Assignment #4--Criticism

I’m going to chose the story “The Chrysanthemums,” by John Steinbeck is a good example of gender criticism. Gender criticism is “the examination of the ways in which sexual identity influences the creation, interpretation, and evaluation of literary works” something that was shown a lot in the Chyrsanthemums. Throughout the beginning of the story Steinbeck shows Elisa as a strong independent women who stands up for herself and doesn’t seem weak at all, which is not your typical female stereotype. But towards the end of story Elisa breaks down and turns into this weak sensitive character where she portrays the typical female persona that makes readers say “oh that’s a weak character”. It’s like she was shown as a character that breaks through all the gender barriers and then is zapped back to the gender roles that society has set for us. The use of gender criticism helps the reader understand the story and how Elisa is portrayed as a women as well as the hardships that she had to face. It also helps the reader see what was expected of the women at the time in how to act and behave. One is example is the stress that she got from the man because of what happened. She is already in a very stressful stage in her life because she wants to be treated equal to men but it seems that the time that she’s living in women are looked down upon. Steinbeck does a really good job in letting the readers know how women dealt with these problems and how they just kept to themselves and showed a brave front so no one would see their weak points. He also uses gender criticism really well and lets the reader understand everything that he wrote in his story.