Literature Review On Elisa’s Unhappiness Is Steinbeck’s “The Chrysanthemums”

“The Chrysanthemums” is a tale of women entrapment and the undermining of an individual because of their gender. Elisa is unhappy, distraught and conflicted by the events of the day. Her one source of pride, the chrysanthemums project is not taken seriously. She is surrounded by men who deliberately ignore the kind of work she does.
The main source of neglect and abandonment is her husband. From the beginning, it seems like he does his husband duties very well because he promises to take his wife to dinner and at times shows concern about her well-being. He however, dismisses her flower project and tells her he wishes she could expend the energy towards growing oranges or something else. This makes Elisa more sad and agitated. Henry is unable to figure out that the smug replies from Elisa are a way for her to communicate her displeasure at being reduced to a flower planter.
The sign that her effort at becoming strong and being taken seriously is futile is the fact that she is the only person that grows chrysanthemums. The tinker even tells her that he knew of a lady who planted flowers but she did not plant chrysanthemums. This shows that even with the little that she tries to do on the farm, it counts to nothing. No one grows this type of flower around. When she inquires about the visiting two men, Henry only manages to get her involved by letting her know that he wanted to take her to Salinas for dinner.
One thing that made Elisa unhappy with her husband was the teasing he made about the fight. His suggestion and reasoning is that as a woman, she wouldn't like fights. As a woman she is expected not have interests in fights but at the end it becomes clear that she does read fight magazines. Elisa wishes for the rumble and tumble but people think she is a woman hence feeble and weak.
It is apparent that the people around her are the source of unhappiness from the tinker to the two visiting men and her husband. The tinker presents a sign of hope and adventure. At first she is not thrilled when he says her flowers “looks like a quick puff of colored smoke” (Steinbeck 4). She replies and says “what a nice way to describe them” (Steinbeck 4). The man doubles down on how bad her flowers were by calling them nasty. He works his way with words until he expresses his not so sincere wish to get seeds for the flowers. This convinces her to give the man a job and flowers to give to his customer. This however does not stop the tinker from mocking her effort which includes telling her that the adventurous life like his was “not the right kind of life for a woman” (Steinbeck 5). She suggests that she can sharpen scissors and beat the dents in pots too but the tinker does not believe her. She knows he thinks of her as just a flower lady. She even tells the man that “I could show you what a woman can do” (Steinbeck 5).
The breaking point in Elisa’s constant fight for approval from a cold and indifferent world is the discovery that the tinker had thrown away her flowers and Henry makes it worse by mocking her when she said that she was strong. Elisa’s only way of escape is wine. She hopes that the wine would take away the coldness she had suffered at the hands of her husband, the two men and the tinker. In this part of the world being a woman means just being a flower and Elisa does not wish to be one.