A Woman of Substance

In "The Chrysanthemums", John Steinbeck brings a microscope into a landscape portrait. Elisa Allen is content with her life. Her husband, Henry, a farmer and rancher, has provided for her well. She has time to tend and nurture a flower garden. All is calm until a passing salesman fans a burning ember within her. His interest in her chrysanthemums, and vicariously, her, empowers her and eventually betrays her.
Elisa Allen lives a sheltered life. Her world rarely escapes "the wire fence that protected her flower garden from cattle and dogs and chickens". (p.247) She also uses her gardening clothes as a shield from the world.
Her figure looked blocked and heavy in her gardening costume, a man?s black hat pulled down low over her eyes, clod-hopper shoes, a figured print dress almost completely covered by a big corduroy apron with four big pockets to hold the snips, the trowel, and scratcher, the seeds and the knife she worked with. She wore heavy leather gloves to protect her hands whil...