The Chrysanthemums

A short story set in central California's Salinas Valley, in a December during the Great Depression, "The Chrysanthemums" by John Steinbeck expresses through subtext a thirty-five year old woman's struggle with her identity. The story opens in the quiet setting of a farm in the Salinas River Valley and "Elisa Allen working in her flower garden, ...her figure ... blocked and heavy in her gardening costume, a man's black hat pulled down over her eyes, clod-hopper …

…trouble expressing them to others. Elisa also realizes that she will probably never be accepted in a man's world the way she wishes to be seen, as an equal. Never finding her freedom, Elisa gets upset and goes to take a shower. "And then she scrubbed herself with a little block of pumice... until her skin was scratched and red." Cleansing her body helps Elisa to "wash away" her masculinity and begin to feminize herself.