SOURCE: Ditsky, John. “‘Your Own Mind Coming Out in the Garden’: Steinbeck's Elusive Woman.” In John Steinbeck: The Years of Greatness, 1936-1939, edited by Tetsumaro Hayashi, pp. 3-19. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993.

In the following essay, Ditsky explores the depiction of women in several stories from The Long Valley.

During the period in which John Steinbeck wrote the three Depression novels that are the special focus of this Third International Steinbeck Congress, he also published one other notable volume of fiction: the memorable assemblage of short stories collectively entitled The Long Valley.¹ Few readers or critics of Steinbeck would argue with the claim that these four volumes represent Steinbeck at his best. But as Robert S. Hughes, Jr., noted in his paper for the Tenth Salinas Steinbeck Festival in August 1989,² there are very different orientations in Steinbeck's short fiction as opposed to his novels, with the differences...