Elisa's Point Of View In The Chrysanthemums By John Steinbeck

Elisa’s Point of View In the short story, “The Chrysanthemums” John Steinbeck tells the story of Elisa Allen living on a ranch in the Salinas Valley with her husband Henry. Elisa is a thirty-five year-old house wife that takes pride in growing chrysanthemums. One day while cutting down last year’s chrysanthemums her husband tells her that he has just sold thirty cattle and is going to take her out to dinner and a movie. After that, a traveling tinker stops by her house and offers to fix any pots or sharpen any knives. After a conversation with the tinker, Elisa figures out for herself that she doesn’t get to express herself very much. Elisa eventually finds something for the tinker to fix and even gives him a chrysanthemum plant for one of his other customers. She later sees that the tinker threw the plant out and that she is unsatisfied with her marriage. “The Chrysanthemums” is told in the third person point of view, but the narration is presented almost entirely from Elisa’s point of view forcing us to try and understand Elisa just as the other characters in the story do.
After the opening that sets the stage, Steinbeck refuses to stray from Elisa. We are put in her shoes from that point on. For example, when the tinker rides up in his worn out wagon, Elisa describes the tinker as handsome. Most people would not describe traveling salesman of
that time period to be handsome. We know that Elisa is married leading us to believe that with her description of the tinker that she is unhappy with her marriage. Elisa later on in the story even flirts with the tinker which is again more evidence that she is unhappy with her marriage or current situation.
“The Chrysanthemums” is written in third person with a woman’s point of view. When this story was written, women weren’t able to be as successful as men. Women of that time period were limited to cooking, gardening, and taking care of children instead of making money. Elisa is nifty, enthusiastic, attractive, and motivated, but all these qualities go to waste due to the time period she lived in. The two key men in the story, Henry and the tinker are less interesting and artistic than Elisa is, but yet their lives are far more gratifying and eventful. Henry runs the ranch and supports himself though his wife is much brighter. The tinker seems craftier than Henry but doesn’t have Elisa’s essence, desire, or longing for adventure, but yet he gets to ride about the country, living an adventurous life. Henry and the tinker are used by Steinbeck as stand-ins for the way patriarchal societies ignore women’s potential.
“The Chrysanthemums’” point of view is narrated in an unemotional, practically detached way that can make interpreting the story problematic.
The narrator rarely identifies a single correct interpretation of events that occur only giving us clues as to how to understand them. For instance, when Henry compliments Elisa’s strength, her irritable response might be assumed in several ways. Maybe she desires that Henry had the tinker’s cleverness or possibly she longs for her husband to call her beautiful. Any of these assumptions are likewise possible, and the narrator never points to any one reading as the precise
one.
The way Elisa describes the tinker, the fact the story is written in a woman’s point of view, and the way it is narrated all effect the way the reader understands Elisa. Elisa describes the tinker as handsome and flirts with him which shows us that her current husband doesn’t fulfill her desires. The fact that the story is written in a woman’s point of view allows Steinbeck to examine her psyche and show us the world through her eyes. The narration of the story makes it hard to interpret the story in one correct way leading us to make our own assumptions to what’s happening. All of these examples help us to learn more about Elisa’s longings and character by the end of the story than her husband does.