Revision - Literary Analysis

In the short story "The Chrysanthemums" by John Steinbeck, the author uses the flowers in a garden to suggest a person being forced to keep their beauty hidden from the outside world. The main character Elisa has a garden that is full of beautiful Chrysanthemum flowers that are surrounded by a fence suggesting that Elisa's feminine beauty is caged in by the things around her such as her husband and his commitment to work. This characterizes a woman's struggle of letting her feminine side shine without it getting in the way of her other parts of her life.
Elisa is shown hiding her womanly features when the author introduces her as resembling a man. She has a face that is "lean and strong [and also a] figure [that] looked blocked and heavy." (240) She also "wore heavy leather gloves to protect her hands while she worked." (240) This symbolizes how Elisa is successfully covering up the most womanly features such as her figure hand and hair.
The person that brings Elisa to cover up her beauty is her husband who signifies the strict values around a woman's lifestyle. Her husband sees Elisa's flowers that she worked so hard to grow and sees no beauty in them, but a waste of their time and thinks that she should be doing something more productive for their farm and their prosperity. This shows how her husband pays no attention to the beauty that Elisa presents inside and out but is more focused on what work needs to be done on their farm so their needs can be met. Her husband also puts a cage around Elisa's garden to keep the outside from seeing these flowers which signify Elisa's beauty being kept from anyone to see and value. This all can also be seen as the society's view on beautiful things as unnessecary and distracting to the outside world.

When a stranger makes his way to the farm, Elisa is instantly intrigued by his dark eyes and "calloused hands [that] he rested on the wire fence." (242) By putting his hands on the fence of Elisa's garden, the stranger is seeing into Elisa's beauty that she kept hidden from the outside world for so long. This stranger shows interst in Elisa's Chrysanthemums, which excites her and she runs "excitedly among the geranium-bordered path to the back of the house. and she [returns] carrying a big red flower pot. the gloves [that she put on for her husband] were now forgotten." (240) which Steinbeck uses to symbolize that Elisa is finally uncovering her femininty to a stranger. This excitement of the stranger brings out Elisa's beauty and helps her be able to see herself in the mirror as what she is - a beautiful woman. She exudes her beauty when she takes care of herself and puts on "her newest under-clothing and her nicest stockings and the dress which was the symbol of her prettiness." (246) Her husband seems to notice elisas beauty by only her outside appearance when she is dressed up.
Steinbeck shows the temporary nature of this excitement when Elisa is on the way to dinner with her husband when she sees a "dark speck" (246) which she knows is her flowers. Elisa realizes that this stranger really did noy want her flowers and did not care about their beauty as much as she was led to believe. The act of this stranger symbolizes an act of vampirism where the stranger sucks the life, which is the flowers, out of Elisa. Elisa then turns away from her husband, who has also exhausted the beauty out of her and cries "weakly- like an old woman" (247) which symbolizes the beauty of Elisa being taken away once again.
Steinbeck uses the flowers to symbolize her womanly beauty and how the outside world can sometimes not completely comprehend the beauty of a woman and see it as something that should be covered up. The flowers were ignored by Elisa's husband and taken advantage of by the stranger which helps with the storys whole theme of the struggle of a woman's place in society and the struggle to fit femininity in.