The Short Story: the Chrysanthemums

The Short Story: the Chrysanthemums

In the short story “The Chrysanthemums,” John Steinbeck structures the meaning of the story through symbols, so that their combined effect is to understand Elisa Allen as a woman who is unhappy and frustrated, unappreciated as a sexual being by her husband, and losing awareness of her own self worth. The wire fence, which protects her flowers and, her husband’s farm in the Salinas Valley, where she lives, is described as isolating, just as Elisa feels isolated. The scissors are a phallic symbol in the narrative.  Elisa's association with the scissors helps illustrate how power works between men and women within the arc of the story. She wears “heavy leather gloves” because she is no longer understood as a sensual person, now digging in the earth and growing flowers as a way to express a femininity otherwise lost (Steinbeck 148).
When we first meet Elisa, she is described as both "lean and strong" and "blocked and heavy" (148).  In the lines that follow, the scissors she uses are described as "short and powerful," a description which is similar both to Elisa's figure (148).  Elisa's physicality appears male; she is not described with the curves of a woman, but rather the square figure of a man.  Her use of the phallic scissors increases the association.  She even wears men's clothing while she gardens.  The garden is where she is most powerful.  The fertile garden is a symbolic womb, and yielding the symbolic phallus means that Elisa is both man and woman in this world; she doesn't have to wait for a man to help her, she can do it on her own.
The scissors continue to be a source of power in Elisa's encounters with the traveling repairman.  He offers to sharpen her scissors, which feels sexual in nature and, she assures him that she can sharpen her own scissors.  Finally, Elisa allows him to fix the hole in her pot, another seemingly sexual situation; although it is made very clear that this is out of pity, not out of necessity.  Her charged interactions with...

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