Symbolism in The Chrysanthemums John Steinbeck’s short story The Chrysanthemums shows Elisa Allen, a strong, capable, childless woman of thirty-five who is frustrated with her present life with her husband, Henry, a man of unscrupulous confidence (French 83). She “longs for what women’s magazines vaguely call romance” (Segal 215), and is “a woman who has a strength of will usually identified with men, as well as an ambiguous combination of traditionally masculine and feminine traits” (…showed first 75 words of 998 total…

…showed last 75 words of 998 total…Pony: A Reader’s Companion to Steinbeck’s Complete Short Stories. New Jersey: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1987 French, Warren. John Steinbeck. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1975. French, Warren. John Steinbeck’s Fiction Revisited. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994. McMahan, Elizabeth, Susan X. Day, and Robert Funk. Literature and the Writing Process. 5th ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1999. Segal, David., ed. Short Story Criticism: Excerpts from Criticism of the Works of Short Fiction Writers. Vol. 11. Michigan: Gale Research, Inc., 1992.