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... e a 'good bitter smell' as Elisa replied (399). As he plants a story about needing some chrysanthemums for another customer, she once again begins to warm to him. Elisa now welcomes this man into her world, she invites him, ''Come into the yard'' (400).
Now inside the gate, she forgets about acting like a lady to the outside world: 'The gloves were forgotten now. She kneeled on the ground by the starting bed and dug up the sandy soil with her fingers and scooped it into the bright new flower pot... With her strong fingers she pressed them into the sand and tamped around them with her knuckles' (400). This not a 'feminine' action because it shows her physical strength; it shows her natural power. She is not simply an excellent gardener but she actually communes with nature. She tells the man about the way that she becomes alive when working with her chrysanthemums, the way her hands become 'planting hands' (400).
It is this term which best describes the feminine power Elisa receives from nature and feels as she works in her garden. She attempts to explain this feelings to the man saying, 'Everything goes down into your fingertips... They " re with the plant... When you " re like that you can't do anything wrong' (400). For Elisa, this is the ultimate expression of herself. The narrator tells us, 'She was kneeling on the ground looking up at him.
Her breast swelled passionately' (400). She bares her soul and in effect shows all of her power to this man. While she physically is beneath him, she believes them on an equal level in their natural power. She questions him: 'Do you see that? Can you understand that?' (400). Again she tries to find something in common with the man and trusts she knows how he must feel traveling alone across the land.
For a second time, Elisa seems to turn this mistaken connection into something sexual. Remembering the night sky she says, 'Every pointed star gets driven into your body. It's like that. Hot and sharp and& amp; em dash; lovely' (400). From her position still on the ground where she is closest to her power source, she reaches out towards the man's pants. With the narrator's description of her like a fawning dog, she seems to have something akin to puppy love.
But this show of feminine power is incomprehensible to the man who turns the conversation back to business. Elisa realizes her mistake and gives into the man, finding him a few old pots to fix. Now both head into the man's world through the gate where Elisa watches the man work with his anvil and hammer, men's tools. As she watches the man work on the saucepans she ponders aloud doing the same type of work and travel he does saying 'I wish women could do such things' (401). The peddler protested with a typical male response, 'It ain't the right kind of life for a woman' (401). Elisa tells the stranger, 'You might be surprised to have a rival sometime...
I could show you what a woman might do' (245). This reveals how Elisa feels about her life and the lives of woman of the time period. Although they want to break free of the fences around them, it would be socially unacceptable to do so. As the man left she whispered, ''That's a bright direction.
There's a glowing there'' (401). She is imaging this peddler's freedom, both lateral and vertical mobility in society. Now Elisa turns to preparing herself for the evening out with her husband. She scrubbed every part of her body wiping the dirt or this sign of her strength from nature off of her body. She now wants to work her feminine attractive charms for her husband, but even more for herself to see if she still has such powers at the age of thirty-five. In the mirror 'she tightened her stomach and threw out her chest' (402).
She dressed with 'her newest underclothing and her nicest stocking and the dress which was the symbol of her prettiness' (401). She continues to emphasize her female body including reddening her lips, one of the ultimate signs of femininity. Elisa is working on her physical beauty, rather than her strength. As she waited for her husband, Elisa noticed 'that under the high grey fog [the willow trees] seemed a thin band of sunshine' (402). Elisa seems some hope in women's futures at this point. When Henry sees Elisa her is surprised at her appearance.
He says, 'Why& amp; em dash; why Elisa. You look so nice! ... I mean you look different, strong and happy' (402). She questions: ''What do you mean 'strong'?' ' He answer comes in a confused tone, since his wife probably never talked to him like this before: 'You look strong enough to break a calf over your knee, happy enough to eat it like a watermelon' (402). But this is not the answer Elisa was looking for any longer. Although this may have satisfied the Elisa whose power search focused on her being like a man, she now wants to have a kind of feminine charm as a second power.
The narrator says, 'For a second she lost her rigidity' (402). Then Elisa says, ''Henry! Don't talk like that. You don't know what you said'' (402). But quickly she recovered boasting, ''I'm strong'... 'I never knew how strong'' (402). She then feels powerful enough as a woman to keep her husband intentionally waiting in the car for her.
But Elisa's sense of power hits a bump in the road. As the drive into Salinas, Elisa sees the chrysanthemum sprouts thrown into the road. Apparently, she expected this after her final encounter with the man, and notices he kept the pot she had given him, since it had some monetary worth. As they passes the peddler's wagon, she turned away so as not to see it.
Henry noticed a change in her saying, ''Now you " re changed again'' (403). Her strength weakens. She questions her husband if the men in the prizefights ever hurt one another. Henry responds in the affirmative. Finally she asks, ''Do women ever go to the fights?' (403).
Elisa is wondering if as a woman she could enter a man's world of business and other 'masculine' responsibilities. Her husband now asks if she wants to go and she responds, 'Oh, no. No. I don't want to go. I'm sure I don't' (403).
Elisa now fully understands that she does not want to gain power from a man's sphere in the world. The 'wine's he wants at dinner is a way to show her acceptance of this fact, of the typical married life of a woman. She condemns herself to attempting to gain power through normal female attempts in a static society. Elisa cries at the end, making her look 'like an old woman' with the realization of this fact, that indeed, she will continue to age into the role of an old woman still enclosed by society. Elisa's encounter with the peddler made her realize that she was not fit for a man's world, but this did not mean she couldn't still be strong.
The peddler's business of selling his service of fixing pots closes women out of his world just as natural fog closes of the valley. Although we hope her tears can be compared to the pruning she does to her precious chrysanthemums, clipping them backed for future and stronger growth, Steinbeck leaves the reader questioning the future for women. Elisa's tears will not rid the valley of the fog, for as Steinbeck tells us in the beginning, 'fog and rain do not go together' (396). While Elisa will continue to dominate her immediate surrounding inside the fence using her power from nature, but she will not gain power outside of it, in a man's world.
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