Women Characters in Works of John Steinbeck
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The purpose of this paper is to offer an analysis of the women characters in the works of John Steinbeck, with a special emphasis placed on Elisa Allen, the main character in his short story, ôThe Chrysanthemums.ö Most of SteinbeckÆs fiction is concerned with his native California, with the Great Depression and how people endured it, and with the deprivation that farm workers in the west suffered generally (Beegel et al. 54). Many of his novels and short stories take place in the Salinas area, and his characters often reflect the values of the working people--a people willing to work hard, required to endure adversity, and simple in their needs and lifestyles. SteinbeckÆs Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Grapes of Wrath (1939) perhaps epitomizes this primary concern with ôthe peopleö and the land and how they lived their lives as farmers working the land (ôSteinbeckö 2). This essay will offer a very short biographical sketch of Steinbeck, bringing out the themes that seemed to concern him the most. It will then examine three women characters from his other works, including Ma Joad and Rose from The Grapes of Wrath, (1939), and Ruth Tiflin, JodyÆs mother in ôLeader of the People,ö (1945). These women characters have been selected because they help us to set the character of Elisa Allen into a context which emphasizes both her similarities to other Steinbeck women characters and those traits which make her distinctive as a æSteinbeck woman.Æ It will be argued that Elis
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l the rest of the world. On every side it sat like a lid on the mountains and made of the great valley a closed pot. On the broad, level land floor the gang plows bit deep and left the black earth shining like metal where the shares had cut. On the foothill ranches across the Salinas River, the yellow stubble fields seemed to be bathed in pale cold sunshine, but there was no sunshine in the valley now in December. (ôChrysanthemumsö)
Like the land, Elisa is ôclosed offö from the rest of the world. It is winter, now, and there is little for her to do, so she is at work in her garden. And also like the ôblack earth,ö Elisa is ôshining like metal,ö at work in her ôclosed potö of a world.
Our first introduction to Elisa is in the garden:
She was thirty-five. Her face was lean and strong and her eyes were as clear as water. Her figure looked blocked and heavy in her gardening costume, a manÆs black hat pulled low down over her eyes, clodhopper shoes, a figured print dress almost completely covered by a big corduroy apron with four big pocketsö (ôChrysanthemumsö).
Here, ElisaÆs femininity is hidden behind her work clothes, her figure ôblocked and heavy,ö and her female attributes subsumed under the gardening costume. What makes t
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Approximate Word count = 2483
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)
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