Odour of Chrysanthemums
"Odour of Chrysanthemums" is a short story by D. H. Lawrence. It was written in the autumn of 1909 and after revision, was published in The English Review in July 1911. Lawrence later included this tale in his collection entitled The Prussian Officer and Other Stories, which Duckworth, his London publisher, bought out on 26 November 1914. An American edition was produced by B W Huebsch in 1916. Lawrence later adapted the story into the play The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd.
Plot
The story concerns Elizabeth Bates, a coal miner's wife. She has two children and is pregnant with a third. She angrily waits for her alcoholic husband to come home from the mine, but suspects that he is at the pub getting drunk. Elizabeth's neighbour runs to the pub, but her husband is nowhere to be found; it is later revealed that he died in an accident in the coal mine earlier that day. His fellow workmen return with his body, and as Elizabeth and her mother-in-law prepare him for burial, Elizabeth reflects on her husband and feels that they never really knew each other at all.
Symbolism
Industry
- Locomotive
- Mines
- Machinery: stands for the cruelty and violence, the alienation of life
- Noises: threatening and described in detail
Vegetation
- Vines: the vines remind of vegetation, thus life, but also of the crown worn by Jesus Christ
- Chrysanthemums: flowers offered by the husband on anniversaries, also kind of flowers deposited on graves at funerals
- Yew Tree: name of the pub where Elizabeth doesn't dare to go, tree that typically stands in a cemetery
- Grass: cut by the locomotive that passes by
Biblical names
- Anne: mother of the virgin Mary
- Elizabeth: significance "House of God" or "House of Abundance", is supposed to be sterile but brings life forth
- John: John the Baptist, beheaded and martyred
Life and death
- Children
- Chrysanthemums (see Vegetation)
- Fertility and sterility
- Light versus darkness: colours of the hair, furnace of industry and fire of death, candles, nighttime, fire of warmth and life in the hearth, life versus death
Film
In 2002 the story was adapted into a short film by Mark Partridge. The film won first prize at the Milan Film Festival.
Standard edition
- The Prussian Officer and Other Stories (1914), edited by John Worthen, Cambridge University Press, 1983, ISBN 0-521-24822-1
External links
- Cushman, Keith (2010): Critical materials: 'Odour of Chrysanthemums'., within the portal: "Odour of Chrysanthemums". A text in process. of the University of Nottingham.
- The University of Nottingham (2008): Portal to "Odour of Chrysanthemums". A text in process., writing on the text by scholars of the University of Nottingham.