The Chrysanthemums is the work by John Steinbeck who is an American author of twenty-seven books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books, and five collections of short stories. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939), East of Eden (1952) and the novella Of Mice and Men (1937). Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962 "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception". In his work, he wrote about poor and sad people, and he also showed his sympathy for these people whose life is in low level.
The Chrysanthemums is a short story from his collection The Long Valley first published in 1938. It was set in John Steinbeck’s hometown, the Salina’s valley in California. It is a story about a poor woman called Elisa Allen who was suppressed by the life for a long time. Elisa Allen and her husband Henry live peacefully on their farm. When Elisa is busy with her chrysanthemums in the garden, a tinker passes by and asks for work .She refused directly. Later when the man enquires about her chrysanthemums and asks for some “seeds” to bring to“a lady”, Elisa gets emotional and finds him two pots to mend. The tinker drives away with fifty cents and the cuttings. When riding on the road with her husband, Elisa sees the chrysanthemum shoots she sent to the "lady" thrown on the road. She is dismayed and cries sadly.
And the main characters in the novel are concluded as following.
Elisa Allen
A passionate woman who leads an unsatisfying life. As a result, she devotes all of her energy to maintaining her house and garden. Elisa is so frustrated with life that she readily looks for stimulating conversation and even sex.
The Tinker
He is clever and canny enough to convince the skeptical Elisa to give him work, begging at first and finally resorting to flattery. In fact, he is just a con man.
Henry Allen
Elisa’s husband, Henry, is everything a woman should want in a husband by the standards of his society. He provides for her, treats her with respect. However, Henry is also stolid and unimaginative. Henry functions in the story as a stand-in for patriarchal society as a whole. He believes that a strict line separates the sexes.
And the theme of this passage is the critique of the society for there is no place for intelligent women to realize their values. Elisa is smart and energetic, but she is limited by her sex. By the contrast, her husband, Henry is not smart as her, but he runs the ranch to support the family. Steinbeck uses Henry and the tinker as stand-ins for the paternalism of patriarchal societies in general: just as they ignore women’s potential, so too does society. It is an inequality of gender.
Besides, John Steinbeck uses many symbols in this passage.
1. At the beginning, the Salinas Valley symbolizes Elisa’s emotional life. The story opens with a lengthy description of the valley. The valley was closed of the high-flannel gray fog of winter. This symbolized that Elisa’s life was suppressed buy the in equality of the gender. She can not realize her intelligence just like the valley can not show its beauty because of the annoyed high-flannel gray fog of winter.
2. The chrysanthemums symbolize both Elisa and the limited scope of her life. The chrysanthemums are beautiful, strong, and thriving, like Elisa Allen. Elisa identifies herself with the flowers, even saying that she becomes one with the plants when she tends to them. She offers the chrysanthemums to thinker at the same time she offers herself, both of which he ignores and tosses aside Just like her, the flowers are unimportant: both are merely decorative and add little value to the world.
3. Fences symbolize the barriers that separate Elisa from the rest of the world, including her husband Henry. Her fences protect flower garden from cattle, dogs, and chickens which represent her husband’s world while her flower garden represents Elisa’s world.
4. Elisa’s clothing changes as her handsome, masculine persona becomes more feminine after the visit from the tinker. When the story begins, Elisa is wearing a gardening outfit, complete with heavy shoes, thick gloves, a man’s hat, and an apron filled with sharp implements. The narrator even describes her body as “blocked and heavy.” At the later passage, after Elisa changes her cloth, feminine items contrast sharply with her gardening clothes and reflect the newly Elisa. At the end of the story, after Elisa has seen the castoff shoots, she pulls up her coat collar to hide her tears, a gesture that suggests a move backward into the repressed state in which she has lived most, if not all, of her adult life.
5. Elisa lets the tinker into the yard; she goes and gets a bright red flower pot. The red is important here because red is the symbol of power and passion. At this point in the story, Elisa is beginning to feel her own power. She is realizing she can bring forth life in her flowers, even if she is not powerful in other aspects of her life. Also, since the encounter with the tinker is likened to a sexual experience, the red flower pot is significant of their passion. The pot is symbolic of her self and her feelings.
This passage uses the third person point of view to tell the story clearly and not limited by the time, place or characters.
As for me, I think the passage encouraged all intelligent woman to realize their values and critic the social limitation for the women.
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