Female Characters in Steinbeck's Fiction
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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 Elisa AllenÆs appearance, actions, and speech depict some typical frustrations of a woman during SteinbeckÆs time, but that she is unique in her attempts to liberate herself from SteinbeckÆs typically masculine world (Renner 306). As such, Elisa Allen is SteinbeckÆs attempt to explore the authentic woman and her world, with all of its frustrations and yearnings for a freer existence.Steinbeck spent the Great Depression in a house given to him by his father in Pacific Grove, California, where he survived by living on the land. From this vantage point, he composed his first successful novel, Tortilla Flats (1935), a warmly humorous, episodic treatment of the lives of the Mexican-Indian-Caucasian mix peopleùthe paisanosùwho lived in the Salinas Valley and whose earthy, uninhibited lives provided a colorful contrast to the valleyÆs more ôrespectableö society (Timmerman 84). Thus be
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d 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 this description noteworthy is its focus on the characteristics that have enabled Elisa to survive. She wears a ômanÆs black hat,ö and her dress is ôalmost completely covered.ö The covered dress symbolizes the fact that ElisaÆs strength, almost masculine at the opening of the story, will transform. The strength combined with her love of her creation, her flowersùthe ômasculineö and the ôfeminineö--could be the very thing to push her to try for ômoreö than a woman can dare to hope for.
Elisa is frustrated as a woman, and
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Approximate Word count = 2338
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
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