Questions And Answers Of Elisa Allen In Her Garden By John Steinbeck
1.) When we first meet Elisa Allen in her garden, with what details does Steinbeck delineate her character for us?
She is thirty-five, with a "lean and strong" face, a figure that "looked blocked and heavy in her gardening costume"; her most feminine features are covered, hidden from view—she wears a loose dress, a heavy apron, a man's hat, "clodhopper shoes," and gloves. She is also described as full of energy—apparently too much stored, unexpressed energy" ". . . even her work with the scissors was over-eager, over-powerful
2.) Elisa works inside a “wire fence that protected her flower garden from cattle and dogs and chickens” (paragraph 9). What does this wire fence suggest?
Trapped under a “grey-flannel fog” that encloses the valley like a lid on a pot (par. 1), Elisa works behind the symbolic barrier of the wire fence that protects her flower garden and her from the wider world. Custom denies her and her restless energy the adequate outlets that men enjoy. She cannot buy and sell cattle as her husband does. As a rancher’s wife, she cannot drift about the countryside working as the traveling repairman does, though his unfettered …show more content…
Notice her tearing off her soiled clothes, her scrubbing her body with pumice (paragraph 93–94).
As her strong hands press the seeds in the “bright new flower pot,” the traveling salesman stood over her (par. 64). Elisa’s battle with her stifled sexuality is conveyed in detail (“her hand went out toward his legs in the greasy black trousers. . . . She crouched low like a fawning dog” (par. 75). William R. Osborne demonstrates that Steinbeck, in revising the story, heightened Elisa’s earthiness and the sexual overtones of her encounter with the repairman (Modern Fiction Studies 12 [1966]: 479–84). The revised version as it appeared in The Long Valley (New York: Viking, 1938) is the text used in this
She is thirty-five, with a "lean and strong" face, a figure that "looked blocked and heavy in her gardening costume"; her most feminine features are covered, hidden from view—she wears a loose dress, a heavy apron, a man's hat, "clodhopper shoes," and gloves. She is also described as full of energy—apparently too much stored, unexpressed energy" ". . . even her work with the scissors was over-eager, over-powerful
2.) Elisa works inside a “wire fence that protected her flower garden from cattle and dogs and chickens” (paragraph 9). What does this wire fence suggest?
Trapped under a “grey-flannel fog” that encloses the valley like a lid on a pot (par. 1), Elisa works behind the symbolic barrier of the wire fence that protects her flower garden and her from the wider world. Custom denies her and her restless energy the adequate outlets that men enjoy. She cannot buy and sell cattle as her husband does. As a rancher’s wife, she cannot drift about the countryside working as the traveling repairman does, though his unfettered …show more content…
Notice her tearing off her soiled clothes, her scrubbing her body with pumice (paragraph 93–94).
As her strong hands press the seeds in the “bright new flower pot,” the traveling salesman stood over her (par. 64). Elisa’s battle with her stifled sexuality is conveyed in detail (“her hand went out toward his legs in the greasy black trousers. . . . She crouched low like a fawning dog” (par. 75). William R. Osborne demonstrates that Steinbeck, in revising the story, heightened Elisa’s earthiness and the sexual overtones of her encounter with the repairman (Modern Fiction Studies 12 [1966]: 479–84). The revised version as it appeared in The Long Valley (New York: Viking, 1938) is the text used in this