![]() She is elated one night to spot a white quail that has taken up residence in the garden. In this narrative, Mary Tiller seems to misuse these affordances of the garden, vigorously pruning it into a narcissistic psychic image of her idealized self. In another story, “The White Quail,” the trope of the garden returns, symbolizing a mental and physical environment for beauty and existential evolution. She cries alone, lamenting her isolation in an uncaring world that devalues natural flourishing and seemingly has no place for people like her. That evening, however, she finds the chrysanthemums discarded on the walkway, the pot smashed. She rejoices in the notion that a man might have seen into her inner life, if only briefly. She replies that she has no work to be done, but gives him a pot of chrysanthemums after he compliments them profusely. One day, a professional tinker drives up to the ranch, offering his services to Eliza. It quickly becomes clear that her husband does not value her perspective on life. She particularly loves the chrysanthemums, which come to stand in for her inner life and gentle sexuality. At the story’s beginning, a contrast is established between Eliza’s diligent care for the plants and her statue-like husband who anticipates the coming winter. The story utilizes the setting of the garden, which Eliza frequently tends to, and which corresponds to her attempt to fashion a sanctuary in a harsh and uncaring external world. In the anthology’s first story, “The Chrysanthemums,” Eliza Allen experiences friction between her innate softness and romanticism and her husband’s abrasiveness. Even so, they strive to grasp some semblance of primal freedom in a capitalist world that tends to suppress it. The stories were heavily influenced by the Great Depression, which pervades the emotional lives of the characters. Each story is characterized by a deep interest in the universal experiences of the ordinary man, with particular attention to the ways in which people feel marginalized or foreign, even in the places where they ostensibly belong. The anthology provides a wide survey of the themes and styles Steinbeck evolved through, and returned to, throughout the early and middle stages of his writing career. ![]() The Long Valley, an anthology of twelve short stories by American author John Steinbeck, was released in 1939, the same year as the novel that is often considered his magnum opus, The Grapes of Wrath. ![]()
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