The Chrysanthemums Masculinity

The 1930’s were a particularly tumultuous time - the Great Depression took full effect after beginning in 1929, and women became more active in advocating and fighting for their rights after winning the right to vote. It was during this period that John Steinbeck wrote his famous novel The Chrysanthemums, which addresses the social issues unique to this pivotal point in history. The story focuses on Elisa, a woman who uses her “green thumb” to grow impressive chrysanthemum flowers. Steinbeck focuses on her bleak existence in an oppressive male environment, exemplified through her husband and a traveling tinker. It is clear that before Elisa’s interaction with the traveling man, she is a proud, strong, and a subtly masculine character who takes …show more content…
In the beginning, she was depicted as subtly masculine; this masculinity influenced Elisa to be highly confident and proud of herself and her abilities, also showing Elisa to be a woman who is strong and capable. She is strong, and therefore is uninterested in going to a place and seeing people who are weak get injured, as they are below her and her strength. She feels above the weak, fragile, defeated men, and thus she does not want to see them fight. On the other hand, after her interaction with the tinker, and her subsequent realization that she is inferior to men, Elisa asks her husband about the fights and seems to want to attend them. She has been broken beyond repair, symbolized by her reversion to her feminine side, and clearly shows interest in the fights now because she wants to be around other people who are broken. Elisa notes to her husband that “...they break noses, and blood runs down their chest,” at the fights; her interest in seeing those injured people signifies her desire to be around people she can sympathize with over being broken (7). Her husband does not show her sympathy, so she looks to the fights with broken men as a place where she can empathize with others. But after this, Elisa realizes that nothing can change her life, and that it will always be uneventful, and she will always be suppressed by men. With this in mind, she gives up on trying to defy the expectation of her as a woman, and asks her husband simply to drink wine at dinner, as it will be enough to make her happy, since nothing else in her life ever

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