As Elisa expresses it, "When the night is dark -- why, the stars are sharp-pointed, and there's quiet. Why, you rise up and up! Every pointed star gets driven into your body. It's like that. Hot and sharp and -- lovely" (par. 73). The open night sky, in contrast to the lid of fog that sits on Elisa now, is felt as a release or a joining of energies, and the fulfillment of the anticipation now felt, and this scene puts Elisa at the height of her internal awareness. She acknowledges this awareness explicitly when she tells her husband, "I'm strong…I never knew before how strong" (par. 93). A short time later, however, when she and her husband have passed the wagon on their way to dinner and she realizes that she will not really fulfill her desire or her potential...

110). Though Steinbeck has placed Elisa outside in this and several preceding paragraphs, there is no mention or description of the setting whatsoever. As it mirrored her anticipation and even her release or freedom earlier in the story, its absence now is indicative of the lack of significance that Elisa feels in her own person.
There are many other subtle ways in which the setting informs the characters in Steinbeck's "The Chrysanthemums." Primarily, however, it is through mirroring Elisa's internal developments that the setting influences this story. For Elisa, then, there is no release and no sharp-pointed star, but only an endless, dreary, and significance-robbing bank of fog.