“The Chrysanthemums” by John Steinbeck
“The Chrysanthemums” is an interesting story about a woman named Elisa Allen who seems frustrated about life. She feels unappreciated and trapped. This is a woman who feels pride in the flowers that she grows in her garden. Not only that, but it seems as if the Chrysanthemums are a part of her, like she finds part of her identity in them.
Her husband doesn’t appreciate her flowers and asks her to apply her hard work and dedication to something that actually matters. This alone shows us a glimpse into their relationship. The husband is the business man, the one who provides for his wife. We have seen (in the other stories we have read) the idea of a man not understanding his wife. Here he offends her because he belittles the work and care she devotes to her beautiful flowers.
So when this tinker comes along, she thinks he is genuinely interested in her flowers and her. She even flirts with him a bit.
I kind of see her flowers as a symbol for what she wants to be. She grows her flowers with precision and understanding. We can see that in the way she tries to explain to the tinker how to pluck off the flower buds. She understands what to do and its a sort of feeling by which she can so it. Her understanding of her flowers reflects the understanding she wants people, perhaps particularly her husband, to have towards her. I felt like the flower she sent with the tinker symbolized some sort of freedom for her. She talks about how the tinker was lucky because he would go out and travel and live like he does. Perhaps she wanted a part of her (her flower) to go as well. This is why she was so crushed to have later seen that the man had dumped the flower on the side of the road and kept the pot it had been in. With this, we see her revert to her previous state.
In this way, the flourishing of the flowers that she grows is ironic because she is not able to bloom and thrive as well as the chrysanthemums do.
P.S. Women read into things too much…
Literature! 