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Kaylor Odor of Chrysanthemums, like other stories by Lawrence, illustrates a false-love relationship. This is not only with Jack and Lizzie, but also between the mother-in-law and Jack. Both women, although different in their relationship to Jack, allow their tie to Jack to dictate their emotions. The mother-in-law has become delusional while Lizzie remains detached as they look upon his body.
Neither woman is better for her relationship than the other as both are suffering emotionally. Odor of Chrysanthemums is much more than a social commentary; it is a statement that love is an emotion that causes more evil than good. With the mother-in-law s relationship to Jack, Lizzie s misplaced blame, and the significance of Lizzie s unborn child, love is shown as a falsity. The mother-in-law refuses to see the true nature of her son as a man. She constantly refers to him as a baby or lad. In addition to not recognizing Jack as being full-grown, she also doesn t acknowledge that he was fallible.
With isn t he beautiful clear as a twelve month baby, bless him beautiful as ever a child was made the mother illustrates her inability or refusal that her son could have been a man of sin or fault, hence how pure and white without a mark. This is reinstated by her likening him to a lamb, biblically and historically relevant as the sacrifice of a lamb, an innocent, for the gods. Only once does she speak of his bad relationship with Lizzie (by blaming it on Lizzie) with You ve had a sight o trouble with him You ve got to make allowances for them. This love for Jack is not true, as it is so deeply filled with an unwillingness or incapacity to love him for what he was, rather than an idealized version. Lizzie continuously demonstrates distaste for things she associates with her husband. Diction as; disheveled pink chrysanthemums and ragged wisps of chrysanthemums in conjunction with Lizzie s explanation of why she dislikes them, the first time they ever brought him home drunk, he d got brown chrysanthemums in his buttonhole, illustrates how she cannot enjoy the flowers anymore because of Jack who hurt her.
In turn she has redirected her hate towards chrysanthemums. Lizzie also does this with her children mentioning, it was chrysanthemums when I married him, and chrysanthemums when you were born. When describing John, the son, his clothes are evidently cut down from a man s. More evidence that Lizzie associates her bad marriage with her children is when she tells her son that he is as bad as his father.
Lizzie seems to not truly have any love for her children as she associates them with the animosity she feels towards her husband Meanwhile, Lizzie s own unborn child is an ice of fear in her womb. Although never outright stated, Lawrence may be making a statement about love in its purest form; mother to child. Lizzie aspires to be a good mother, she continuously tries to quiet her wailing mother-in-law as to not wake the children. Lizzie s ice of fear may be her own dread that she will end up like her mother-in-law, so blinded by the only bond she has ever formed, mother to child, that she may not see the truth about that relationship (just as mother-in-law blames Lizzie for the horrible marriage). This is confirmed by the absence of Jack s father in the story. Lawrence seems to have no hope for a real love between a man and a woman and a cynical view on the relationship between a parent and child.
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