Steinbeck's The Chrysanthemums: Disconnect in Expectations of Women

            When reading Steinbeck’s The Chrysanthemums, I was struck by the disparity between Elisa’s description in the story and her prescribed gender role. Steinbeck was clearly making a statement in this short story about how women were viewed towards the end of the Great Depression in the late 1930’s. Elisa’s character is portrayed as quite masculine which gave me a strange picture of her as I read the story. Although she is wearing a dress, her face is described as “lean and strong” as well as “eager and mature and handsome,” and her figure is “heavy” in her clothing with “leather gloves” that cover her hands in the garden. Steinbeck even tells us that she wears “a man’s black hat.” Elisa is continually described throughout the story with the adjectives “strong,” “hard,” and “powerful” which are all words that tend to be traditionally masculine in nature. However, there is a difference between the way Elisa is described and her actual power in the story. Any time there is a male presence, Elisa’s power suddenly becomes diminished. When her husband tells her that he “wish[es] [she’d] work out in the orchard” because of her skill with gardening, Elisa seems excited at his comment but subliminally we get the idea that this isn’t actually a plausible option for her. Again when the tinker is speaking to her, he tells her that his life “ain’t the right kind of life for a woman.” Although she is defensive as to whether or not she can handle it, there is still the idea implanted that the working lifestyle isn’t the traditional role a woman should be comfortable in. When Elisa realizes that she has been duped by the tinker at the end of the story, she is described “crying weakly—like an old woman.” Her hardiness is weakened by the imposed gender roles she must follow.

            As I noticed the gender roles in the story, I was amazed by the difference between what was expected of women in the Great Depression and the gender roles that they were still forced to comply to. I think that Steinbeck was hitting on a touchy subject of the time. Women were expected to support families with so many men out of work in their households; often times, women were the main breadwinner of the family during the depression. Although it was such a necessity for women to work, it was also looked down upon as low-class for women to be working outside the home. Steinbeck shows this when he shows Elisa as a strong, masculine-type woman but continues the discrimination that she is unable to work outside of the home successfully in his story. Steinbeck’s portrayal made me think of how ridiculous American society’s view of women was in the 1930’s. There was such an impossible tear between the different expectations of women that would have been unmanageable for anyone to balance during the depression. Steinbeck’s criticism of American society in this way really hit home for me as I imagined the social constructions that would have terrorized poor American families that relied on women to help them survive through the Great Depression.