Feminist Perspective of John Steinbeck’s The Chrysanthemums Essay

A Feminist Perspective of magic Steinbecks The Chrysanthemums John Steinbeck, in his short study The Chrysanthemums depicts the trials of a woman attempting to gain world-beater in a mans world. enzyme-linked-immunosorbent serologic assay Allen tries to define the boundaries of her role as a woman in such a closed society. While her milieu is portrayed as a tool for social repression, it is finished genius in her garden where enzyme-linked-immunosorbent serologic assay gains and shows off her index finger. As the story progresses, Elisa has trouble extending this power outside of the shut in that surrounds her garden. In the end, Elisa learns tho does non readily accept, that she possesses a feminine power weak for the time, not the masculine one she had tried so hard to achieve through its imitation. The work begins with a look at the storys setting. The Chrysanthemums was written in 1938, and the story takes place roughly around the same time. It is winter in Salinas Va lley, California. The nigh prominent feature is the gray-flannel indistinctness which hid the valley from the rest of the world (396). The mountains and valleys and leaf and overcast encapsulate everything inside as a closed atomic pile (396). Inside this shut-off habitat the environment is trying to change. Just as the parenters atomic number 18 waiting for an unlikely rain, Elisa and all women are hopeful for a change in their enclosed lives. Steinbecks foreshadows, It was a time of noneffervescent and waiting (396). The action of the story opens with Elisa Allen working in her garden. She is meet by a wire 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 adaptation of the environment in which they live. This mans... ...mean she couldnt still be strong. The peddlers business of selling his overhaul of fixing pots closes wome n out of his world just as natural fog closes of the valley. Although we hope her tears can be compared to the pruning she does to her precious chrysanthemums, snippet them backed for future and stronger growth, Steinbeck leaves the reader questioning the future for women. Elisas tears leave 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 dominate 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. sixth ed. New York Harper Collins, 1995.