Odour of Chrysanthemums as a Classic
The claim that "Odour of Chrysanthemums" is a well-crafted story is hardly brave or risky, for many would agree. For instance, the man who in a sense discovered Lawrence, English Review editor F. M. Ford, said this about "Odour of Chrysanthemums":
The very title makes an impact on the mind. You get at once the knowledge that this is not, whatever else it may turn out, either a frivolous or even a gay springtime story. Chrysanthemums are not only flowers of the autumn: they are the autumn itself. . . This man knows what he wants. He sees the scene of his story exactly. He has an authoritative mind. (Ford 257)
As a fiction editor, he is quite receptive to Lawrence's descriptive gifts. He is impressed with Lawrence's sense of purpose. But readers needn't assess the short story by Ford's methods alone. Modern readers have a very different perspective than Lawrence's contemporaries, ensuring that many different analyses of "Odour of Chrysanthemums" are possible.
However, the plot itself is very simple. In the 1914 version, Elizabeth Bates spends most of the story waiting for her husband to return from the mine, fretting that he is once again dallying at a favorite pub. His coworkers drag him home, but he is not in a drunken stupor. He is dead, suffocated in an accident at the mine. Initially it seems that the moment when Elizabeth learns that her husband is dead is the story's climax. However, this is not the story's most riveting moment, for Lawrence's foreshadowing has already given this ending away. Elizabeth often unknowingly hints at the coming death, saying, "They'll bring him when he does come--like a log" (Lawrence 290). The real surprise comes after the reader discove...
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...e sense alone. This idea reflects people's deepest fears, or perhaps evokes new ones. "Odour of Chrysanthemums" is not successful and shocking because of particularly beautiful writing, realistic characters or even a surprise ending. It is shocking because of a surprise thought.
Works Cited
Lawrence, David Herbert. "Odour of Chrysanthemums." D. H. Lawrence: The Complete Short Stories (Vol. 2). New York: Penguin Books, 1976.
Bolton, James T. "Odour of Chrysanthemums: An Early Version." Renaissance and Modern Studies 13 (1969), 12-44.
Ford, Madox Ford. "D. H. Lawrence." Portraits from Life. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1937.
Lawrence, David Herbert. "Women Are So Cocksure." Phoenix. London: Heinemann, 1936. 167-69.
Lawrence, David Herbert. "To T. D. D." 7 July 1914. Selected Letters. Ed. Richard Aldington. New York: Penguin Books, 1996.
...t in outlook. By using such an evocative word as “seductive”, Tsukiyama appeals to the readers’ emotions and convinces them that the garden’s beauty was able to distract Stephen from the initial loneliness of his situation.
In general, the “ethics” of something is an issue that must be decided by those involved in the situation. The opinions of the Yanomamo as to whether or not Chagnon’s genealogical study was ethical are just as important as the western scientists’ opinions. And if language presents a barrier to communicate and agree on a study taking place, then maybe that study just was not meant to happen. Not everything and everyone in this world is open to be analyzed, photographed, interviewed, etc. by western scientists. So was it ethical for Chagnon to go to Bisaasi-terri, drop his bags and start working? I say no. Was it really that important for Chagnon to go there and study people who didn’t come out and announce their welcoming of outsiders? I say no.
The main character in John Steinback’s short story: The Chrysanthemums, is a married woman named Elisa Allen. She is a hardworking diligent young woman. In the opening chapters of The Chrysanthemums, Elisa is seen heartily in a great degree tendering to her gentle flowers. Powerful she is – gentle and conservative with her strength. She knows her weakness. Like the gentle calm flow of water embedding itself into layers of strata – which forms the highest peaks and grandest canyons.
Eventually, the three leaders decided to divide Germany up and occupy it until it was certain peace would be upheld. However, they did not discuss the exact date they would stop occupying Germany. As time went on, the Soviets didn’t want to leave and even built a blockade in Berlin separating East Berlin from West Berlin. This only added to the fuel of the Cold War’s fire. This derailed the plan of the Potsdam Conference, which was to eventually withdraw their occupation. For this reason, the impact of The Potsdam Conference was more successful then the Treaty of Versailles but was still not a successful outcome. The Potsdam conference inevitably leads to tension between US and Soviet Union and used Germany as a place to show their
In “The Violets” I entwine the past and present, the reoccurring flower motif of ‘spring violets’ sprout in both memory and reality to reflect the persona’s age and perceptions “I kneel to pick frail melancholy flowers among ashes and loam”. The violets portray the persona as an adult, whose gained knowledge and lacking innocence has created a critical, melancholic view on her world. This is juxtaposed by the persona’s childhood perception; “spring violets in their loamy bed”. In childhood, beauty was simplistic and untainted by knowledge and human experience; blessed by innocence.
World War II was a war unlike any other war that has occurred in the history of the war. In studying this war, there are some significant events that contributed to the start of World War II, that led to the US's entrance into W.W.II, and events that helped bring an end to W.W.II. The failure of the Geneva Peace conference, Hitler's annexation of Austria, the Spanish Civil War, Hitler's acquisition of Czechoslovakia, the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, Germany's invasion of Poland, and the fall of France all contributed greatly to the start of World War II. Some events that contributed to the entrance of the US into the war were Italy's invasion on Ethiopia, Japan's invasion of China, the Attack on Pearl Harbor, the Destroyer-Base Deal, the Nye Committee, and the Lend-Lease Act. The Invasion of Italy, the Battle of Midway, D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, and the fall of Berlin to the Soviets were five of the events that contributed to the ending of World War II.
Renner, Stanley. “The Real Woman Inside the Fence in ‘The Chrysanthemums’.” Modern Fiction Studies. Vol. 31. No.2. (Summer 1985). 305-317. print; reprinted in Short Story Criticisms. Vol.37. eds. Anja Barnard and Anna Sheets Nesbitt (Farmington Hills: The Gale Group, 2000). 333-339. print.
Steinbeck, John. “The Chrysanthemums” Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. Ed. Edgar V Roberts and Robert Zweig. 10th ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2012. 416-422. Print.
The first theme present in the horrific and heart wrenching story is the subordinate position of women within marriage. “The Yellow Wallpaper” begins with the narrator’s wish that her house were haunted like those in which “frightened heroines suffer Gothic horrors” (DeLamotte 5). However, this wish is in essence to empower herself. The narrator is already afraid of her husband and is suffering mentally and emotionally. She desperately wishes for an escape “through fantasy, into a symbolic version of her own plight: a version in which she would have a measure of distance and control” (DeLamotte 6). Throughout the text, Gilman reveals to the reader that during the time in which the story was written, men acquired the working role while women were accustomed to working within the boundaries of their “woman sphere”. This gender division meritoriously kept women in a childlike state of obliviousness and prevented them from reaching any scholastic or professional goals. John, the narrator’s husband, establishes a treatment for his wife through the assumption of his own superior wisdom and maturity. This narrow minded thinking leads him to patronize and control his wife, all in the name of “helping her”. The narrator soon begins to feel suffocated as she is “physically and emotionally trapped by her husband” (Korb). The narrator has zero control in the smallest details of her life and is consequently forced to retreat into her fantasies...
After analyzing Charlotte Perkins Gilman's, "The Yellow Wallpaper", from a feminist perspective it is undoubtedly shown to challenge patriarchal ideals through the stories heavy amounts of symbolism. The story revolves around the thoughts of a woman suffering from hysteria who ultimately loses her sanity due to her interactions with the isolated environment and husband, John. The story does a clear job at showing the oppressions of women in the late nineteenth century through the narrator's conversations with John, the ideas she has written down and in her head, the room in which she is caged in and finally the reflection of the Gilman's life in this story.
In “The Flowers,” by Alice Walker, the flowers are used throughout the story to symbolize the beauty and naivety of childhood. In the beginning of the story the author shows the main character Myop walking down a path along the fence of her farm. Myop sees “an armful of strange blue flowers with velvety ridges…” The flowers are bright and colorful, reminding the reader of an innocent type of beauty often associated with them. This suggests the flowers were inserted in the story by Walker to reveal how young and innocent Myop appears to be. Later in the story, after Myop had discovered the dead body of a man who seemed to have been hung “Myop laid down her flowers,”. As Myop put down the flowers she was also putting down the last of her innocence.
Described as an “autobiographical account fictionalized in the first person,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” chronicles the narrator as she is brought to a country house and put on rest cure, instructed by her physician husband to live in a room with yellow wallpaper (“The Yellow Wallpaper”). Throughout her stay there, the narrator appears to develop a sort of hysteria and falls into a deeper depression than when she arrived.
Steinbeck, John. “Chrysanthemums.” Forty Short Stories: A Portable Anthology. Ed. Beverly Lawn. Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2001.
“Odour of Chrysanthemums,” by D. H. Lawrence, tells a story of a woman named Elizabeth Bates, who is married to a man that works in the mines. The couple has two children, and they are expecting their third child. There is a lot trouble between them. The Bates family lives in poverty. The house where they live has no electricity and it needs to be lit up with torches. One night Mrs. Bates waits for her husband to come back home from work to serve dinner, but he never shows up. She thinks he may be drinking with his friends, and that maybe his friends are going to bring him back home drunk as usual. Time passes and Mrs. Bates does not hear from him. Later that night her mother in law arrives crying, then she begins suspect that something bad happens and her husband is dead. The central idea of liberation is expressed as the writer uses three elements of fiction to tell the story.
...ty of the daffodils. The powerful effect that they have on his mind and body snap him out of depression and cause him to experience such a strong and powerful joy. This poem shows the powerful affect nature can have on the emotions of a person.