Odour of Chrysanthemums

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1911

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Themes

The Inevitability of Death and Decay

Death and decay are at the center of “Odour of Chrysanthemums,” apparent in the most prominent symbol running through the text—the chrysanthemums—and the primary event of the narrative—the death of Walter Bates.

Walter’s death is painted as tragic but has an inevitable quality to it: He has been dead for hours by the time Elizabeth and the reader learn of it, and it is foreshadowed throughout the text. One of the ways this is done is through Elizabeth’s growing fear, which illustrates a constant awareness of risk. Mining accidents like this were common in communities such as Brinsley, and Lawrence drew on his own uncle’s death in one such accident. Elizabeth has also experienced another death recently (her mother’s) and is warned about a third potential death by Walter’s mother—that of her unborn child: “You mustn’t let it upset you, Lizzie—or you know what to expect” (14). This shows the fragility of human life and death as commonplace—something expected that one should try to move on quickly, as Elizabeth’s father is doing.

The slow progression of the living characters toward death is also highlighted by drawing attention to the physical changes humans undergo as they age. Walter’s mother is introduced with a description of her decrepit physical appearance: “[H]er face all wrinkled and lamentable” (13). Even the youngest character, Annie, has hair that is “just ripening from gold to brown” (5). In the natural world, brown is associated with fall and decay; the youth of a child may seem far removed from death, but even they are slowly aging.

In keeping with this, the story is set in the fall. Elizabeth is aware of the oncoming darkness of winter: “[S]he would have to keep [Annie] at home the dark winter days” (5). Lawrence fills the opening page with imagery of deteriorating vegetation such as “withered oak leaves” and “ragged cabbages” (1), establishing a clear tone. The house is surrounded by wilting plants. The chrysanthemums of the title, an important symbol of death throughout the story, are “dishevelled,” and Elizabeth describes how “the first time they ever brought him [Walter] home drunk, he’d got brown chrysanthemums in his button-hole” (8), symbolizing the decay of their relationship and again using the color brown. By setting it at this time of year and showing the annual dwindling of the natural world, Lawrence paints decay as something recurring and predestined. Even the time of day suggests this—“Odour of Chrysanthemums” opens in the late afternoon, but by the end, it is night. This reflects the mood of the story and underlines the inevitability of mortality, just as the light of the day always dies.

The Reality of Labor

The colliery where the story is set also contributes to the decay of the natural world. It has scarred the landscape: “The pit-bank loomed up beyond the pond, flames like red sores licking its ashy sides” (1). It impacts the mortality of the people living there, even while providing a livelihood for them. The reality of labor for people in this time period, both domestic and industrial, was familiar to Lawrence from his working-class upbringing.

The death of Walter is an embodiment of the ultimate toll industrial labor can take on a person. Following the Industrial Revolution, many people still worked in dangerous environments such as factories, where the machinery or materials they worked with presented a risk. However, coal mining was a particularly dangerous industry with even higher rates of injury and death and long hours. Mr. Rigley’s scar is another example of this: It is “a wound got in the pit, a wound in which the coal-dust remained blue like tattooing” (11). His labor in the mine has marked him as permanently as a tattoo would, and the coal dust is even inside his head. His labor has shaped him so deeply that it is now part of who he is.

The Rigleys’ general appearance and that of their home also reflect the demands of labor more broadly. They seem to have a lower social status than Elizabeth: They treat her deferentially and are quick to offer to run errands to help her, so they may have an even more labor-intensive existence. They are physically haggard—“raw-boned” and “bony” (10, 11)—and their home is messy and crowded. Elizabeth notes that there are 12 different pairs of shoes scattered in the room, showing there are 12 children, which is why Mrs. Rigley’s domestic labor is so demanding. Families of this size were common in working-class households in England in this period, entailing huge amounts of work for women, who performed domestic labor and childcare while often working other jobs, too. In a mining community in 1909, this would have been labor at the surface of the mine as women were banned from working underground after 1842.

Elizabeth Bates is a “till woman,” meaning that she does this type of mine work and is also a mother running her household, like Mrs. Rigley. While she may not have so many children, she is always busy with a domestic task during the story: emerging from the chicken coop at the start, preparing tea, sewing, and tending the fire. While Mr. Rigley has been physically marked by working in the mine, this constant labor has had a mental impact on Elizabeth. She is bitter and angry. When Annie admires the sight of the fire, Elizabeth asks her why because in her eyes, it is a job to tend to rather than a pretty sight—“It’ll want mending directly” (6). This interaction juxtaposes the innocence of youth and the bleak practicality learned through a working-class existence.

Elizabeth forces herself to be practical even when she finds out her husband is dead; she only weeps “a little” before she “remember[s] that they [are] bringing him home, and she must be ready” (16). Having suppressed her emotional response, she later finds she is unable to cry: “[S]he strove to weep […]. But she could not” (22). The reality of labor for Elizabeth is that it has reduced her ability to appreciate life and experience emotions. To some degree, it has alienated her from her own humanity.

Social Alienation

The reality of labor may also be one of the reasons for Elizabeth’s social alienation—her isolation from those around her. This alienation, specifically from her husband, is the focus of her climactic realizations toward the end of the story, but the theme is also threaded throughout the narrative and impacts her relationships more generally.

When she fears her husband is dead or injured, her first response is not emotional distress but calculating how the household can survive financially. She thinks about “how tiresome he would be to nurse” (14), categorizing his hypothetical needs as a wearing practical duty—it does not occur to her at this point to feel concerned for him as a human being, let alone as her husband. She is alienated from the potential human connection between them. She briefly imagines a future in which she is able to stop him from drinking while she nurses him and initially feels an emotional response: “The tears offered to come to her eyes at the picture. But what sentimental luxury was this she was beginning?—She turned to consider the children. At any rate she was absolutely necessary for them. They were her business” (14). So pressing is the need to take care of practicalities that indulging in emotions is a “luxury,” and this also impacts Elizabeth’s relationship with her children. Her care for them has become “business,” showing that she takes her familial duty seriously, but the relationships themselves have become emotionally distant. She is not able to engage with Annie’s appreciation of the fire and the chrysanthemums, and John is sullen and quiet, physically hidden from her when she first calls for him. Once he comes into the house, he remains shrouded in literal darkness in the shadows of the room for several pages—“their faces were hidden from each other” (6). This visual metaphor reflects the emotional disconnect between them and the idea that despite their proximity, they do not truly know each other.

Elizabeth’s social alienation also includes the other characters in the story. She tunes out Walter’s mother and disapproves of her father remarrying so soon after her mother’s death (which implies a distance in her parents’ relationship, too). She is formal with the Rigleys and often does not say what she really thinks, pretending not to disapprove of their untidy home or turning down Mr. Rigley’s offer to help when she actually means to accept it. This social alienation, scattered throughout the story, is strongest in her relationship with the absent, then dead, Walter. After stripping the body, Elizabeth herself becomes consciously aware of it—“She had nothing to do with him” (20). She wants to close this gap; she is “trying to get some connection. But she could not. She was driven away. He was impregnable” (20). She spends the closing pages of the story in anguish over “[t]he horror of the distance between them” (23), the seeds of which are apparent right from the start. Her feeling of social alienation is so intense by this point that she even feels separate from the unborn baby in her womb: “[T]he child within her was a weight apart from her” (20). At the opening of the story, she doesn’t know where her husband is; by the end of the story, she realizes she does not know who he is.