Odour of Chrysanthemums

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that Elizabeth has not connected emotionally with Walter, but has only set him up as the father of the family, not as a partner. His death brings self-realization to Elizabeth and causes her to question her life and her behavior.

Though Elizabeth initially emerges as a long-suffering wife who deserves sympathy, her response to Walter's death reveals that she is not as blameless for her unhappiness as she first appears. At first, Walter seems to be the clear cause of Elizabeth's difficult life. He regularly comes home drunk after working in the mine, making the local pub more of a home than his actual home. Elizabeth is accustomed to the dull, dreary routine of waiting for him, but she still feels anger and annoyance when dinner must be delayed.

In my opinion, these circumstances are the factor that leads Elizabeth to always comment "bitterly" about what she said and she also describes herself as a "bitter" person. At times she seems so harsh that I may wonder whether she is ...

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represent a dual meaning for Elizabeth. She loves the flowers, but they last briefly in the fall. To Elizabeth, the chrysanthemums represent the good in her life and the bad times that have doused her dreams. Chrysanthemums were in her wedding bouquet, and Walter gave her chrysanthemums when her daughter was born. On the other hand, the first time that Walter was brought home drunk, he had a brown chrysanthemum in his buttonhole. Bitterly, she thinks to herself that this is what her life has come: Waiting on a drunken man.

The smell from these flowers suddenly becomes clearly associated with sadness and death. When the writer wrote "There was a cold, deathly smell of chrysanthemums ...

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