Clothing is able to be used as a way of exemplifying one’s personalitiy. Whether it is showing what band you like, your style, or what food you like, it is a visual aid into someone’s character. Elisa’s clothing in “The Chyrsanthemums” is a visual representation of her internal conflict between masculine and femine qualtities and how she is trying to understand how she wants to be treated. 

Elisa shows a want of masculinity from the very start with her outer appearance, “Her figure looked blocked and heavy in her gardening costume, a man’s black hat pulled low down over her eyes, clodhopper shoes, a figure printed dress almost completely covered by a big corduroy apron…” (Steinbeck 1). A woman proudly owns her body and is confortable in it, but in Elisa’s case, she is hiding every announce of her body that screams female. Her face is completely covered by a hat serving as a mask, her dress is hidden, and the apron and hat together shapes her figure into a man. 

Further down the road in the story she encounters a man that is able to bring the realization in Eliza’s eyes as to why she is feeling a sense of masculinity and how she wishes to be treated. The man puts the idea of strengthen and independence in her head. Even though the man shreds to light on independence, once the man leaves and Elisa is on her own, she remembers her date with her husband. This snaps her back into her state of feminine and tossing aside the masculinity:

“In the bathroom she tore off her spoiled clothes and flung them into the corner. And then she scrubbed herself with a little block of pumice, legs and thighs, loins and chest and arms, until her skin was scratched and red. When she had dried herself she stood in front of the mirror and locked at her body. She tightened her stomach and threw out her chest” (Steinbeck 6).

This example is a turning point for Elisa. She is literally shredding her manly skin and way of thinking to the core only leaving what is the natural, original state. Elisa straightens up her body’s appearance just like women do to impress her man. She is throwing the masculinity thoughts to the back of her mind, the very corner, but they are not completely gone. 

Following Elisa’s transformative bath, she dresses herself, “After a while she began to dress slowly. She put on her newest underclothing and her nicest stockings and the dress which was the symbol of her prettiness” (Steinbeck 6). This example out of the text is showing her feminine side and accepting that she is a female and enjoys female qualities, such as being taken out for dinner and wine into town. Elisa falls back in line behind her husband where she belongs or feels that is where she has to belong. 

Although her outer appearance has surrendered to the feminine side of dates and dresses and wine, Elisa still has a masculine want of strength or independence. She has the desire to be strong like a man, but it is not a burning flame inside her. “Henry stopped short and looked at her. ‘Why—why, Elisa. You look so nice!’ ‘Nice? You think I look nice? What do you mean by nice?’” Here, Elisa is not satisfied by the word nice, which is a complementing adjective women would be flattered by, but she wants something more than nice. Elisa wants something with meaning of inner quality. “Henry blundered on. ‘I don’t know. I mean you look different, strong and happy.’ ‘I am strong?  Yes, strong What do you mean ‘strong’?”(Steinbeck 7). Furthermore in this conversation she is searching for Henry to say the right thing without having to tell him, even though she doesn’t know specifically what she want him to say about her. Her husband finally finds the words that please her but she is questioning what he means by the word strong, because she doesn’t quite understand yet what it means herself to be strong. 

Many ideas and objects can portray another idea or person, and can show feeling or insite. Elisa has inner conflict in understanding who she is and how she wants to be. The descriptive clothing in the story relating to Elisa allows the audience to understand her confict and feel her misery in finding her place and how she is to be treated through the visualness of her clothing and behavior.