Candy’s face had grown redder and redder, but before she was done speaking, he had control of himself. He was the master of the situation. “I might of knew,” he said gently. “Maybe you just better go along an’ roll your hoop. We ain’t got nothing to say to you at all. We know what we got, and we don’t care whether you know it or not.”
– John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men, Chapter 4. Candy to Curley’s wife, who enters the stable buck’s room looking for Curley. Candy looks upon Curley’s wife as inferior to him because she is a woman, and a young woman at that. He feels he can tell her what to do. Lonely and flirtatious, she is discriminated against by the men, who are contemptuous of her and won’t engage in conversation with her for fear of being fired.