Taaha Khan
787826
Mrs. Duzzie-Browne
ENG 4UO-H
Feb 10, 2022
Notes for Odour of Chrysanthemums
Atmosphere and Mood:
The atmosphere in the “Odour of Chrysanthemums” is sad and gloomy.
● “The fields were dreary and forsaken, and in the marshy strip that led to the whimsey, a
reedy pit-pond, the fowls had already abandoned their run among the alders, to roost in
the tarred fowl-house. The pit-bank loomed up beyond the pond, flames like red sores
licking its ashy sides, in the afternoon’s stagnant light.”
The mood of the story is depressed and tensed. Even when she is performing a simple task such
as sewing, the narrator gives us a glimpse of the tensed and depressed thoughts of Elizabeth.
● “Mrs Bates sat in her rocking-chair making a ‘singlet’ of thick cream-coloured flannel,
which gave a dull wounded sound as she tore off the grey edge.”
Symbolism:
● Chrysanthemums: Chrysanthemums symbolized the distance between Walter and
Elizabeth’s relationship. It is shown with Elizabeth’s reaction to when Annie gives her
mother chrysanthemums and she acts like she is sick of Walter.
“‘No,’ she said, ‘not
to me. 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.’”
Character:
Elizabeth is a mysterious and action-perceiving character. She doesn’t tell anyone about the
issues she faces with her marriage.
● Physical: She is a beautiful woman “She was a tall woman of imperious mien,
handsome, with definite black eyebrows. Her smooth black hair was parted exactly.”
● Does: She is very introverted and a person with a cold heart.
“In her womb was ice
of fear, because of this separate stranger with whom she had been living as one flesh.”
She also hates her husband. ““Eh, he’ll not come now till they bring him. There he’ll
stick! But he needn’t come rolling in here in his pit-dirt, for I won’t wash him. He can lie
on the floor—Eh, what a fool I’ve been, what a fool! And this is what I came here for, to
this dirty hole, rats and all, for him to slink past his very door.”
● Others’ opinions: The narrator thinks that she is not an ideal wife. “she looked at his
naked body, that she had known falsely.”
● Says: She is just concerned and worried about her children, neither her husband nor his
mother. “ ‘Oh, mother,’ she said, putting her hand on the old woman, ‘don’t waken th’
children, don’t waken th’ children.’”'
Theme:
● Trauma is necessary to free the mind of its unhealthy patterns.