SOURCE: “Ms. Elisa and Steinbeck's ‘The Chrysanthemums’,” in Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. 20, No. 2, Summer, 1974, pp. 210–14

Here, Sweet asserts that “The Chrysanthemums” can be read as Steinbeck's response to feminism.

In a recent article on Steinbeck's “The Chrysanthemums,” Elizabeth McMahan began “Virtually every critic who has considered John Steinbeck's short story ‘The Chrysanthemums’ has agreed that its basic theme is a woman's frustration, but none has yet adequately explained the emotional reasons underlying that frustration.”¹ Indeed the conflict in the story derives from the relationship between Elisa Allen's sexuality and her interest in gardening, both elements that culminate with the visit from an itinerant fixer. In a lengthy interpretation Mordecai Marcus focuses on Elisa's desire for childbirth² as relating the elements while Elizabeth McMahan sees the motivation under the general desire for “what women's magazines vaguely call ‘romance.’”³ F. W. Watt is much too brief and ambiguous himself in...