Odour of Chrysanthemums Flashcards
What form and structure does odour of chrysanthemums have?
- Extremely long winded
- Time moving slowly
What imagery does odour of chrysanthemums have?
- Chrysanthmum flowers represent milestones
- Darkness and disillusionment
- time
- Coldness
- Lack thereof
What language does odour of chrysanthemums have?
- Pathetic fallacy
- “dreary” “forsaken”
What key themes does odour of chrysanthemums have?
- Death
- Loss
- Chrysanthemums
- Isolation of human soul
- Types of love
Quotes about expectation vs reality:
“there was a cold deathly smell of chrysanthemums”
“dishevelled pink chrysanthemums”
“the first time they brought home home drunk there was a brown chrysanthemum in his button hole”
- Flowers are supposed to bring happiness but only remind her of her failed relationship and disappointment
- Death of flowers= her marriage and foreshadowing
Quotes about being consumed and trapped:
“the pit bank looked up beyond the pond, flames like red sores liking its ashy sides”
- pond= femininity
- Fire= masculinity
Quotes about being alive but not living:
“withered”
“dreary and forsaken”
“Load threats of speed”
“clanking, stumbling”
“large boney vines clutched the house”
“passed like shadows”
“the miners in grey sombre groups”
Quotes about being trapped physically and emotionally:
“The room was in almost total darkness”
“we met in the darkness and fought in the darkness”
- Walter asphyxiated
- Conflict
- Confinement
- Unfamiliarity
Who are the main characters?
- Elisabeth
- Walter
- John (son)
- Unborn baby
- Walters mother
- Annie (daughter)
Quotes about repression and motherhood:
“her mouth was in disillusionment”
“imperious, mean, handsome with definite black eyebrows”
“her face was calm and set”
“bitter and stern”
- emotionally unavailable
- isn’t nurturing
- opposite of a typical “ideal”woman
Quotes about walter:
“when a man can do nothing with his money but make a beast of himself”
“walters got about bout on”
- Absent father
- unreliable
Quotes about john (son):
“he stood quite still, defiantly”
“he tore at the ragged whisper of chrysanthemums”
“she saw the father in her child’s indifference”
“to all but himself”
- He acts like his father
- similar destructive tendencies
Quotes about seeing beauty in destruction/ hope:
“the child put the pale chrysanthemums to her lips murmuring”
“don’t they smell beautiful”
- Annie
- Ignorance is bliss
- pure
- sees beauty
Quotes about disconnection to her unborn child:
“in her womb was ice of fear”
“separate stranger” “the child within her was a weight apart from her”
- Lack of connection
Quotes about walters mum:
“white as milk he is, clear as a twelve month baby”
“clear and clean and white”
“isn’t he beautiful, the lamb”
“the lamb the dear lamb”
- Idolisation of children
- Excuses for her sons actions
