinbeck subtly argues that the common dreams of people in this time period were unattainable and led only to a miserable cycle of work and tragedy while informing the reader of the true societal conditions of the 1930’s working class.

Steinbeck evokes the reader’s affections by having them sympathize with George and Lennie’s situation and breaks their hearts by presenting the men’s complex relationship that ended with a depressing death. By utilizing vivid...

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Themes and Analysis

Of mice and men, by john steinbeck.

‘Of Mice and Men’ by John Steinbeck is an illustrious tale tied around the ordeals of the working class. The book brings to life themes that become even more vivid and powerful as the story progresses.

About the Book

Article written by Victor Onuorah

Degree in Journalism from University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

‘ Of Mice and Men ’ is one book that parades characters who represent the most vulnerable group in society. The extractable themes in the book are the results of the harshness of life these characters live while they struggle to survive. Some of the most eye-catching themes found in the book include those around chattered dreams, fear and loneliness, Fugitive, friendship, and brotherhood.

The story ‘Of Mice and Men ’ opens with its two principal characters, George and Lennie , moving desperately away from Weed to as far as the Soledad area. Weed is the place they used to work but had to leave to save their lives after Lennie stirred up trouble for an apparent sexual assault on a woman.

Although John Steinbeck makes it immediately clear to readers that their migration is spurred by the job offer they received at a ranch in Soledad, there’s no doubt, however, that the main reason they’re leaving is to avoid being caught by an unknown lynch party hot on their trail.

Fear and Loneliness

With the exception of the boss who owns the ranch, it’s hard to find one more character throughout the book who isn’t consumed by fear or gets sunk in by the feeling of loneliness, or both.

Lennie is a perfect exemplification of both, and this reality becomes very hard for readers to accept, given his size and the excelling expectations one would place on him at first sight. Of the many instances leading to the two friends losing their jobs, Lennie’s fears and inability to curb his strength contributed greatly to the outcome.

Even though Lennie has a companion in George, he’s easily singled out as one of the loneliest characters in the book, and his fondness for stroking soft animals and things gives more credence to the fact.

Shattered Dreams

John Steinbeck’s characters have dreams, each on their own, but none ever get to live them out. The high point of a dream brutally shattered in ‘ Of Mice and Men ’ comes to climax at the scene where old Candy is standing over the lifeless body of Curley’s wife, saying;

You God damn tramp… You done it, di’nt you? I s’pose you’re glad. Ever’body knowed you’d mess things up…

Here, one notices old Candy rendering expletives on Curley’s wife, who is lying on the barn floor, partly covered by hay, dead. He blames her for being killed by Lennie, the result of which destroys his dream of someday washing dishes and hoeing the garden on George’s dream farm, which will never materialize again because she’s dead.

While alive, Curley’s wife also dreamed of becoming a movie star and once admitted that her marriage to Curley shattered that dream.

Friendship and Brotherhood

It’s safe to say that George’s friendship with Lennie goes well beyond just being friends to as far as brothers. Their close bond is considered weird and unusual by the men at the ranch, but the reader easily understands this when George tells Slim he and Lennie have been so from childhood.

Also, the men at the ranch share a sort of bond comparable to a brotherly connection, and we see them from time to time protecting each other’s interests and rallying around support for the team.

Key Moments in Of Mice and Men

• George and Lennie hurry through the brush near the river called Salinas after alighting a bus untimely.
• George aims to chide Lennie for hiding a dead mouse in his pocket and makes him throw it away.
• Lennie threatens to leave George and go live in a cave alone, but George begs and talks him out of it by retelling him their shared dream of owning a ranch.
• George and Lennie get to the ranch and are received by Candy, who tells them the boss is angry they’re a day late.
• They meet the boss, who interviews them and assigns them to Slim.
• They meet the other look laborers, including the boss’s son Curley, his wife, Slim, Carlson, Crooks, and Whit.
• Carlson takes permission and shoots Candy’s dog after they all agree that killing it would be a kinder, more honorable way to put the old, smelly dog out of misery.
• Candy declares interest in George and Lennie’s dream of owning a farm and pledges financial support to the cause.
• A fight sets in at the bunkhouse, and Lennie crushes Curley’s hand after the latter attacks him for smiling at jokes about him.
• Lennie and Candy visit Crook’s in his room and have conversations while the other men are out to a nearby brothel.
• Crooks is told about George’s dream farm, and he declares his interest.
• Curley’s wife interrupts the men but is snubbed by them, and she threatens to have Crooks lynched. She leaves the room angrily afterward when George and the other men who went out start to trickle in.
• George is angry that Lennie told Crooks about their plan, but Crooks immediately says he’s no longer interested in a plan so dumb and unrealistic.
• Lennie is alone in the barn mourning over his dead puppy, which he mistakenly struggled with hard strokes. Curley’s wife enters, finds out, and tries to console him.
• Lennie mistakenly kills Curley’s wife by breaking her neck after she offers him her hair to stroke because Lennie admitted to liking the texture of soft things.
• Lennie runs away and hides in the brush where he and George agreed to meet if things go awful.
• Candy finds Curley’s wife’s body partly covered by hay and tells the others. Curley, angry and enraged, gather a lynch party and goes out to look for Lennie.
• Lennie daydreams and sees aunt Clara standing before him with a giant rabbit.
• George disappears from the lynch party and goes straight to meet Lennie at their rendezvous.
• George kills Lennie with Carlson’s gun, putting a bullet in the back of his head at point-blank.

Style and Tone

The style of John Steinbeck’s book ‘ Of Mice and Men ’ is both descriptive and commentatory, with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ‘s ‘Half of a Yellow Sun ‘ the only close comparison on these fronts. Steinbeck instilled a dialogue-type conversation throughout the book because his real intention goes beyond the book just serving as a mere novella as he also intended for it to be actable on stage.

The tone is literal, straightforward, and somewhat arcane, which makes it a perfect reflection of the characters whose lives have heavily been disrupted by the Greatest Depression.

Figurative Languages

John Steinbeck’s ‘ Of Mice and Men ’ is flooded with figurative language, and this doesn’t come unexpectedly to the readers, given that it’s part of the characteristics of descriptive writing. Some of the most prevalent figurative languages employed are highlighted.

He was … the prince of the ranch.

In the above ‘ Of Mice and Men ‘ Quote , Steinbeck deploys this metaphorical expression as part of an attempt to offer a neat description of Slim and the degree of his relevance among all the other men on the ranch. Slim is very clearly the complete package; strong, a leader, empathetic, and the best at his job. Others revere him and take his words as law.

…she’s a rat trap if I ever seen one.

Most of the men consider Curley’s wife a threat to their job, possibly even their lives, and often times they avoid her, with George even dishing out a strict warning to Lennie to stay off of her.

Personification

The shades climbed up the hills towards the top.

This excerpt is taken from the third paragraph of chapter one. Steinbeck does everything he could- including using that figure of speech – to set the introductory mood of the book before ushering in his characters.

On the sand banks the rabbits sat as quietly as little gray, sculptured stones.

Steinbeck describes a momentary peace and tranquillity of life for plants and animals in the brush, but this is short-lived as George and Lennie soon knock about this axis, causing an offset to their being. Other figurative languages therein the book includes – idioms, epigram, and onomatopoeia, among others.

Analysis of Symbols

The dream farm.

George and Lennie talk about the dream farm for the most part of the book starting from chapter one. The two friends have this dream of co-owning a small farm where George grows vegetation and Lennie resigns to the pleasure of rearing rabbits.

The dream is found to be contagious and wanted by the men at the ranch, with Crooks and Candy particularly showing interest because it offers them the chance to become free, independent, and self-sufficient.

The dream is representative of the elusive American dream, and just like how the American dream doesn’t get to be attained by everyone, the dream about the farm eluded all of them.

Candy’s Old Dog

In the book, Candy’s dog is killed for being weak, old, and smelly. This goes to represent the repercussion of being weak in the times in which ‘Of Mice and Men’ was written .

The Dead Mouse

In ‘ Of Mice and Men ’ George discovers that Lennie is hiding a dead mouse in his pocket and throws it away to the other side of the swamp. Before that happens, we see Lennie’s reluctance to give away the dead animal which he had mistakenly killed by severe stroking.

With the dead mouse, there is a symbolism of false hope, and Lennie is too focused on clinging to it. However, George throwing it away marks the end of all hope for their goal, just like when he kills Lennie at the end with a gunshot to the head.

What is the major theme of Steinbeck’s ‘Of Mice and Men’ ?

Although having only a few pages, the book explores several important themes – with the most frontal being themes of friends and loneliness, and those contrasting between dreams and realities.

Why is Steinbeck fascinated with Salinas Valley?

Steinbeck was not only born in Salinas Valley in California , but he also spent his childhood there. This explains why he often used the place as the primary setting for several of his books.

Where was John Steinbeck born?

John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California on February 27, 1902.

How well-off was Steinbeck’s family?

Steinbeck’s family was not that rich. His father did all kinds of low-paying jobs – including owning a grain store and working for a county treasury.

Did Steinbeck have a happy childhood?

Although Steinbeck himself agreed it was tough growing up and not having several of his childhood needs to be met, overall, the writer attested to the fact that he had a happy and worthwhile childhood and this is mostly because he grew up in the midst of three lovely sisters.

About Victor Onuorah

Victor is as much a prolific writer as he is an avid reader. With a degree in Journalism, he goes around scouring literary storehouses and archives; picking up, dusting the dirt off, and leaving clean even the most crooked pieces of literature all with the skill of analysis.

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Of Mice and Men

John steinbeck, everything you need for every book you read..

Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

Of Mice and Men: Introduction

Of mice and men: plot summary, of mice and men: detailed summary & analysis, of mice and men: themes, of mice and men: quotes, of mice and men: characters, of mice and men: symbols, of mice and men: theme wheel, brief biography of john steinbeck.

Historical Context of Of Mice and Men

Other books related to of mice and men.

• Full Title: Of Mice and Men
• When Written: 1930s
• Where Written: Salinas, California
• When Published: 1937
• Literary Period: Modernism
• Genre: Novella
• Setting: Depression-era Salinas and Soledad, California
• Climax: Lennie shakes Curley’s wife to death and flees the ranch.
• Antagonist: Curley

Extra Credit for Of Mice and Men

Stage and Screen. Of Mice and Men has been widely adapted into plays and films. The first theatrical performance took place in 1937 at the Music Box Theater on Broadway, while the novel itself was still topping the bestseller list. Notable revivals of the play include a 1974 Broadway production which featured James Earl Jones as Lennie Small, and a 2014 production featuring James Franco as George Milton. The novel has also been adapted for the screen twice—once in 1939, in an adaptation which garnered five Academy Award nominations, and once in 1992.

Poetic Origins. The title of Of Mice and Men is drawn from a Robert Burns poem titled “To a Mouse, on Turning up in Her Nest with the Plough, November, 1785,” which features the line “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, / Gang aft agley.” The poem describes its speaker’s shock and regret upon realizing they have disturbed a mouse in her nest while plowing a field. The speaker tries to assure the mouse they mean no harm while at the same time lamenting the unpredictable nature of the future—and the futility of planning ahead. “Gang aft agley,” a Gaelic phrase, translates to “go oft awry”—and Steinbeck uses his own novel to show the devastating effects of future plans that go horribly wrong.

Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Of Mice and Men — American Dream In ‘Of Mice and Men’

American Dream in 'Of Mice and Men'

• Categories: American Dream Of Mice and Men

About this sample

Words: 924 |

Published: Apr 29, 2022

Words: 924 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

Works Cited:

• Cohen, R. (2016). The Power of Words. The Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing, 31(1), 3-4.
• Gibbs, R. (2017). Why we need powerful words. Journal of Child Language, 44(1), 1-4.
• Goodwin, B. (2018). The Power of Words: A Review of Current Research and Theory on Language and Writing. Educational Psychology Review, 30(1), 1-22.
• Lester, P. (2017). Power of Words. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 61(1), 1-2.
• Lobaczewski, A. (2016). The Power of Words in History, Politics, and the Political Science of Psychopathy. Political Ponerology, 2(2), 53-66.
• Marshall, H. (2019). The Power of Words in Health Care. American Journal of Nursing, 119(1), 11-13.
• Maurer, B. (2019). The Book Thief: The Power of Words. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 58(2), 119-121.
• Miller, C. (2016). Words and the Mind: How words capture human experience. Journal of Applied Psychology, 101(1), 1-10.
• Pinker, S. (2014). The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. Harper Perennial Modern Classics.
• Zusak, M. (2005). The Book Thief. Knopf Books for Young Readers.

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Of Mice and Men

47 pages • 1 hour read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Imagine a seventh chapter that details the events of George’s life without Lennie. What happens to George? Does he maintain any of the relationships he started at the ranch? What happens to the dream farm? Cite evidence from the text to support your outcome.

Curley’s wife is not depicted as a wholly innocent character. Is this treatment of her fair or unfair? Prepare a defense of her character and support your point of view with evidence from the novella.

Do you agree with George’s decision to take Lennie’s life into his own hands, or do you believe George should have turned Lennie into the law?

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The Case for Marrying an Older Man

A woman’s life is all work and little rest. an age gap relationship can help..

In the summer, in the south of France, my husband and I like to play, rather badly, the lottery. We take long, scorching walks to the village — gratuitous beauty, gratuitous heat — kicking up dust and languid debates over how we’d spend such an influx. I purchase scratch-offs, jackpot tickets, scraping the former with euro coins in restaurants too fine for that. I never cash them in, nor do I check the winning numbers. For I already won something like the lotto, with its gifts and its curses, when he married me.

He is ten years older than I am. I chose him on purpose, not by chance. As far as life decisions go, on balance, I recommend it.

When I was 20 and a junior at Harvard College, a series of great ironies began to mock me. I could study all I wanted, prove myself as exceptional as I liked, and still my fiercest advantage remained so universal it deflated my other plans. My youth. The newness of my face and body. Compellingly effortless; cruelly fleeting. I shared it with the average, idle young woman shrugging down the street. The thought, when it descended on me, jolted my perspective, the way a falling leaf can make you look up: I could diligently craft an ideal existence, over years and years of sleepless nights and industry. Or I could just marry it early.

So naturally I began to lug a heavy suitcase of books each Saturday to the Harvard Business School to work on my Nabokov paper. In one cavernous, well-appointed room sat approximately 50 of the planet’s most suitable bachelors. I had high breasts, most of my eggs, plausible deniability when it came to purity, a flush ponytail, a pep in my step that had yet to run out. Apologies to Progress, but older men still desired those things.

I could not understand why my female classmates did not join me, given their intelligence. Each time I reconsidered the project, it struck me as more reasonable. Why ignore our youth when it amounted to a superpower? Why assume the burdens of womanhood, its too-quick-to-vanish upper hand, but not its brief benefits at least? Perhaps it came easier to avoid the topic wholesale than to accept that women really do have a tragically short window of power, and reason enough to take advantage of that fact while they can. As for me, I liked history, Victorian novels, knew of imminent female pitfalls from all the books I’d read: vampiric boyfriends; labor, at the office and in the hospital, expected simultaneously; a decline in status as we aged, like a looming eclipse. I’d have disliked being called calculating, but I had, like all women, a calculator in my head. I thought it silly to ignore its answers when they pointed to an unfairness for which we really ought to have been preparing.

I was competitive by nature, an English-literature student with all the corresponding major ambitions and minor prospects (Great American novel; email job). A little Bovarist , frantic for new places and ideas; to travel here, to travel there, to be in the room where things happened. I resented the callow boys in my class, who lusted after a particular, socially sanctioned type on campus: thin and sexless, emotionally detached and socially connected, the opposite of me. Restless one Saturday night, I slipped on a red dress and snuck into a graduate-school event, coiling an HDMI cord around my wrist as proof of some technical duty. I danced. I drank for free, until one of the organizers asked me to leave. I called and climbed into an Uber. Then I promptly climbed out of it. For there he was, emerging from the revolving doors. Brown eyes, curved lips, immaculate jacket. I went to him, asked him for a cigarette. A date, days later. A second one, where I discovered he was a person, potentially my favorite kind: funny, clear-eyed, brilliant, on intimate terms with the universe.

I used to love men like men love women — that is, not very well, and with a hunger driven only by my own inadequacies. Not him. In those early days, I spoke fondly of my family, stocked the fridge with his favorite pasta, folded his clothes more neatly than I ever have since. I wrote his mother a thank-you note for hosting me in his native France, something befitting a daughter-in-law. It worked; I meant it. After graduation and my fellowship at Oxford, I stayed in Europe for his career and married him at 23.

Of course I just fell in love. Romances have a setting; I had only intervened to place myself well. Mainly, I spotted the precise trouble of being a woman ahead of time, tried to surf it instead of letting it drown me on principle. I had grown bored of discussions of fair and unfair, equal or unequal , and preferred instead to consider a thing called ease.

The reception of a particular age-gap relationship depends on its obviousness. The greater and more visible the difference in years and status between a man and a woman, the more it strikes others as transactional. Transactional thinking in relationships is both as American as it gets and the least kosher subject in the American romantic lexicon. When a 50-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman walk down the street, the questions form themselves inside of you; they make you feel cynical and obscene: How good of a deal is that? Which party is getting the better one? Would I take it? He is older. Income rises with age, so we assume he has money, at least relative to her; at minimum, more connections and experience. She has supple skin. Energy. Sex. Maybe she gets a Birkin. Maybe he gets a baby long after his prime. The sight of their entwined hands throws a lucid light on the calculations each of us makes, in love, to varying degrees of denial. You could get married in the most romantic place in the world, like I did, and you would still have to sign a contract.

Twenty and 30 is not like 30 and 40; some freshness to my features back then, some clumsiness in my bearing, warped our decade, in the eyes of others, to an uncrossable gulf. Perhaps this explains the anger we felt directed at us at the start of our relationship. People seemed to take us very, very personally. I recall a hellish car ride with a friend of his who began to castigate me in the backseat, in tones so low that only I could hear him. He told me, You wanted a rich boyfriend. You chased and snuck into parties . He spared me the insult of gold digger, but he drew, with other words, the outline for it. Most offended were the single older women, my husband’s classmates. They discussed me in the bathroom at parties when I was in the stall. What does he see in her? What do they talk about? They were concerned about me. They wielded their concern like a bludgeon. They paraphrased without meaning to my favorite line from Nabokov’s Lolita : “You took advantage of my disadvantage,” suspecting me of some weakness he in turn mined. It did not disturb them, so much, to consider that all relationships were trades. The trouble was the trade I’d made struck them as a bad one.

The truth is you can fall in love with someone for all sorts of reasons, tiny transactions, pluses and minuses, whose sum is your affection for each other, your loyalty, your commitment. The way someone picks up your favorite croissant. Their habit of listening hard. What they do for you on your anniversary and your reciprocal gesture, wrapped thoughtfully. The serenity they inspire; your happiness, enlivening it. When someone says they feel unappreciated, what they really mean is you’re in debt to them.

When I think of same-age, same-stage relationships, what I tend to picture is a woman who is doing too much for too little.

I’m 27 now, and most women my age have “partners.” These days, girls become partners quite young. A partner is supposed to be a modern answer to the oppression of marriage, the terrible feeling of someone looming over you, head of a household to which you can only ever be the neck. Necks are vulnerable. The problem with a partner, however, is if you’re equal in all things, you compromise in all things. And men are too skilled at taking .

There is a boy out there who knows how to floss because my friend taught him. Now he kisses college girls with fresh breath. A boy married to my friend who doesn’t know how to pack his own suitcase. She “likes to do it for him.” A million boys who know how to touch a woman, who go to therapy because they were pushed, who learned fidelity, boundaries, decency, manners, to use a top sheet and act humanely beneath it, to call their mothers, match colors, bring flowers to a funeral and inhale, exhale in the face of rage, because some girl, some girl we know, some girl they probably don’t speak to and will never, ever credit, took the time to teach him. All while she was working, raising herself, clawing up the cliff-face of adulthood. Hauling him at her own expense.

I find a post on Reddit where five thousand men try to define “ a woman’s touch .” They describe raised flower beds, blankets, photographs of their loved ones, not hers, sprouting on the mantel overnight. Candles, coasters, side tables. Someone remembering to take lint out of the dryer. To give compliments. I wonder what these women are getting back. I imagine them like Cinderella’s mice, scurrying around, their sole proof of life their contributions to a more central character. On occasion I meet a nice couple, who grew up together. They know each other with a fraternalism tender and alien to me.  But I think of all my friends who failed at this, were failed at this, and I think, No, absolutely not, too risky . Riskier, sometimes, than an age gap.

My younger brother is in his early 20s, handsome, successful, but in many ways: an endearing disaster. By his age, I had long since wisened up. He leaves his clothes in the dryer, takes out a single shirt, steams it for three minutes. His towel on the floor, for someone else to retrieve. His lovely, same-age girlfriend is aching to fix these tendencies, among others. She is capable beyond words. Statistically, they will not end up together. He moved into his first place recently, and she, the girlfriend, supplied him with a long, detailed list of things he needed for his apartment: sheets, towels, hangers, a colander, which made me laugh. She picked out his couch. I will bet you anything she will fix his laundry habits, and if so, they will impress the next girl. If they break up, she will never see that couch again, and he will forget its story. I tell her when I visit because I like her, though I get in trouble for it: You shouldn’t do so much for him, not for someone who is not stuck with you, not for any boy, not even for my wonderful brother.

Too much work had left my husband, by 30, jaded and uninspired. He’d burned out — but I could reenchant things. I danced at restaurants when they played a song I liked. I turned grocery shopping into an adventure, pleased by what I provided. Ambitious, hungry, he needed someone smart enough to sustain his interest, but flexible enough in her habits to build them around his hours. I could. I do: read myself occupied, make myself free, materialize beside him when he calls for me. In exchange, I left a lucrative but deadening spreadsheet job to write full-time, without having to live like a writer. I learned to cook, a little, and decorate, somewhat poorly. Mostly I get to read, to walk central London and Miami and think in delicious circles, to work hard, when necessary, for free, and write stories for far less than minimum wage when I tally all the hours I take to write them.

At 20, I had felt daunted by the project of becoming my ideal self, couldn’t imagine doing it in tandem with someone, two raw lumps of clay trying to mold one another and only sullying things worse. I’d go on dates with boys my age and leave with the impression they were telling me not about themselves but some person who didn’t exist yet and on whom I was meant to bet regardless. My husband struck me instead as so finished, formed. Analyzable for compatibility. He bore the traces of other women who’d improved him, small but crucial basics like use a coaster ; listen, don’t give advice. Young egos mellow into patience and generosity.

My husband isn’t my partner. He’s my mentor, my lover, and, only in certain contexts, my friend. I’ll never forget it, how he showed me around our first place like he was introducing me to myself: This is the wine you’ll drink, where you’ll keep your clothes, we vacation here, this is the other language we’ll speak, you’ll learn it, and I did. Adulthood seemed a series of exhausting obligations. But his logistics ran so smoothly that he simply tacked mine on. I moved into his flat, onto his level, drag and drop, cleaner thrice a week, bills automatic. By opting out of partnership in my 20s, I granted myself a kind of compartmentalized, liberating selfishness none of my friends have managed. I am the work in progress, the party we worry about, a surprising dominance. When I searched for my first job, at 21, we combined our efforts, for my sake. He had wisdom to impart, contacts with whom he arranged coffees; we spent an afternoon, laughing, drawing up earnest lists of my pros and cons (highly sociable; sloppy math). Meanwhile, I took calls from a dear friend who had a boyfriend her age. Both savagely ambitious, hyperclose and entwined in each other’s projects. If each was a start-up , the other was the first hire, an intense dedication I found riveting. Yet every time she called me, I hung up with the distinct feeling that too much was happening at the same time: both learning to please a boss; to forge more adult relationships with their families; to pay bills and taxes and hang prints on the wall. Neither had any advice to give and certainly no stability. I pictured a three-legged race, two people tied together and hobbling toward every milestone.

I don’t fool myself. My marriage has its cons. There are only so many times one can say “thank you” — for splendid scenes, fine dinners — before the phrase starts to grate. I live in an apartment whose rent he pays and that shapes the freedom with which I can ever be angry with him. He doesn’t have to hold it over my head. It just floats there, complicating usual shorthands to explain dissatisfaction like, You aren’t being supportive lately . It’s a Frenchism to say, “Take a decision,” and from time to time I joke: from whom? Occasionally I find myself in some fabulous country at some fabulous party and I think what a long way I have traveled, like a lucky cloud, and it is frightening to think of oneself as vapor.

Mostly I worry that if he ever betrayed me and I had to move on, I would survive, but would find in my humor, preferences, the way I make coffee or the bed nothing that he did not teach, change, mold, recompose, stamp with his initials, the way Renaissance painters hid in their paintings their faces among a crowd. I wonder if when they looked at their paintings, they saw their own faces first. But this is the wrong question, if our aim is happiness. Like the other question on which I’m expected to dwell: Who is in charge, the man who drives or the woman who put him there so she could enjoy herself? I sit in the car, in the painting it would have taken me a corporate job and 20 years to paint alone, and my concern over who has the upper hand becomes as distant as the horizon, the one he and I made so wide for me.

To be a woman is to race against the clock, in several ways, until there is nothing left to be but run ragged.

We try to put it off, but it will hit us at some point: that we live in a world in which our power has a different shape from that of men, a different distribution of advantage, ours a funnel and theirs an expanding cone. A woman at 20 rarely has to earn her welcome; a boy at 20 will be turned away at the door. A woman at 30 may find a younger woman has taken her seat; a man at 30 will have invited her. I think back to the women in the bathroom, my husband’s classmates. What was my relationship if not an inconvertible sign of this unfairness? What was I doing, in marrying older, if not endorsing it? I had taken advantage of their disadvantage. I had preempted my own. After all, principled women are meant to defy unfairness, to show some integrity or denial, not plan around it, like I had. These were driven women, successful, beautiful, capable. I merely possessed the one thing they had already lost. In getting ahead of the problem, had I pushed them down? If I hadn’t, would it really have made any difference?

When we decided we wanted to be equal to men, we got on men’s time. We worked when they worked, retired when they retired, had to squeeze pregnancy, children, menopause somewhere impossibly in the margins. I have a friend, in her late 20s, who wears a mood ring; these days it is often red, flickering in the air like a siren when she explains her predicament to me. She has raised her fair share of same-age boyfriends. She has put her head down, worked laboriously alongside them, too. At last she is beginning to reap the dividends, earning the income to finally enjoy herself. But it is now, exactly at this precipice of freedom and pleasure, that a time problem comes closing in. If she would like to have children before 35, she must begin her next profession, motherhood, rather soon, compromising inevitably her original one. The same-age partner, equally unsettled in his career, will take only the minimum time off, she guesses, or else pay some cost which will come back to bite her. Everything unfailingly does. If she freezes her eggs to buy time, the decision and its logistics will burden her singly — and perhaps it will not work. Overlay the years a woman is supposed to establish herself in her career and her fertility window and it’s a perfect, miserable circle. By midlife women report feeling invisible, undervalued; it is a telling cliché, that after all this, some husbands leave for a younger girl. So when is her time, exactly? For leisure, ease, liberty? There is no brand of feminism which achieved female rest. If women’s problem in the ’50s was a paralyzing malaise, now it is that they are too active, too capable, never permitted a vacation they didn’t plan. It’s not that our efforts to have it all were fated for failure. They simply weren’t imaginative enough.

For me, my relationship, with its age gap, has alleviated this rush , permitted me to massage the clock, shift its hands to my benefit. Very soon, we will decide to have children, and I don’t panic over last gasps of fun, because I took so many big breaths of it early: on the holidays of someone who had worked a decade longer than I had, in beautiful places when I was young and beautiful, a symmetry I recommend. If such a thing as maternal energy exists, mine was never depleted. I spent the last nearly seven years supported more than I support and I am still not as old as my husband was when he met me. When I have a child, I will expect more help from him than I would if he were younger, for what does professional tenure earn you if not the right to set more limits on work demands — or, if not, to secure some child care, at the very least? When I return to work after maternal upheaval, he will aid me, as he’s always had, with his ability to put himself aside, as younger men are rarely able.

Above all, the great gift of my marriage is flexibility. A chance to live my life before I become responsible for someone else’s — a lover’s, or a child’s. A chance to write. A chance at a destiny that doesn’t adhere rigidly to the routines and timelines of men, but lends itself instead to roomy accommodation, to the very fluidity Betty Friedan dreamed of in 1963 in The Feminine Mystique , but we’ve largely forgotten: some career or style of life that “permits year-to-year variation — a full-time paid job in one community, part-time in another, exercise of the professional skill in serious volunteer work or a period of study during pregnancy or early motherhood when a full-time job is not feasible.” Some things are just not feasible in our current structures. Somewhere along the way we stopped admitting that, and all we did was make women feel like personal failures. I dream of new structures, a world in which women have entry-level jobs in their 30s; alternate avenues for promotion; corporate ladders with balconies on which they can stand still, have a smoke, take a break, make a baby, enjoy themselves, before they keep climbing. Perhaps men long for this in their own way. Actually I am sure of that.

Once, when we first fell in love, I put my head in his lap on a long car ride; I remember his hands on my face, the sun, the twisting turns of a mountain road, surprising and not surprising us like our romance, and his voice, telling me that it was his biggest regret that I was so young, he feared he would lose me. Last week, we looked back at old photos and agreed we’d given each other our respective best years. Sometimes real equality is not so obvious, sometimes it takes turns, sometimes it takes almost a decade to reveal itself.

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