John Steinbeck's The Chrysanthemums was published in the late 1930s, "when some critics consider his greatest works were published aincluding Tortilla Flat (1935), Of Mice and Men (1937), The Red Pony (1937), and The Grapes of Wrath (1939)" (http://www.hrc.utexas.edu). The story is about Elisa, a farm wife who is sexually frustrated, lonely, and in need of validation as both a woman and a human being.
The first sentence - "The high grey-flannel fog of winter closed off the Salinas Valley from the sky and from all the rest of the world" -- evokes a suffocating sense of isolation (1). When we meet her she is working in her flower garden. "Her figure looked blocked and heavy in her gardening costume, a man's black hat pulled low down over her eyes, clod-hopper shoes, a figured print dress almost completely covered by a big corduroy apron " (1). Her femininity is submerged by the hard physical labor of the farm, this passage tells us. "Her work with the scissors was over-eager, over-powerful" (2), Steinbeck writes, indicating she is filled with passion that has no other outlet. She keeps glancing at the men, indicating both a break from her boredom as well as perhaps sexual interest.
When her husband compliments her on her green thumb, she echoes his compliment with "a little smugness", suggesting that her gardening is one of her few sources of self-esteem (2).
Her provocative response to the intinerant fix-it man's comment about his dog being a good fighter is flirtatious and funny. She relates to him the instant he appears. She primps her hair for him. She immediately brightens up when he makes her feel valuable by suggesting she give him some mums for a lady up the road. "She tore off her hat and shook out her dark pretty hair" (5)and "ran excitedly" to get a flower pot.
As she kneels down to get the flowers "the man stood over her" (5). This is a display of feminine submission and masculine domination. The phrases "Her ...