| Title | : | Odour of Chrysanthemums |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | ebook |
| Number of Pages | : | - |
| Publication | : | First published July 1, 1911 |
Odour of Chrysanthemums Reviews
-
Another author I've been wanting to read for some time and succeeded thanks to The Short Story Club. As the blurb of this short story states: "D. H. Lawrence's short stories portray complex, flawed interior lives, showing individuals facing momentous emotional events." This story is no exception. I would also add that the author does a good job with nature descriptions and symbolism.
This short story reminds me of Germinal by Zola, the masterpiece I read a few months ago. They both deal with the hard lives of miners but from a different angle. In this short story, Elisabeth marries into a lower class. Her husband, Walter, is a miner and he enjoys spending time with his friends drinking. One night, when Elisabeth becomes more and more frantic waiting for him to come back from work, something happens that will make her realise that she never really knew her husband and they lived isolated one from the other.
Chrysanthemums are an important presence in the short story and have a foreboding role.
"It was chrysanthemums when I married him, and chrysanthemums when you were born, and the first time they ever brought him home drunk, he'd got brown chrysanthemums in his button-hole."
“The air was cold and damp... The candle-light glittered on the lustre-glasses, on the two vases that held some of the pink chrysanthemums, and on the dark mahogany. There was a cold, deathly smell of chrysanthemums in the room.” -
Odour of Chrysanthemums
'Odour of Chrysanthemums', a story of colliery life, is rightly considered among Lawrence's finest tales. One of the most carefully wrought of the early stories exemplifies his art at its most dramatic, his vision at its most sympathetic. A moving statement about the human condition made within the world Lawrence knew as a child and young man. The collier's son was able to observe his milieu with the eyes of an outsider; the domestic tragedy renders with what seems great detachment. A scholar lacking the biographical background of 'Odour of Chrysanthemums' would be hard-pressed to discover the author's deep personal involvement with its materials.
The Blind Man
English writer D.H. Lawrence's short story "The Blind Man," published in his 1922 collection, England, My England, concerns a war veteran who returns home to his wife after being blinded in combat. -
"It was chrysanthemums when I married him, and chrysanthemums when you were born, and the first time they ever brought him home drunk, he'd got brown chrysanthemums in his button-hole."
A great tragedy befalls colliers wife Elizabeth, but in the wake of this tragedy, she faces the truth of what her marriage really meant and how it had affected the lives of both herself and coal miner husband Walter.
Such a powerful and moving story of Elizabeth waiting for her husband to return home from work at the pit. As the hours pass and with the children in bed, her anger becomes overwhelming, has he sneaked past their cottage on his way to the pub yet again? and so she does something she’s never done before! You can read this beautifully written short story for free here
https://theshortstory.co.uk/devsitegk... -
This takes you to the heart and hearth of a Nottinghamshire coalmining village, for a single evening, c1909. There’s no big twist. The transformative event is no surprise. It’s about context, consequences, and self-awareness.
Contrasts
The opening paragraph pits the power of technology (“threats of speed” and “inevitable movement” as “the winding-engine rapped out its little spasms”) against ordinary people (a woman “insignificantly trapped” between a hedge and racing train) and the natural world (the “withered oak”). The third paragraph foreshadows what's to come (“miners... passed like shadows”, a clawing vine, and “dishevelled pink chrysanthemums”).
Symbols
Symbolism can be a useful short-cut or something obscure that many readers miss. Lawrence makes it plain, without it feeling heavy-handed - even from the very first word: “odour”. Flowers normally have fragrance, scent, or perfume, whereas an odour is usually unpleasant, and often signals decay and death. Chrysanthemums traditionally symbolise love and they flower as late as November, when everything around is dying. This will not be a story of joy.
Image: “Dishevelled pink chrysanthemums”, long past their best (
Source)
Setting
Elizabeth has two young children and is pregnant with a third. She is waiting for her husband to come home from the pit. She talks of him “bitterly” (the word is used five times) because he’s probably frittering his meagre wages in the pub, as he has before. Like the woman between train and hedge, she’s trapped. Darkness and shadows pervade the little house. As she continues to wait, “her anger was tinged with fear”.
Turning point
Really not a surprise, but
Image: Hucknall Torkard colliery, a few miles from Brinsley, at the time of this story (
Source)
Chrysanthemums
Earlier, Elizabeth had plonked some wan chrysanthemums in a vase, after she chided her little boy for throwing petals on the path.
“The air was cold and damp... The candle-light glittered on the lustre-glasses, on the two vases that held some of the pink chrysanthemums, and on the dark mahogany. There was a cold, deathly smell of chrysanthemums in the room.”
Later, the vase is broken. A trivial, commonplace accident, but laden with meaning.
Image: A surreal take on a broken vase, by Erik Johansson (
Source)
Elizabeth comes to realise how little she and Walter knew and understood each other:
“And she knew what a stranger he was to her. In her womb was ice of fear, because of this separate stranger with whom she had been living as one flesh.”
Quotes
• “The withered oak leaves dropped noiselessly.”
• “A large bony vine clutched at the house, as if to claw down the tiled roof.”
• “As the mother watched her son's sullen little struggle with the wood, she saw herself in his silence and pertinacity; she saw the father in her child's indifference to all but himself.”
• “It was chrysanthemums when I married him, and chrysanthemums when you were born, and the first time they ever brought him home drunk, he'd got brown chrysanthemums in his buttonhole.”
• “She knew she submitted to life, which was her immediate master. But from death, her ultimate master, she winced with fear and shame.”
See also
This is good, but I didn't enjoy it as much as many others of his, so 3.5*, rounded down.
• I’ve reviewed several of DHL’s short stories,
HERE. Many of them have themes that overlap with those here, including autobiographical elements.
• Chrysanthemums feature prominently in Sons and Lovers, which I reviewed
HERE.
• A couple of years after he published this story, Lawrence adapted it for the stage, as
The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd.
• There’s a short film from 2002, which I’ve not watched. See
imdb.
• This is set in Brinsley Colliery - the same mine Lawrence’s father worked at. His mother, like Elizabeth, was middle class (and determined her son wouldn’t follow in his father’s footsteps). Monty Python were probably thinking of Lawrence in their sketch about a working-class playwright and his coalmining son. See
HERE.
Short story club
I reread this as one of the stories in
The Art of the Short Story, by Dana Gioia, from which I'm aiming to read one story a week with
The Short Story Club, starting 2 May 2022.
You can read this story
here.
You can join the group
here. -
"It was chrysanthemums when I married him, and chrysanthemums when you were born, and the first time they ever brought him home drunk, he'd got brown chrysanthemums in his button-hole."
Odour of Chrysanthemums is a short story written by D. H. Lawrence first published in 1911. The story has a rather minimalist setting where a mother is seen reflecting on her unhappy marriage while she stays up, along with her two children, awaiting her husband's arrival back from the mines.
“The small locomotive engine, Number 4, came clanking, stumbling down from Selston with seven full waggons. It appeared round the corner with loud threats of speed, but the colt that it startled from among the gorse, which still flickered indistinctly in the raw afternoon, outdistanced it at a canter."
Set in a mining town, the story begins with detailed descriptions of the harsh noises of mining locomotives, painting a difficult environment for human existence. The story has distinct symbolism with vivid references to light and darkness in detail. We eventually come to realize that darkness symbolizes death in the story. Odour of Chrysanthemums is an eerie reminder of the many sacrifices a working man has to go through trying to make a living. The unspeaking chrysanthemums seem to be the only witness to Elizabeth and Walter's struggles to survive in a hostile world."Was this what it all meant — utter, intact separateness, obscured by heat of living? In dread she turned her face away. The fact was too deadly. There had been nothing between them, and yet they had come together, exchanging their nakedness repeatedly. Each time he had taken her, they had been two isolated beings, far apart as now. He was no more responsible than she."
A touching, tragic story."She knew she submitted to life, which was her immediate master. But from death, her ultimate master, she winced with fear and shame."
-
Not very cheery. Strong realistic writing. Odd, sad story.
-
In a small English mining village, Elizabeth Bates waits with her two children for her husband Walter to come home from the mines. As time passes she gets angry, thinking that he has stopped at the pub after work. As the evening darkens into night, she starts to worry and enlists her neighbor to search for Walter.
The imagery of chrysanthemums runs through the story. When their daughter comments on the aroma of the flower, her mother says:
"It was chrysanthemums when I married him, and chrysanthemums when you were born, and the first time they ever brought him home drunk, he'd got brown chrysanthemums in his button-hole."
The smell of chrysanthemums will again fill the air later in the story. The story has lush descriptions of the natural world. There is a contrast between light and darkness in the evening, the fire of industry, and the darkness of the mine.
Elizabeth comes from a higher class than her illiterate husband, and they do not communicate well. She tries to keep a respectable home, is unused to the dirt and noise of a mining village, and keeps an emotional distance from others. Elizabeth uses proper English, but the miners speak with a dialect. Walter is a handsome man who works hard in a physically difficult job. He's a popular guy who enjoys socializing with his buddies. In many ways, Elizabeth and Walter do not know each other, and no one person is totally at fault for the sense of isolation.
The story has many autobiographical elements since D H Lawrence was raised in a village in Nottinghamshire by a miner father and a former school teacher mother. "Odour of Chrysanthemums" is beautifully written, and the characters in the Bates family come alive on the pages. -
"Odour of Chrysanthemums" (1911) is a miserable little story by D.H. Lawrence in keeping with his rage and despair over industrialization and particularly the coal industry.
Elizabeth Bates is the main character of the story. She has two young children and is pregnant with a third. She is waiting for her husband Walter, a coal miner, to come home. I know very well that contemporary feminists decry Lawrence--writing more than a 100 years ago--for what they perceive to be insufficiently contemporary sensitivity to the needs of women, but I would say this story, as sad as it is, written from her perspective, is like a lot of his work, focused on how industrial society do not serve the needs of humans, and often in his stories, women.
Elizabeth’s not particularly strong or passionate--she’s so vulnerable, economically and psychically--as are the upper-class women in Women in Love or The Rainbow, but we sympathize with her. And Walter, all those (un-uionized) colliers working long hours six days a week in the unsafe mines, is also a victim of the system, clearly.
(I am aware I am publishing this review on Christmas, when we are supposed to be happy. Let's see if I can justify this: A lot of people are miserable on Christmas, so we acknowledge all those in economic and psychological despair for the holidays. Think Ukraine, too. -
4★
“The small locomotive engine, Number 4, came clanking, stumbling down from Selston with seven full waggons.”
This is such a dark story that it’s hard to like it, but Lawrence’s darkness is so atmospheric and so well told that I have to admire it. It is evening in a coal-mining village in Nottinghamshire, England, where the mother of a young family is waiting impatiently for her husband to come home from the mines.
“She seemed to be occupied by her husband. He had probably gone past his home, slunk past his own door, to drink before he came in, while his dinner spoiled and wasted in waiting.
. . . she saw the yellow lamps were lit along the highroad that went up the hill away beyond the space of the railway-lines and the field. Then again she watched the men trooping home, fewer now, and fewer.”
Her little boy is home, helping with the firewood.
“Then she stood unmoving. Directly, gratefully, came quick young steps to the door. Someone hung on the latch a moment, then a little girl entered, and began pulling off her outdoor things, dragging a mass of curls just ripening from gold to brown over her eyes with her hat.”
That is the most delightful and welcome bright spot, seeing this cheerful little girl come home and tell her mother she’s not late – her father’s not even home yet, after all. Then she admires the chrysanthemums that her brother had torn out of the garden and her mother had tucked into her apron. Mother doesn't have such happy memories of them.
“...the first time they ever brought him home drunk he’d got brown chrysanthemums in his button-hole.”
As the mother moves from impatient to frustrated to angry to worried, the evening gets darker and darker and the children complain they can’t see and where’s their father? Probably drunk.
Lawrence grew up as the son of a miner in a town near this one, and would have felt keenly the overwhelming sense of darkness he evoked in this short story. -
The beginning of this story immediately recalled Turner’s “Rain, Steam and Speed” from 1844, in the London National Gallery.
This is a painting that can be interpreted as a veiled criticism of modernity and the effect that technology has on humanity. It can also be interpreted without the critical overtones.
In Lawrence’s story the locomotive is more clearly threatening. It jots a colt and makes a woman to draw back in awe and the dreary tints of dusk forewarn of what is to follow. Pink Chrysanthemums, the flowers of death in some cultures, do not add colour but cast an ominous air to this mining town.
As the drama unfolds, that of a family living in poverty and threatened by alcoholism and some domestic violence, another painting came to my mind: Van Gogh’s The Potato Eaters, from 1885.
Chrysanthemums continue to lead on the story, as they have led the life of the mother, - “You’ve got a flower in your apron!” - but they do not help.
And then tragedy strikes. But it was expected.
What I did not expect was the final section of the story. The complete estrangement that a recently widowed wife expresses while contemplating the dead man to whom she has been married and with whom she has had her children, comes across as a harrowing scream of hopelessness.
In Lawrence, more clearly than in Turner, these locomotives and any other signs of the industrial age, bring to the fore their dehumanizing effect. -
“The cloth was laid for tea; cups glinted in the shadows. At the back, where the lowest stairs protruded into the room, the boy sat struggling with a knife and a piece of whitewood. He was almost hidden in the shadow.”
I thought from the title that this would be a treat for the senses, but it’s so much more. Lawrence has a way of using our shared sensory world to delve into our emotions, beliefs, and principles, and he does that here, even in this short little story.
If you’ve read his semi-autobiographical
Sons and Lovers, you’ll recognize the characters. It’s tea time, and a family is waiting for the father to come home from work in the mines.
When I was young (long ago, now), it was very common for children to have time after school at home with mom before dad came home. This story took me back to the closeness of that time, the bond between mom and the kids, the unit that was created, and that morphed into something else when dad was added back in.
Family, relationships, unions between separate people--they’re so everyday and yet so mysterious. Lawrence gives us a glimpse into what’s behind those bonds, and reminds us it is our impressions that we’re really living with most of the time, not the actual people sitting across from us at the tea table.
I've looked at love from both sides now
From give and take and still somehow
It's love's illusions I recall
I really don't know love at all
~Joni Mitchell, Both Sides Now -
Such a powerful story! A woman waits for her husband to come home from the mine. I was totally immersed in this story and found it very moving.
-
Thoughts coming soon...
-
This was my first D.H. Lawrence read. This short story of a young woman, Mrs. Elizabeth Bates, awaiting the return of her husband from the coal mines. She displays a bitterly annoyed attitude as she suspects he has stopped off again at the pub. She is home with two young children making excuses for his absence.
The writing is very descriptive with plenty of imagery and symbolism as well as verbal exchanges in heavy dialect, making it a challenge sometimes to interpret. All of this taken together certainly paints a vivid picture of the working class early in the industrial era.
Mrs Bates reflects on her relationship with her husband with little good to say about him. After the children are put down to bed she sets out to find him only to learn there has been an accident at the coal mine.
When he is returned to her a short time later, albeit he is dead, she again reflects on their relationship with much sadness as she comes to realize how little they really shared. The chrysanthemums are a recurring theme in their short life together and are, I would suspect, part of both the imagery and symbolism intended by the author.
This short story is filled with much description and emotion rather reflective of the hardship of the era.
Although it may not be the best place to start reading the works of this author it is well deserving of four stars. -
Moving and thought-provoking. When Ford Madox Ford published this in his June 1911 issue of his English Review he was convinced he had discovered a genius.
A mother (Mrs. Bates) with two young children, a girl and a boy, in their humble dwelling waiting for the father who works in a mine. Dinnertime passes and he hasn't arrived. The night deepens, she sends the children to bed, and her husband is still not home. This is not the first time this has happened. On many occasions before, her husband would later stagger home dead drunk. Any wife who has a husband who loves the bottle would find familiar the vacillating anger-and-fear emotion she feels here as so skillfully presented by D.H. Lawrence who was himself born of poverty and a son of a coal miner:
"The children had their hands and faces wiped with a flannel. They were very quiet. When they had put on their night-dresses, they said their prayers, the boy mumbling. The mother looked down at them, at the brown silken bush of intertwining curls in the nape of the girl's neck, at the little black head of the lad, and her heart burst with anger at their father, who cause all three such distress. The children hid their faces in her skirts for comfort.
"When Mrs. Bates came down, the room was strangely empty, with a tension of expectancy. She took up her sewing and stitched for some time without raising her head. Meantime her anger was tinged with fear."
Things happen after this which will create unforgettable scenes that would stay in your mind for a long time and with an ending that would make you revisit your thoughts on one of literature's recurrent themes: "the utter isolation of the human soul." -
A vivid, intimate look at life in a mining town, offering insights from the point of view of a married woman, Elizabeth Bates, whose life is an ordeal. Her husband tries her patience and she has to endure his bad habits; alcoholism is never named but its murky presence cloaks everything like a shroud.
From a writing point of view, I thought the prose felt laboured — every word, every sentence was working hard. This impression was formed mostly from the long opening paragraph which establishes mood and setting.
Surprised to see reviewers here claim that "nothing happens" in this short story. Yes, the only thing that happened, besides daily frustrations and regrets, was a major life event. For most of the characters in the story their lives changed forever, and surely that is enough to carry a plot.
Read this originally in The Complete Short Stories, Volume 2. -
I have to confess that I have never read anything by D. H. Lawrence before and I thought one of his short stories might be a good introduction. The story follows the wife of a coal miner, who is awaiting the return of her husband Walter from the pit. She has two children and is pregnant and, as dusk falls, we gradually learn of her suspicion that he has gone drinking, leaving his dinner to dry out uneaten. However, as the evening progresses, she is concerned enough to go looking for him and we discover the truth of what has happened.
This short story was, in so many ways, really realistic. The thoughts which drifted through Elizabeth Bates mind; the worries of the children that their father had not returned and yet the concern that he might walk in and begin to argue with their mother, were well realised. This was a dark and somewhat depressing read, which did express real concerns and the poverty faced by miner’s families, as well as the dangers of the job. Written in 1909 and published in 1911, this story was later adapted into a play and it does give a realistic, if bleak, portrait of life during those times. -
a great dread possessed them both, the mother felt the lie was given to her womb, she was denied; the wife felt the utter isolation of the human soul, the child within her was a weight apart from her
Ah, yes; the bottomless loneliness of being human, the illusion of togetherness........ -
10/10
-
I've arranged my thoughts on this short story into a haiku:
"Made distinct by death,
The familiar and the plain
Are starkly arcane." -
the chrysanthemums did indeed odour thank u d h lawrence
-
দিনের কয়েকপ্রহরের ব্যাপ্তিতে ঘটে যাওয়া একটামাত্র ঘটনাকেন্দ্রিক ছোট্ট একটি গল্প হলেও তাতে মনস্তত্ত্বের কত বিস্তর কিছু কথা উঠে এসেছে! একই ছাদের নিচে বসবাসরত দুটো মানুষের মাঝে থাকা সম্পর্কের বিস্তীর্ণ দূরত্বকে লেখক এমন একটা ক্রুশিয়াল সময়ের বর্ণনা ঘিরে উন্মোচিত করেছেন, যা সত্যিই প্রশংসনীয় আর একইসাথে নির্মম। এর বেশি কিছু বলতে গেলে স্পয়লার হয়ে যাবে। এটু��ু গল্পে আর কীই-বা বলবো!
শুরুতে বুঝতে সমস্যা হলেও পরের দিকে ধরে উঠতে আর সময় লাগেনি। আর অল্প কয়টা পৃষ্ঠাই, একটু ধৈর্য নিয়ে পড়তে গেলে শেষই হয়ে যায়। জীবনভিত্তিক গল্প ভালো লাগলে, আর অল্প সময় থাকলেই এই ছোট্ট বইটা পড়ে ফেলা যায়। -
This is the first piece of writing by D.H. Lawrence I’ve read.
We’re introduced to a woman, Elizabeth Bates, and her little son, John, and Elizabeth’s father, who is an engine-driver.
The woman’s husband, Walter, is a miner; he is fond of the drink, and spends a lot of money at the pub.
At this particular time, the miners are coming home, but Walter has not come home yet, and they have too wait for him before they can have tea.
Elizabeth suspects Walter of slinking past his door to go to the pub.
So the mother, John and the little girl, Annie, who has now come home from school, wait and wait for their husband and father.
They begin to eat. Elizabeth becomes more and more resentful about her husband’s lateness.
She is expecting another child.
Annie is enamoured of the chrysanthemums her mother has in her apron band.
It is twenty to six and Walter hasn’t come home. Elizabeth is angry now. She says “What a fool I’ve been! The children were put to bed. Now Elizabeth’s anger was “tinged with fear”.
A neighbour’s husband tells Elizabeth he doesn’t know where Walter is, but he’s not in the “Prince of Wales”, the pub.
Walter’s elderly mother arrives in her black bonnet and black shawl. She tells her that Walt has had an accident..
Two men came with Walter on a stretcher – he is dead.
One of the men knocks off a vase of chrysanthemums. “There is a deathly smell of chrysanthemums in the room.”
Elizabeth feels she has nothing to do with Walter. She tries to get some connection to him, but cannot.
“The wife felt the utter isolation of the human soul.”
”Life with its smoky, burning gone from him, had left him apart and utterly alien to her.”
She now knows what a stranger he was to her. She sees he was a “separate stranger with whom she had been living as one flesh.”
There had been nothing between them though they repeatedly had had marital relations. They had been far apart, just as they were now he was dead.
She saw now that she had never seen him for what he was, and he had never seen her for what she was.
She was grateful to death which “restored the truth”.
For the first time she had empathy and compassion for him. She now knew how awful it had been to be a wife, and how awful it must have felt to him to be a husband.
If they met in the next world, he would be a stranger to her. The children did not unite them. Eternally, he had nothing more to do with her.
“Now he had withdrawn.” I take this to mean that he had voluntarily left his life.
I’m not sure what Lawrence totally means by his description of Elizabeth’s insight.
As I understand it, they had not been really meant for each other and should not have married, since they were so different.
Now, at any rate, they had nothing to do with each other.
But I feel Lawrence is contradicting himself; because though she now feels they were so different and separate beings, she still for the first time feels empathy for him.
The final sentence is:
“From death, her ultimate master, she winced with fear and shame.”
Why was she fearful and shameful? I cannot see the need for fear; is she shameful because she did not previously see him as he really was? And what does she mean by this?
Re the title, in some European countries, chrysanthemums are only given in time of mourning. Elizabeth had previously received them when she married Walter, and the first time they brought Walter home drunk he had chrysanthemums in his button-hole. So this is perhaps why the author uses the word ”odour”” instead of the usual word “scent”.
I didn’t quite understand this story, but Elizabeth’s insight is its crucial part.
I did not previously realize what a gifted writer D.H. Lawrence was. -
"She had said he was something he was not; she had felt familiar with him. Whereas he was apart all the while, living as she never lived, feeling as she never felt."
-
Second read of this tale that reflects on the day your good-for-nothing husband fails to return from the coal pit. It’s particularly resonant in Elizabeth’s assessments of their marriage towards the end.
“Life with its smoky burning gone from him, had left him apart and utterly alien to her. And she knew what a stranger he was to her. In her womb was ice of fear, because of this separate stranger with whom she had been living as one flesh. Was this what it all meant--utter, intact separateness, obscured by heat of living? In dread she turned her face away. The fact was too deadly.” -
I love D. H. Lawrence and when this was assigned as a reading assignment in one of my classes I assumed that I would enjoy this. But I have to be honest and say though I think St. Mawr is a beautiful short story and that Women in Love is a masterpiece of fiction, this is nowhere near on the same level. Lawrence writes fiction with dark themes. He definitely has a preoccupation with the darker side of humanity but this book was just too bleak and discouraging for me.
This book first and foremost to me is about a dysfunctional, toxic, and abusive relationship and how that makes people feel trapped. That when you love someone there is the hope, no matter how small, that one day they will change and become the person you so desperately want them to be. And I sympathize with this, particularly in this period when it was even harder for a woman to leave a bad marriage. And I will praise Lawrence for doing this excellently.
But despite all this that was done so well, I just wanted this unfortunate story to end. I wanted to see the cycle of neglect and abuse and misery end once and for all. And it never does. The ending is as hopeless as the beginning and from Lawrence this feels like a slap in the face. Perhaps a deserved one in his opinion, but a slap nonetheless.
This story feels like less of a story where the characters make bad choices and then have to deal with the consequences that are in many ways their own fault, than a story where it seems that the characters are unable to do anything to escape their fate. Which actually makes this story even more disturbing, on reflection. The idea that some people are just dealt a bad hand, and that nothing can be done to change it is a chilling moral. If this kind of story is something that interests you from a determinist vs predetermined view of life you might enjoy this, but it was not for me. -
Now this was a far better read than "The horse dealer's daughter".
A short story, the prose is rich with emotion. The story begins quite gently, weaving out a simple life of a family from a mining town. The main theme is the emotional (or lack of, in this instance) relationship between a husband and wife.
The last two pages is where the harrowingly thought-provoking character realisation occurs. Lawrence does very well in portraying the fragility of life, an oft-forgotten realisation of how mortal every human being is.
The wife's emotions, bittersweet and coloured with guilt yet peace, happiness yet dread (so many juxtapositions) I think are meant to reflect the title of the book - how the chrysanthemum flowers, usually a symbol of joy or optimism, not to mention the expected nice fragrance, actually has an "odour" in this case.
The juxtaposition of what we expect out of life versus the reality (a happy marriage where the children unite the parents, as opposed to a loveless marriage) is portrayed fantastically. A really great piece of prose, showcasing the emptiness in one's life when miscommunication is present, and the sinking feeling one gets after realising this, only after the partner passes away.
"It is life intensified which is what short stories are interested in" Carys Davies -
Opening lines:
The small locomotive engine, Number 4, came clanking, stumbling down from Selston — with seven full waggons. It appeared round the corner with loud threats of speed, but the colt that it startled from among the gorse, which still flickered indistinctly in the raw afternoon, outdistanced it at a canter. -
Novella molto carina, che spinge a riflettere sul significato della vita e della morte.
Riporta i problemi familiari di Lawrence ed è interessante scoprire che solo la figlia di Elizabeth riesce a sentire l'odore dei crisantemi.
3 stelline perché mi sarebbe piaciuto leggere qualche pagina in più. -
Literary Analysis/Review of The Odour of Chrysanthemums:
“Odour of Chrysanthemums” is a novella written by D. H. Lawrence. This short story discusses the life of a dramatic family, whose members are alienated and distanced from each other, specially the wife and the husband. The wife and the husband suffer from lack of clear communications. The lack of Elizabeth bravery and the frustration of her husband, Walter, ended their marriage with the death of Walter. The novella major events are described by the use of different, but related imageries like darkness, fire, and Chrysanthemums.
The short story, style of writing, is highly poetic and full of symbols, description, and imagery. Lawrence portrays the intimate feelings through the usage of a great description of the place, landscape; he, even, portrays the intimate feelings of the conversations and the character as well. He introduces characters, who are not present, through other characters and symbols, making the reader develop a clear understanding of them, although they are not present. The reader cannot hear them directly. In this review, I will discuss the imagery of the fire, Chrysanthemums and their function in the story them then analyze and relate them to the Blate’s lives, to build a clear understanding of the death Walter and life of Elizabeth by using the imageries.
In the opening paragraph of Odour of Chrysanthemums juxtaposes the hard tough long locomotive with many wagons behind it. Lawrence tone reveals much darkness. His narration exposes the complexity and conflicts the characters struggle, he writes,” Miners, single, trailing and in groups, passed like shadows diverging home.” (Lawrence, p. 336) resembling the tough life and the insignificance of the woman, who is watching it passing by making lots of noise. The writer describes the scene of the wagons passing as shadows interring and tearing the house apart.
The main protagonist of the story is a woman named Elizabeth Bate, she lives with her husband, Walter, and two children, pregnant with the third, in a cottage near the railway beside a coal mine. Her husband works in the mine, usually, until afternoon. Elizabeth is a good house wife. She tries to stay strong and suppresses her feelings, to be able to take care of her house and kids. Elizabeth is not brave enough to face her husband and fix their problems. During one of the nights she waits for her husband, however, he does not come home. She hears from her father that her husband is in a pub. When her husband does not come home, she goes out of the house trying to find her husband.
Earlier in the day, Walter is not literary present in the story; he is the essential element in the life of the Bates family. Elizabeth name is not revealed until Walter is mentioned in the story. He works in the mine. Although the mine is dark, we can notice the life in Walter as if he is the only bright thing there. From the conversations and the comments of Elizabeth, her father, and Walter’s mother we develop a clear understanding of Walter. The father says, “I heered tell of him in the ‘Lord Nelson’ braggin’ as he was going to spend that b —— afore he went: half a sovereign that was.” (337) Walter is, interpreted by the reader as careless and drunken man. However, later in the text, we realize, from his mother, that he was a good kid. His mother used to call him, “a good lad.” Implying that something must had happened to change Walter attitude, maybe his marriage, since he changed during it.
He also uses imageries to describe different scenes in the text, like using “darkness” to symbolize death. Since the story takes place in the late afternoon tell the night falls, the writer focusses on the darkness and use it to resemble death or foreshadowing to it. The darkness covers almost everything as a veil. Even in the beginning of the story, where there is a form of a natural light and bright colors, the writer uses the shadows to foreshadows for a more darkness that is about to come. He writes, “A large bony vine clutched at the house, as if to claw down the tiled roof” (p. 336). The shadows are coming to tear the house.
The writer uses the darkness to describe Walter’s death, he says,” Darkness was settling over the spaces of the railway and trucks: the miners, in grey sombre groups, were still passing home. The winding-engine pulsed hurriedly, with brief pauses. Elizabeth Bates looked at the dreary flow of men, and then she went indoors. Her husband did not come.”(338) Lawrence is describing a dramatic moment, which is the death of Walter. All the men are back to homes, however, Walter trapped in the darkness or death.
After the sun sets and evening falls, the fire becomes the main source of light in different ranges. Anther imagery in the story is the fire, which resembles Walter’s Life. The fire is a great imagery describing the life and energy in the house. The Bates house appears to be warm and full of life, Lawrence describes it by saying, “The kitchen was small and full of firelight; red coals piled glowing up the chimney mouth, all the life of the room seemed in the white, warm hearth and the steel fender reflecting the red fire” (p. 338). This portrays the feeling that the secret of life, in the house, is within the fire and the energy of it, Walter.
However, the fire did not stay for too long. He writes, “Indoors the fire was sinking and the room was dark red” (p. 338), giving the impression that the fire is losing its spark of life and energy, while the room at the same time is turning red, a resemblance of unpleasant thing, with the fire fading away. Elizabeth then “dropped piece after piece of coal on the red fire, the shadows fell on the walls, till the room was almost in total darkness” (p. 339). She killed the fire slowly; she buried the fire under a layer of coal. Elizabeth was informed that Walter had died from suffocation. He was trapped in the coal mine and the coal fell down from the ceiling, and Walter suffocated from lack of oxygen. In the end of the story, he is present but vulnerable and dead as the fire fades away. The reader can relate this way of death to the fire death. Which makes the reader wonders, was Elizabeth, indirectly, the reason behind his death. Because she did not take care of him, did not have the bravery to argue with him. This acts as a great imagery, as if Elizabeth had killed the energy of the house and filled it with darkness.
In the “Odour of the Chrysanthemums” the chrysanthemums is an imagery of Elizabeth life with her husband. In the beginning there were no colors, only descriptions of the landscape and voices. Until the chrysanthemum appears, pink in color, bright and alive in the road leading to the house, implying that Elizabeth had good days with her husband. However, there is also a chrysanthemum on the dead body. As a description of this, she notes, “It was chrysanthemums when I married him, and chrysanthemums when [my daughter was] born, and chrysanthemums the first time they ever brought him home drunk, he'd got brown chrysanthemums in his buttonhole.”(p. 341) the chrysanthemum was there to witness their major life events, and be affected by it.
They were living together without knowing each other, or in other words, wasting the chrysanthemums pleasant odor. Elizabeth realizes how distanced they were from each other, he writes, “Life with its smoky burning gone from him, had left him apart and utterly alien to her.” She was not able to understand him well, and never will. The narrator narrates, “She knew she had never seen him, he had never seen her, they had met in the dark and had fought in the dark, not knowing whom they met or whom they fought.”(p. 349) two strangers living together, one is symbolized by the fire that keeps life and warmth and the other can be interpreted as the fire killer. their life together is symbolized by the Chrysanthemum.
After Walter’s death Elizabith needs to support the house. She realized she is alive, maybe she will show more concern to the feelings toward other people. He writes, “She was grateful to death, which restored the truth. And she knew she was not dead.”(p. 349) This might be a different start to Elizabeth, who had submitted to her new master, “She knew she submitted to life, which was her immediate master.” (349) after the death of her old master, she needed a new one to be submitted to. The reader can relate some of the imageries to build a clear understanding of the text plot. In the end of the story, the fire fades away. He writes, “She lighted a candle and went into the tiny room. The air was cold and damp, but she could not make a fire, there was no fireplace. She set down the candle and looked round. The candle-light glittered on the lustre-glasses, on the two vases that held some of the pink chrysanthemums, and on the dark mahogany. There was a cold, deathly smell of chrysanthemums in the room. ”(p. 345) after Walters death, nothing is left but the memories, the oudor of the Chrysanthemum as a memory and an unborn child, maybe the goodness of the unborn fades under the strong effect of the death of the father who used to bring money and supply the house needs.
The vase full of chrysanthemums fell on the ground. It reminded her of her of her marriage life. Elizabeth has lost a great fire that cannot be only replaced by the light of the candles, even of it was bright. It will not be bright enough because the oudor of chrysanthemums will always be there. The memories cannot be easily erased. She will not overcome her husband’s neither life nor death. The chrysanthemums which started her marriage life had ended it hoping for a better one, with a new light colors on it. Chrysanthemum falls on the ground leaving nothing behind, just an oudor of the chrysanthemums.
