Odour of Chrysanthemums

 “He [John] was dressed in trousers and waistcoat of cloth that was too thick and hard for the size of the garments. They were evidently cut down from a man’s clothes.”

This simple description indicates the Bates’ economic circumstances—they cannot afford children’s clothes for John, so have repurposed adults’ clothes. It is also thematically significant—John is already being pushed into the role he will have to take as an adult, the man of a household. The clothes are tough and uncomfortable, showing the physically tough, harsh life that awaits John as a poor working man.

“As the mother watched her son’s sullen little struggle with the wood, she saw herself in his silence and pertinacity; she saw the father in her child’s indifference to all but himself.”

John’s sullenness as he struggles with his practical task embodies the idea that a life of physical struggle impacts a person emotionally, too, as this is already beginning with John. Elizabeth can see how he is already being shaped by her and Walter’s behaviors, which have arisen in response to the hardships they face. “Pertinacity” is a nuanced choice of word, with connotations of a person hard to get on with (dour or obstinate) but also of someone tenacious with the fortitude to survive. The distance between Elizabeth and Walter is also apparent in her descriptions of them, foreshadowing her later revelations.

 “As she dropped piece after piece of coal on the red fire, the shadows fell on the walls, till the room was almost in total darkness.”

Feeding the fire with coal demonstrates how the colliery provides the family with their means of survival—it provides the world with fuel and the workers with their livelihood. However, the color red and the image of a flame are typically associated with life, warmth, and passion, so their gradual concealment by the coal also shows how mining labor wears away at the workers’ vitality. The room’s descent into darkness creates an ominous atmosphere and adds to the theme of death and decay that runs throughout the story.

“‘I canna see,’ grumbled the invisible John. In spite of herself, the mother laughed.”

John’s invisibility reinforces the distance between Elizabeth and him, but this contrasts with the humor of the moment. Their relationship has nuance—his grumbling indicates that he has started to inherit her disillusionment but also shows that they still have a typical parent-child dynamic in which he complains to her. Even in her frustration, she can’t help but laugh at this. It is a tender moment in which the humanity of the characters comes through. Elizabeth’s sense of social alienation becomes even more tragic when juxtaposed with these glimpses into a normalcy and familial intimacy that cannot triumph over the story’s ultimate horrors.

“‘And this is what I came here for, to this dirty hole, rats and all, for him to slink past his very door. Twice last week—he’s begun now—’ She silenced herself, and rose to clear the table.”

It is implied that Elizabeth is from a different background than Walter and that her bitterness partly comes from being trapped in this horrible environment because of marrying him, only for him to fail her expectations. The grim reality of their physical environment with its rats and dirt is clear, leaning into Social Realism. Her distress is evident in her dialogue—she cuts herself off twice, indicating her heightened emotional state—but she does not allow herself to remain with these thoughts or emotions, returning to her domestic duties instead.

“When Mrs. Bates came down, the room was strangely empty, with a tension of expectancy. She took up her sewing and stitched for some time without raising her head.”

Elizabeth’s activity here is not only an example of her domestic labor but also has a nervous quality, as she does not look up from it, distracting herself from the foreboding atmosphere in the room. The lonely, tense image of Elizabeth waiting in the empty room is one of a number of contrasting tableaus Lawrence creates in the same space: the small, fire-lit family before learning of Walter’s death and the awkward group of colliers in their pit clothes bringing in the body afterward. This middle tableau of the empty room is a moment of suspension between the two, a pause that builds tension.

“He stood perplexed, as if answering a charge of deserting his mate. Elizabeth Bates, now again certain of disaster, hastened to reassure him.”

Mr. Rigley’s anxiousness about leaving Walter in the mine foreshadows something having gone wrong, adding to the growing sense of foreboding in the story’s tone. His perplexed manner builds the theme of death and decay by showing its incomprehensibility, a universal human experience. Elizabeth, meanwhile, hides her true feelings and tries to reassure him—again, Lawrence gives her character nuance, showing how she acts in ways that simultaneously distance herself from others while also caring for them.

“‘What am I working myself up like this for?’ she said pitiably to herself, ‘I s’ll only be doing myself some damage.’ She took out her sewing again.”

Elizabeth is again shown suppressing her emotions, this time anxiety and fear as she waits to hear of her husband. Despite their estrangement and Elizabeth’s sense of detachment, Lawrence humanizes her, showing her strong emotional concern for him, but her sense of self-preservation wins through. She must be stoic for her own sake, that of the child she is carrying, and the household’s—as usual, she returns to a domestic task.

“The fountains of her tears were stopped by Elizabeth’s directness.”

This quotation epitomizes the difference between Elizabeth and Walter’s mother. Elizabeth embodies Realism and practical response, contrasting with Walter’s mother, whose demonstrative expression of heightened emotion is more in keeping with literary Romanticism. Lawrence even shifts the style of his writing to reflect the perspective and thematic significance of each character: Walter’s mother’s grief is described poetically, using the simile of a fountain to describe her tears, while Elizabeth’s response is summarized in very succinct language.

“The door came open, and the two women saw a collier backing into the room, holding one end of a stretcher, on which they could see the nailed pit-boots of the dead man.”

This is a stark image of death imposed on the everyday, domestic scene of the house. The specificity of the image is striking—the boots coming through the door first, and the detail of them as “nailed pit-boots.” This enhances the Realism of the scene and may reflect the clarity with which Lawrence remembered the sight of his brother’s body, with a similar tableau repeated in many of his works.

“When they arose, saw him lying in the naïve dignity of death, the women stood arrested in fear and respect.”

The characterization of death as imbued with “naïve dignity” implies that life, particularly the hard life of a collier, strips people of their dignity and erodes their innocence, which is restored by death when a person’s daily struggles are over. Walter’s mother and Elizabeth are tied together at this moment, sharing the same emotions and the same action. This indicates how despite their differences, they are bonded by the common ground of their relationships to Walter, but more fundamentally, by experiences common to all humanity—loss, death, and love.

“In her womb was ice of fear, because of this separate stranger with whom she had been living as one flesh. Was this what it all meant—utter, intact separateness, obscured by heat of living? In dread she turned her face away.”

This quotation shows the depths of Elizabeth’s feelings of social alienation and how her estrangement from Walter is a microcosm for, and an inciting factor in, her broader feelings of isolation as a fundamental part of being human. She even feels fear and coldness regarding her unborn child. It is implied that heat and life are fleeting, illusions that obscure the inevitable realities of death and separation. She also feels shame throughout this section of the story, and this quotation illuminates why—she feels disturbed by her sexual relationship with her husband because of how their physical intimacy juxtaposes with their emotional estrangement.

“And her soul died in her for fear: she knew she had never seen him, he had never seen her, they had met in the dark and had fought in the dark, not knowing whom they met nor whom they fought. And now she saw, and turned silent in seeing.”

This quotation is an example of Lawrence’s use of light and dark throughout the story to symbolize hope and life—and separation and death—respectively. Here, it is a metaphor for the way husband and wife did not really know each other. Lawrence uses this broad metaphorical language to step beyond the specific, material context of Elizabeth and Walter’s relationship, implying that their differences were more fundamental than their everyday frustrations and squabbles: They never truly knew each other. In the broad image of undefined darkness, Lawrence takes a step back from socially specific and literal realism to raise wider questions about the human experience and whether isolation is, like death, ultimately a fundamental part of being human.