She knew."  The tinker has made a mockery of her gift, and he has recalled to her her dissatisfaction with her restricted life that is bound by the fences of the ranch setting.

This is an excellent short story that features the life of one woman, Eliza, who feels trapped and enclosed by life. It is important to note how the setting adds to this feeling of oppression and entrapment through its physical details. Note how the story opens and the description of the weather that we are given:

The high grey-flannel fog of winter closed off the Salinas Valley from the sky and from all the rest of the world. On every side it sat like a lid of the mountains and made of the great valley a closed pot.

Note how the Salinas Valley, the setting for this story, is "closed off" by the winter fog and effectively isolates it from all other forms of life. The valley is described as a "closed pot" with the fog acting as a "lid." From the very beginning, then, the oppressive and almost claustraphobic nature of Eliza's life is made clear, which helps us to understand the way she responds to any interest whatsoever in her life, even if it comes from the tinker. Her intense, almost uncontrollable desire to reach out and touch his foot comes as a result of being trapped in her life with no form of understanding, empathy or outlet for who she is. Setting in this story is thus vitally important in how it builds up our understanding of character.

The short story "The Chrysanthemums" by John Steinbeck tells of a couple living on a cattle ranch on the foothills of the Salinas Valley in California. The woman, Elisa, is thirty-five years old. She and her husband, Henry, have no children, and their marriage seems to have become dissatisfactory and somewhat formalized. She finds great joy in tending to her garden, especially her chrysanthemums, which grow large and beautiful under her care.

An itinerant repairman comes by in his wagon and stops at the ranch. At first Elisa is dismissive, but when the man expresses interest in the chrysanthemums, her attitude changes. She longs for the freedom the man experiences in his travels, and she gladly prepares some chrysanthemum shoots for a customer of his. In the end, however, as she and her husband are driving to town to celebrate a cattle-selling deal, she sees the shoots and soil by the side of the road. The man has thrown out her carefully prepared gift and kept only the pot. She realizes that he had been deceiving her. The new vigor she had received after his visit dissipates, and she abruptly feels old.

In the opening paragraph, Steinbeck writes of a ceiling of fog closing off the valley from the outside. This foreshadows Elisa's closed-in world that readers are about to discover. Her husband really doesn't understand her or properly appreciate her gift in tending the chrysanthemums. She is also unable to grasp the stranger's deception until it is too late. The yellow from the stubble in the fields gives an impression of sunshine, but it is an illusion, just as the brightness Elisa feels when the stranger pretends to have an interest in her flowers turns out to be based on false impressions.

In the second paragraph there is further foreshadowing of Elisa's ultimate disappointment. Steinbeck writes of a light wind that brings hope of rain, but in fact the fog does not usually presage rain, just as the stranger's visit seems to awaken hope in Elisa, but it proves to be misplaced hope.

With the description in the first two paragraphs of the dormant Salinas Valley that in the winter is a "closed pot," there is the suggestion of what is to come. "The grey-flannel fog of winter" shuts the valley off from its surroundings much as Elisa's passionate nature lies dormant as it, too, awaits the sunshine of human interaction.

On a ranch with no other women, Elisa Allen finds little outlet for her creative drive and energy except for her work in the flower garden in which she zealously cuts the old chrysanthemum stalks and digs with "her terrier fingers" in the ground to remove any pests that might attack her flowers. Much like the fog described in the opening paragraph, "a cloud of hair" hangs in her eyes.

When the tinker pulls up with his wagon and Elisa talks with him, she becomes hopeful of sharing some human emotion with this vibrant man. And, because Elisa tells him she has no work for him, he lingers in the chance that there may yet be something for him; then, noticing how she attends her chrysanthemums, he asks her about them under the pretext of obtaining some seedlings for another woman. Eagerly and passionately, Elisa responds with much the same manner as the farmers in the second paragraph are "hopeful of a good rain."

But, "rain and fog do not go together." Elisa's passion is not matched by the tinker, nor is it stirred enough in her husband as they head to town for an evening out. Certainly, her excitement for their evening is diminished when she finds the flower which she has given the tinker thrown out onto the road, causing her to cry.