The Chrysanthemums: Summary & Analysis

Beginning

Elisa tends her chrysanthemum bed while her husband Henry talks cattle business with men across the yard. She is strong and energetic in her garden, wearing heavy gloves and a man's hat. The chrysanthemums are magnificent — she has a gift for growing things. Henry compliments the flowers; she brushes this off as easy. She would like to go to the cattle fights in town; Henry says women don't go to cattle fights.

Rising action

A tinker's wagon stops at the gate. The tinker is rough and confident, looking for work — pots to mend. Elisa at first says she has nothing. The tinker notices her chrysanthemums and asks about them with what seems like genuine interest. He says he knows a woman along his route who has been asking for the kind of chrysanthemum shoots Elisa grows. Elisa is transformed: she becomes animated, kneeling in the dirt, explaining her method with intensity. She packs a pot with shoots for the unknown woman and finds him a pot to mend.

Ending

After the tinker leaves, Elisa showers and dresses carefully, feeling something she cannot name. She and Henry drive to dinner in Salinas. On the road she sees a dark spot ahead: the chrysanthemum shoots, dumped in the road. The tinker kept the pot and threw the flowers away. She turns up her coat collar so Henry will not see her crying.

Elisa Allen

Elisa is the story's full subject. She is intelligent, capable, and vital — her chrysanthemums are proof of what she can do when she has something to invest herself in. Her frustration is not stated but shown: the boxing match she cannot attend, the energy that goes into flowers rather than work she has chosen. The tinker's momentary attention unlocks something; its betrayal closes it again.

The tinker

The tinker is plausible rather than villainous. He uses Elisa's enthusiasm to get a pot mended — a small, pragmatic manipulation. He is not malicious; he simply does not value what she valued. The chrysanthemums meant nothing to him. This indifference is worse, in Steinbeck's telling, than active cruelty would have been.

The chrysanthemums as creative expression

The flowers are what Elisa makes and tends in the absence of other outlets. She describes growing them with a precision and passion that go beyond gardening — she speaks of getting her fingers into the soil, of a 'planting hands' that some people have and others don't. The chrysanthemums represent the creative energy that has no other channel. When they are thrown in the road, it is that energy that has been discarded.

The fence and enclosure

The wire fence around the garden is the story's central spatial symbol. Elisa is on one side; the world beyond the ranch — the tinker's wagon, the cattle fights, the unknown roads — is on the other. The tinker can cross the fence; Elisa cannot, literally or figuratively. Her encounter with him at the fence is the story's charged scene: the world briefly touching her enclosed one before moving on.