John Steinbeck’s short story “The Chrysanthemums” depicts a very significant event in the life of Elisa Allen, a woman living with her husband in the Salinas Valley, residing in a “neat white farm house with red geraniums close-banked around it as high as the windows. It was a hard-swept looking little house with hard-polished windows, and a clean mud-mat on the front steps.” (Steinbeck 1269) The description of the house only emphasizes the obvious fact that Elisa lives in a world in which she feels trapped and her escape is made impossible by “the high-flannel fog of winter [that] closed off the Salinas Valley from the sky and from all the rest of the world. On every side is sat like a lid on the mountains and made of the great valley a closed pot.” (1269) The fog described by Steinbeck in this story represents the domination of the male gender in society, a “society [in which] the female gender of the species are not given the chance to develop their potentials to the fullest” (Lessy) and in which “they have been oppressed, [and] subordinated.” (Lessy) Steinbeck’s “The Chrysanthemums’” fight of a woman to be her own person and find a significant role in a male-dominated society has parallels in both Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” and William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”.
Chopin’s and Steinbeck’s stories have parallels from the very beginning, as seen by the respective husbands in the stories. Both husbands are to an extend responsible (maybe more so in Brently’s case) for the entrapment of their wives in a world in which the women feel powerless, tense, and unable to find an outlet for all their frustration. In “The Story of an Hour”, Brently’s domination over Louise results from her heart trouble. Brently’s “kind, tender hands [and] face that had never save with love looked upon her” (Chopin 327) deemed it necessary to keep her indoors and under constant vigilance in order to assure that her condition was under control. “A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less of a crime” (327) to her, she wanted to be “free, free, free!” (327) Yet, even though the husband is a loving person trying to the best of his abilities to make her happy, she is not able to achieve her independence, her significant role as long as he is around. As long as he is present (and therefore his domination) there will be his “powerful will bending her in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature” (327) and she would never move from the winter days to the “spring days and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own.” (327) Similarly, in “The Chrysanthemums” Henry is a caring husband that “refers with simple pleasure to the size of her chrysanthemums” ( Swisher 30) and goes as far as wishing that she would “work out in the orchard and raise some apples that big.” (Steinbeck 1270) It is apparent by Henry’s behavior that he is not directly dominating Elisa, but rather Elisa’s futile efforts to escape the geological trap of the Salinas Valley are the ones dominating her and to an extend distancing her from her husband and the opportunity to escape with him, even if its only once in a while. Elisa sees the chrysanthemums as an extension of herself, that’s why when the traveler presented to her the opportunity to transplant the chrysanthemums to another garden, outside of Salinas Valley, “Elisa’s eyes grew alert and eager.” (1272) If the chrysanthemums were able to escape the “grey-flannel fog,” (1269) she might also be able to achieve it some day. It is again at the end of the stories that both show the harshest ending to the difficulty of a woman in a man’s world, death. The death of both women’s dreams and aspiration of freedom, and self-realization occurs.
William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” portrays a much more evident male domination as seen by the image of “Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horse whip,” (Faulkner 486) keeping the men away from her, protecting her, making her miserable. Faulkner’s story shows more parallels with Steinbeck’s ones Emily’s father dies, since once this happens the domination over Emily ceases to be done by an individual person and becomes a thing of her surrounding environment as is the case with Elisa. In Steinbeck’s story the force keeping the woman dominated is “the high grey-flannel fog” (Steinbeck 1269) which closes Elisa from “all the rest of the world.” (1269) Whereas, in Faulkner’s story the people of the town take on the same functions as that of the fog. The two stories also parallel each other in the sense that the women in both stories choose to be subjugated to the pain and suffering they receive by staying under the control of their respective dominating factors. In Emily’s case, she knows the townspeople will go as far as breaking “open the cellar door and sprinkling lime there, and in the outbuildings” (Faulkner 486) before admitting to her that they have detected the repulsive smell emitted by her house. She uses this knowledge in order to keep Homer Barron’s dead body in her house as reminder and self-inflicted punishment for what she had done. Elisa also suffers from self-induced restrictions, but not as a way of punishing herself but rather making herself look like the victim. The reader is made well aware the Elisa is full of energy and that “the chrysanthemums stems seemed too small and easy for her energy,” (Steinbeck 1269) but she is the only one restricting herself. In fact, her husband even proposes the idea of her “work[ing] out in the orchard,” (1270) and it is him that seems the most eager to go out to a restaurant. Both women have achieved what they really want.
To conclude, both Faulkner’s and Chopin’s stories share parallels with Steinbeck’s “delicate, indirect handling of a woman’s emotions…[especially] the difficulty of a woman in finding a creative significant role in a male-dominated society,” (Benson 1268) from the factors and people that dominated them, to the way these factors and people affect them as women, to the ways in which they decide to embrace the situation.
Works Cited
Charles, Ann. The Story and it’s Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction. Ed. Ann Charters. 6th
ed. Boston: Bedford, 2003.
---. “John Steinbeck.” Charters 1268
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” Charters 326-328.
Faulkner, William. “A Rose for Emily.” Charters 484-490.
Lessy, Dmitri Tobias. “Promise of a New Day: The Female in a Male-Dominated Society” http://www.vibrani.com/female.htm, 29 November 2005
Steinbeck, John. “The Chrysanthemums.” Charters 1269-1276.
Swisher, Clarice. Reading on John Steinbeck. Ed. Clarice Swisher. San Diego, 1996.
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