is time she subconsciously knows what the spot is and is disgusted with the tinker; “she whispered to herself sadly,” ‘He might have thrown them off the road. That wouldn’t have been much trouble, not very much. But he kept the pot…’(Steinbeck 123). “Elisa is shattered by the callous manner in which [the tinker] had drawn something from her secret self and then completely betrayed her ‘gift’ by not even taking the trouble to hide the flowers” (Lewis 393). It is at this point in the story that Elisa truly recognizes her place in society. Elisa now sadly realizes that she can never fulfill her wish to be anything more than what she is already, a housewife.Many obstacles have been overcome in the past seven decades, one in particular being the fight for women’s rights. In “The Chrysanthemums” the theme of male dominance shines through clearly. The behaviors and descriptions of each of the characters allows the reader to envision Elisa’s hunger for her own self worth, Henry’s role as the man of the house and the tinkers position of being a man of the road, out to do whatever he can to make a penny. However, Steinbeck’s descriptions of these characters are not just words, they are words with feeling. Elisa is a housewife and a gardener but she is also a lady of dignity who wants to rise above and be more than what everyone expects of her or of any woman in general. “Steinbeck’s characters, like Henry Allen are quite pleased to be able to make a decent living, but equally important, like Elisa Allen, they are beginning to sense that not everyone can be satisfied by bread alone” (Lewis 394). It is not until the climax of the story that Elisa begins to give up on her goal to be free from a male domineering society. The tinker truly misleads her into believing that for once someone was interested in her life, for once so...
