Elisa Allen: The Chrysanthemums Elisa Allen is a smart, attractive, and ambitious woman whose talent goes unnoticed and lives in a society that does not allow women to have professional careers in John Steinbeck’s The Chrysanthemums. Elisa longed for her husband’s approval when it came to her talent with planting flowers. She desperately wanted to work in the business of the ranch and her offers of helping her husband were brushed off. Elisa’s husband is not as smart, but he makes all of the business decisions and runs the ranch while Elisa watches from afar. Elisa is unsatisfied with life and came in contact with a man who showed up on the ranch who she found appealing to talk to and quite flirtatious which is the kind of interaction she
The chrysanthemums themselves are a symbol for Elisa. They’re strong, beautiful, and confined. I say confined because just like the flower box the chrysanthemums are forced to live in, Elisa only knows the ranch. There are no near neighbors or houses in the distance just thick fog surrounding the ranch. She even says that whens taking care of the flowers she becomes one with them.
The red dress depicts a feeling of passion. The little girl is adorned in pink, a color between the red and white, because she is still innocent and pure but age causes her to be infatuated with shiny things such as the woman’s gold and shiny pieces. She is too young to develop a wisdom that has value beyond material possessions. Cornelia and her children were historical Roman figures. She was a widow who lived to train and educate her children and was thought very highly of as a wise noble matron.
Or, as Leroy Thomas argues, is she a "Sexually frustrated woman" whose release comes only from gardening? Are the chrysanthemums "a substitute for children," which the Allens are apparently without, as suggested by Mordecai Marcus? Finally, is Henry "Rendered effectively sterile" by a wife who "Secures herself within a fortress of sexual reticence and self-withholding," as indicated by Stanley Renner? These kind of mysterious questions grow out of a more deeply rooted dysfunction between Henry and Elisa a lack of real communication. When Henry approaches Elisa's garden and comments on her impressive crop of chrysanthemums, his business sensibilities cause him to wish out loud that Elisa would raise a cash crop of apples equally impressive.
Elisa is similar in the way she enjoys her routine. She is a 35 year old wife living on a farm in the Salinas Valley of California and growing chrysanthemums. A proof of how simple and boring her life seems is her reaction when her husband asks her if she would like to go to town for dinner and a movie. ‘’She said she would like to go to town with him like she really didn’t get to spend much time with him’’. They seem to be psychologically stable but in reality unsatisfied with their occupations.
In the poem In The Park, the woman pretends to someone that her little bundles-of-joy are just that, angelic children. As he walks away however, she confesses to nobody that ‘they have eaten me alive.’ This expression demonstrates the feeling of being alone and ignored. The mother in Suburban Sonnet expresses her anxiety in trying to achieve with small children. The mother is overwhelmed by how much she has to do – cook dinner, clean up after her children, keep them entertained and comfort them, presenting the views of many mothers. The language Gwen Harwood uses in these poems emphasises the feeling of drained energy and failure in other aspects of their lives (for example fugue playing).
Walker and Williams both use indirect characterization to show how Celie and Blanche grow as people throughout the works. For example, at the beginning of The Color Purple, Celie is an obedient girl who doesn’t know how to stand up for herself, especially when it comes to her husband, Albert. By the end of the novel, Celie stands up for
Recognition Ruined In The Road Henry’s wife, Elisa was intelligent and passionate about her gardening and having the well known qualities of being a woman and wife, although she lived a unsatisfying and under stimulated life, in which her husband didn’t know of. Elissa was talented and was longing for people to recognize her and what she experts in. In the story “The Chrysanthemums” by John Steinbeck Elisa doesn’t have a professional career, no children to take care of, and even though she is interested in her husband’s business on the ranch he’s is not fully conscious of that. Elisa’s wish to travel the world and to work on the farm with Henry is implied, but it is expressed to be a unfit desire for a woman. Elisa puts all her energy and time into perfecting the chrysanthemum garden and her house working skills, even though she would rather be doing more exciting things.
Steinback’s The Chrysanthemums Elisa is a lonely woman who fills the void in her life by spending her time growing and taking care of her chrysanthemums. Her husband is a working man who pays her very little attention. In this time period, women were looked upon as being the weaker sex while the men were the dominant ones. Elisa, stereotypically, is a housewife who tends to her house and husband as she is expected to. In this story Elisa, is a woman who so desperately wants to gain some sort of power in a man’s world.
This description can be used to symbolize Elisa’s lonely and isolated feelings. She is 35, married without children, and the “closed pot” can be interpreted as unhappiness. Elisa is not given much of a chance to be taken seriously. An example of this is during a conversation she has with her husband Henry about her flowers, where Henry tells her “I wish you would work out in the orchards and raise some apples”. Elisa perks up for a moment and makes a suggestion that she could accomplish working out in the orchards, only to have Henry shut her down by saying “well it sure works with the flowers”.