Setting and Character in D.H. Lawrence's "Odour of Chrysanthemums"

Introduction: Setting as Character Development

In any story, an author's description of setting can serve several functions simultaneously, all relevant and necessary to the telling of the story. Setting is not only what is seen — it also incorporates all other senses, encompassing what is heard, what is smelled, and in some cases, what is tasted and felt. In D.H. Lawrence's short story Odour of Chrysanthemums, setting plays a central role in developing the personality and character of the protagonist, Elizabeth Bates. Her character is developed through setting starting with the moment the outside of her house is introduced, continuing through the time spent waiting with the children in her kitchen, and culminating when Mr. Bates is laid in the parlor.

Odour of Chrysanthemums is a story fraught with tension and suspense, evident from the unhappy setting depicted in the first paragraph, where "the fields were dreary and forsaken" (Lawrence). As the plot progresses, we find a family awaiting their father's return from the mines so that he may sit down and enjoy dinner with them. Tension is already present as the reader, along with Elizabeth, suspects that her husband may not be home on time — and it increases as these suspicions are gradually confirmed. At first, Elizabeth dismisses the situation angrily as another night when her husband stopped at the Prince O' Wales pub "while his dinner spoiled and wasted in waiting" (Lawrence). Despite her angry outbursts in front of the children, the reader detects a hint of fear beneath her uncertainty about where he really is.

After Elizabeth sends her children to bed, she locks them in the house and heads into town to see whether her husband is at the Prince O' Wales pub as she suspects. When he is not there, her fear mounts as she heads home to wait for word from Mr. Rigley, who continues searching on his own. The drama reaches its highest point when Elizabeth's mother-in-law arrives in a state of agitation to announce that an accident has occurred — and it boils over when the worst is confirmed: Mr. Bates has died of asphyxiation in the mine. His body is brought into the parlor, and the two women clean and dress his corpse. In this final moment of confrontation with death, Elizabeth realizes that she never truly knew the man as her husband, but experienced him as someone foreign and alien to her — and that after his death she must live on, carrying forward the life they never fully shared.

The Cottage Exterior and Elizabeth's Loneliness

Elizabeth's character is shaped by the environment in which she finds herself, as is evident from the first description the reader encounters of her cottage:

"A large bony vine clutched at the house, as if to claw down the tiled roof. Round the bricked yard grew a few wintry primroses . . . There were some twiggy apple trees, winter-crack trees, and ragged cabbages. Beside the path hung disheveled pink chrysanthemums, like pink cloths hung on bushes." (Lawrence)

The Kitchen Scene: Light, Darkness, and Hope

The words bony, wintry, twiggy, winter, ragged, and disheveled all convey a feeling of barrenness. It is through this description of Elizabeth's cottage that we sense her loneliness. The amount of poorly kept landscape surrounding it — the neglected cabbages and unkempt chrysanthemums — suggests that her loneliness is deeply felt to the point where she cares very little for the appearance of her dwelling or for her responsibility to tend it. The untended state of the garden also implies qualities of tiredness, weariness, and being careworn. It comes as no surprise later in the story that Elizabeth harbors a long, tired anger toward her husband; she is well accustomed to his neglect of the family.

Despite the anger and weariness Elizabeth feels toward her husband's repeated neglect, she is also capable of other emotions, as the kitchen setting suggests. While Elizabeth and the children wait for Mr. Bates to come home, there is a battle between light and dark, heat and cold — powerfully suggestive symbols of good and bad. Entering the scene, "the kitchen was small and full of firelight; red coals piled glowing up the chimney mouth. All the life of the room seemed in the white, warm hearth and the steel fender reflecting the red fire" (Lawrence). The fire is a fitting indicator of the anger burning inside Elizabeth as she braces, once again, for her husband to be late.

Later in the scene, however, the fire begins to die down to a dull red. Annie, Elizabeth's daughter, describes it as "beautiful" and "full of little caves — and it feels so nice, and you can fair smell it" (Lawrence). The fire has become a source of warmth and pleasantness — it is beautiful, and it is good. As the coals struggle to maintain their red glow, the reader senses Elizabeth's hope that her husband will soon be home, perhaps earlier than usual, before they have to "bring him in" (Lawrence). This hope is extinguished as quickly as the fire dies and darkness creeps in. Elizabeth is soon forced to produce her own light with the oil lamp above the table.

Conclusion: Setting as Emotional Portrait

Lawrence, D.H. "Odour of Chrysanthemums." The Norton Introduction to Literature. Tenth Edition. W.W. Norton & Company, 2010. Print.