Odour of Chrysanthemums

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1911

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Background

Story Analysis

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

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Symbols & Motifs

Chrysanthemums

The central symbol in “Odour of Chrysanthemums” is the titular chrysanthemums, which appear throughout the story. Flowers are often associated with life and beauty, and the sprig tucked into Elizabeth’s apron is symbolically linked to this by their proximity to her pregnant belly. However, chrysanthemums also have an association with death in many European countries, and the chrysanthemum bush by the house is withering as fall passes.

Annie appreciates their beauty and scent, symbolizing the optimism of youth, but Elizabeth describes how their meaning has become tainted for her and bitterly lists her associations: “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” (8). Here, the chrysanthemums represent the decay of her domestic, familial life, particularly her relationship with Walter and his alcohol addiction.

Just as she tries to connect with Walter’s body but fails, she still longs to find beauty in the flowers, holding them against her face, tucking them into her apron, and keeping two vases of them in the parlor. However, she removes them from her apron during her reminiscence with Annie, and one of the vases is knocked over by a collier bringing in Walter’s body. These incidents represent her disillusionment and the household ruin brought about by Walter’s death.

The Winding Engine

The winding engine is an important motif that reoccurs throughout the story. This machine was used to winch cages up and down the mine shafts, between the surface and the active areas of the mine. This is how coal and the colliers themselves were transported.

Elizabeth’s emotional reactions to the sound or lack of it also give insight into her character and daily life. Initially, hearing the winding engine tells her that Walter should be returning home soon, establishing the dramatic tension for the whole story as he continually fails to appear. When she notices that “all was deserted: she could not hear the winding-engines” (5), she assumes Walter has been brought up but hasn’t come home, informing her growing anger and bitterness as time passes.

Later, however, knowing Walter is not in the usual pub, she has a visceral reaction to hearing the winding engine—she feels a “painful sweep of her blood” (13). By the time she knows there has been an accident, the sound of the winding engine presages that she will soon learn the details. This preempting of possible news builds tension for Elizabeth and the reader. It also gives insight into the tense nature of life at a colliery with its high rate of accidents—the sound of the winding engine can indicate the safe return of the colliers, or it can be the herald of bad news.

Cleaning with a Flannel

Elizabeth uses a flannel to clean her children before sending them to bed and later uses one to clean her husband’s body. The recurrence of this motif firmly places Elizabeth into a world of domestic labor and caregiving duties to her family but juxtaposes her caring actions with her internal emotional state.

When she cleans her children with the flannel, she is largely preoccupied with her frustration toward her husband, and the children are quiet as they are anxious, too. A moment that could develop into tenderness when she looks down at their hair instead sparks a flash of anger in her. The children “hid[e] their faces in her skirts for comfort” (9), a partial intimacy in which their faces are still concealed from her. This tableau of Elizabeth cleaning them with a flannel juxtaposes the ideal image of her role as a mother caring for her children with the more emotionally removed reality of their relationship.

Similarly, the tableau of Elizabeth cleaning her husband’s body with a flannel juxtaposes her wifely role against the alienation she feels from Walter. She uses the tender action as an attempt to soothe her inner turmoil by endowing their relationship with an intimacy it did not really have: “[S]he was afraid with a bottomless fear, so she ministered to him” (20). Her insistence earlier in the story that she would not clean him if he was brought in drunk gives this scene dramatic irony and also shows that this is a typical duty of a collier’s wife, though Elizabeth is disillusioned with it.