SOURCE: “The Real Woman Inside the Fence in ‘The Chrysanthemums’,” in Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. 31, No. 2, Summer, 1985, pp. 305–17.

In the following essay, Renner interprets “The Chrysanthemums” as “informed far less by feminist sympathies than by traditional ‘masculist’ complaints.”

Steinbeck's classic short story “The Chrysanthemums” has long attracted admiration and respect from discriminating readers and eminent critics. But quite clearly the story's fame was enhanced during the last couple of decades as it was caught up in the eager discovery of works of literature dramatizing the female consciousness and was, in effect, included in the feminist canon.¹ Indeed, in the criticism of this period, “The Chrysanthemums” emerges as something of a feminist tract. The keynote was sounded in the late Fifties when Peter Lisca commented on “Elisa's silent rebellion against the passive role required of her as a woman” (95). As the woman's movement gathered momentum, critics enthusiastically followed the...