Feminist Perspective of John Steinbeck’s The Chrysanthemums Essay

A libber Perspective of John Steinbecks The Chrysanthemums John Steinbeck, in his short accounting The Chrysanthemums depicts the trials of a woman attempting to gain power in a mans beingness. enzyme-linked-immunosorbent serologic assay Allen tries to define the boundaries of her role as a woman in much(prenominal) a closed society. While her environment is portrayed as a tool for social repression, it is through nature in her garden where enzyme-linked-immunosorbent serologic assay gains and shows off her power. As the point progresses, enzyme-linked-immunosorbent serologic assay has trouble extending this power impertinent of the fence that surrounds her garden. In the end, Elisa learns just does non readily accept, that she possesses a feminine power weak for the time, not the masculine one she had try so hard to achieve through its imitation. The work begins with a note at the storys setting. The Chrysanthemums was written in 1938, and the story takes place roughly almost the same time. It is winter in Salinas Valley, California. The most prominent feature is the gray-flannel overcast which hid the vale from the rest of the world (396). The mountains and valleys and sky and fog encapsulate everything intimate as a closed pot (396). Inside this shut-off habitat the environment is trying to change. Just as the farmers are waiting for an unlikely rain, Elisa and all women are hopeful for a change in their cover lives. Steinbecks foreshadows, It was a time of quiet and waiting (396). The action of the story opens with Elisa Allen working in her garden. She is surrounded by a fit fence, which physically is there to protect her flowers from the farm animals. This barrier symbolizes her life she is fenced in from the real world, from a mans world. It is a smaller, on-earth version of the environment in which they live. This mans... ...mean she couldnt unagitated be strong. The peddlers business of selling his service of fixing pots closes wom en out of his world just as natural fog closes of the valley. Although we hope her tears foundation be compared to the pruning she does to her precious chrysanthemums, clipping them backed for future and stronger growth, Steinbeck leaves the lector questioning the future for women. Elisas tears will not rid the valley of the fog, for as Steinbeck tells us in the beginning, fog and rain do not go together (396). While Elisa will continue to surmount her immediate surrounding inside the fence using her power from nature, but she will not gain power outside of it, in a mans world. Work CitedSteinbeck, John. The Chrysanthemums. Literature An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 6th ed. New York Harper Collins, 1995.