Odour of Chrysanthemums

• Odour of Chrysanthemums - written by Lawrence
• Odour of Chrysanthemums -

  Quotes -

  Memory:

  • ‘It was the Chrysanthemums when I married him, and chrysanthemums when you were born, and the first time they ever brought him home drunk he’d got brown chrysanthemums in his button-hole’

  Identity:

  • ‘She seemed to be occupied by her husband’

  Relationships:

  • She describes her husband as ‘strange
  • ’Two isolated beings, far apart’
• Odour of Chrysanthemums -

  Summary -

  • Train passes mining town and mother and son watch miners go home after work
  • Waiting for the husband to return home from work
  • Husband doesn’t come home, Elizabeth assumes he is drinking at the pub
  • She doesn’t want to worry the children
  • Later, she finds out her husband died in the mines
• Odour of Chrysanthemums -

  Context -

  • Highlights hardship of lives of miners
  • Elizabeth is a stereotypical working-class woman
  • Industrial revolution - showing degradation of natural world