“What Can Flowers Tell About
A Woman”


In the I938 short story “Chrysanthemums”, the writer, John Steinbeck, demonstrates the subtle symbol that signifies a great deal towards the character, and their role in the story. Steinbeck focuses on the protagonist, Mrs. Elisa Allen, a regular housewife in the mature age of 35, who is seen tending the budding chrysanthemums. Through this context, Steinbeck sets up the characterization of Mrs. Elisa Allen as a woman with masculine features but a dim, feminine demeanor to her person. The author illustrates Mrs. Allen tending to her chrysanthemums as a base to set up the main symbol to the story. The flowers would describe Mrs. Allen’s youth, the beauty that she has. In addition, Steinbeck sets up the setting to be in the winter; which represents a period of the knowledge of maturity as well as death and old age. Through this, the author uses the season as a symbol to connect to the flowers to indicate conflict between the two meanings: the desperate maintenance of youth during realization of death. The author uses this narrative to suggest the symbol of the story is the chrysanthemums; though Steinbeck illustrated them to be the symbol of youth, he also defines the inevitable loss of youth and ultimately death.

Steinbeck opens the story with the description of the Salinas Valley as the depiction of winter. He displays death and it’s presence in the setting throughout the valley. Steinbeck symbolizes the setting to emphasize the presence of death when he describes the landscape: “It was a time and quiet and of waiting. The air was cold and tender. A light wind blew from the southwest so that the farmers were mildly hopeful of a good before long, but fog and rain do not go together (p.240)” he summarizes the air of the valley to be languid and cold. One suspects that the description proposes that the air embodies death through such adjectives like light, cold, tender and quiet. Steinbeck uses these adjectives to defend the symbol of winter and define death through old age. The setting and those who live in it are not excused from this, especially Mrs. Allen, which has Steinback then use this symbol to its real purpose.

Steinbeck then puts his focus to Mrs. Allen and the story then takes meaning and is expand on from the season’s symbol. The author illustrates Mrs. Allen to be tending to the growth of her flowers in the winter. From the start, the symbol of the flowers in the same picture as the cold and quiet valley conflicts from the dichotomy of flowers being grown during the time of death. Steinbeck intentionally places these two symbols together to show how one defies the other. The author illustrates the blooming flowers growing in the cold and tender winter as a struggle between preservation and decay, life and death as well as youth and old age. Through this, he accomplishes the intentions of Mrs. Allen and why she takes care of the chrysanthemums. He demonstrates the desperation Mrs. Allen has for her life as well as the flowers. Through this, he reveals the symbols at their literary connotations as well as the purpose and inner thoughts of Mrs. Allen. Steinbeck illustrates the chrysanthemums to personify Mrs. Allen as a sol that struggles to ward off the signs of aging and death, while being surrounded by it.

Later in the novel, after she has been acquainted with the salesman on p.243-245, she had given him one of her flowers in a pot. Later, on p.246, she then sees her flowers on he ground by where the salesman was and the pot missing: “He might have thrown them off the road, that wouldn’t have been much trouble, not very much. But he kept the pot …(p.246) In this passage, Steinbeck then illustrates the conclusion of her flower being left, being forgotten by the salesman’s subtle act of disregard for the feeling of the protagonist. Through the context, Steinbeck has the reader interpret what the flower on the ground meant to her and has the reader go back to the author’s connotation of the flower to conclude that: Mrs. Allen’s gift of her flower to a stranger to then be discarded. Through this, it shows Mrs. Allen ‘s efforts to ward off death and old age are in vain and that she has came to realize her mortality.