Eliza in The Chrysanthemums Essay

The Chrysanthemums

John Steinbecks "The chrysanthemums" is a short story, which portrays the fixed lifestyle of a family in the mid twentieth century, when women were deprived of many opportunities and their established roll in society was to care for children and the household.

The main character is Eliza Allen, a woman who lives with her husband in a ranch, which she manages with great agility and eagerness. We first meet her as she works out in her garden and watches as her husband converses with two businessmen. However, it isn't until after her husband leaves and a stranger pulls up in a caravan to ask her for work and directions that we're given a much greater insight into her thoughts and feelings. Initially, she remains aloof and resistant as he implores for her to grant him some work in his specialty, which is fixing pots, knives and scissors. But the man, noticing the flowers and becoming aware of her discomfort, strives to get her attention through what he later finds is her greatest passion, the chrysanthemums, which he describes to her amazement as being kind of a long-stem flower, a quick puff of colored smoke (419). Furthermore, he claims to have a friend whos in want of those same plants and asks if he can take a few for her. Shes instantly delighted to see him take interest in them, not realizing that his purpose is only to obtain his means of survival. Nevertheless, it isnt until she goes out to dinner with her husband that same night that the disappointment rises in her as she sees a dark spec out in the distance, the flowers that bring her to the awareness of the mans intentions (421). Eliza is a woman for whom lifes real meaning lies in privileges only permitted to men, whose yearning for a different life is embodied in her passion for the chrysanthemums, and whose search for a likeness and understanding of her thoughts and feelings only exposes her to the unpleasant aspects of life of which she has been secluded.

Eliza is far more advanced in her manner than most women of her time. However, because she is unable to attain the much-desired lack of restrictions that men enjoy, she lives a life filled with anxiety and impatience. Her only choice is to imagine herself taking pleasure in the strangers nice kind of way to live (420). Even so, she is very quick to keep herself from intermingling reality with imagination by exclaiming, Ive never lived as you do, but I know what you mean (422). She also expresses a need to be accepted as a woman possessing characteristics more commonly expected in men by challenging his performance in repairing pots and scissors when she says, I could show you what a woman might do (423).

One of Elizas greatest devotions is tending to her garden of chrysanthemums, which unfailingly bloom every year in a beautiful variety of colors and sizes. She shares a particular closeness with them, a certain characteristic of herself of which shes proud and which her husband discerns effortlessly. We notice at the beginning of the story that he observes her with much interest and comments on how shes got a strong new crop coming (419). Subsequently, as she prepares to go out for dinner, he once again mentions, this time referring to her, how different, strong and happy she looked (422). Presently, when she notices the plants lying on the road and she turns her eyes away toward her husband instead, he once again complains that she has changed again. Another instance in which we see the resemblance in the flowers and Eliza is when the stranger in the caravan appears and requests of her some of the flowers to take to his friend across the street. She becomes extremely happy. Taking her hat off and letting her hair down, she arranges the flowers and explains to him how to tell her to take care of them. Theres a longing in Eliza that only caring for the chrysanthemums can satisfy, as shes deprived of the diversity and enriched life that her energy has transferred to them. She feels that through giving them away, shes also setting free a part of herself so that her beauty and liveliness is dispersed with them. After the man leaves, taking the chrysanthemums with him, she makes an unusual attempt to dress prettier to go out for dinner with her husband.

Although Eliza lacks none of the essential factors of a reasonably enjoyable existence, she feels in want of a kind of understanding that her husband is seemingly unable to provide. She therefore seizes the chance of having the complete attention of the stranger in the wagon to seek desperately for a mutual sense of awareness only to find that she has been deceived, and that she has lead herself to be cheated and disappointed. At first, when she makes a frenzied attempt to explain to him the way it feels to have her fingers pick the unwanted buds from the plants, she believes him to understand her deepest emotions. But as she rides beside her husband and spots them along the road, she is completely disheartened by the realization that he kept the pot. He had to keep the pot. Thats why he couldnt get them off the road (423). She could only turn up her coat collar to keep her husband from noticing that she was crying.

Eliza Allen represents the struggles of a restrained life, of an imprisoned soul who seeks a different path to life and is ultimately shattered by the wickedness she discovers instead. She like many others, in seeking satisfaction, is only faced with stunning truths that may be found difficult to accept.