Odour of Chrysanthemums

Written by D H Lawrence

Narrated by Cathy Dobson

Elizabeth , a young wife and mother, waits for her husband Walter to come home from the coal mine. She attributes his lateness to him having gone drinking. As time goes on, she goes to look for him and alerts his colleagues. It transpires he has been killed in a pit accident. Elizabeth's mother-in-law helps her to wash the corpse after it is brought home from the mine. The reactions of the two women are in stark contrast - and the experience of laying out the body shows Elizabeth how she and her husband never really knew one another in life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Door Consulting
• Release date: Oct 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9781467669719

D H Lawrence

David Herbert Lawrence, (185-1930) more commonly known as D.H Lawrence was a British writer and poet often surrounded by controversy. His works explored issues of sexuality, emotional health, masculinity, and reflected on the dehumanizing effects of industrialization. Lawrence’s opinions acquired him many enemies, censorship, and prosecution. Because of this, he lived the majority of his second half of life in a self-imposed exile. Despite the controversy and criticism, he posthumously was championed for his artistic integrity and moral severity.

Reviews for Odour of Chrysanthemums

[ionas_7 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is the first piece of writing by D.H. Lawrence I’ve read. We’re introduced to a woman, Elizabeth Bates, and her little son, John, and Elizabeth’s father, who is an engine-driver. The woman’s husband, Walter, is a miner; he is fond of the drink, and spends a lot of money at the pub. At this particular time, the miners are coming home, but Walter has not come home yet, and they have too wait for him before they can have tea. Elizabeth suspects Walter of slinking past his door to go to the pub. So the mother, John and the little girl, Annie, who has now come home from school, wait and wait for their husband and father. They begin to eat. Elizabeth becomes more and more resentful about her husband’s lateness. She is expecting another child. Annie is enamoured of the chrysanthemums her mother has in her apron band. It is twenty to six and Walter hasn’t come home. Elizabeth is angry now. She says “What a fool I’ve been! The children were put to bed. Now Elizabeth’s anger is “tinged with fear”. A neighbour’s husband tells Elizabeth he doesn’t know where Walter is, but he’s not in the “Prince of Wales”, the pub. Walter’s elderly mother arrives in her black bonnet and black shawl. She tells her that Walt has had an accident.. Two men came with Walter on a stretcher – he is dead. One of the men knocks off a vase of chrysanthemums. “There is a deathly smell of chrysanthemums in the room.” Elizabeth feels she has nothing to do with Walter. She tries to get some connection to him, but cannot.“The wife felt the utter isolation of the human soul.” ”Life with its smoky, burning gone from him, had left him apart and utterly alien to her.” She now knows what a stranger he was to her. She sees he was a “separate stranger with whom she had been living as one flesh.” There had been nothing between them though they repeatedly had had marital relations. They had been far apart, just as they were now he was dead. She saw now that she had never seen him for what he was, and he had never seen her for what she was. She was grateful to death which “restored the truth”. For the first time she had empathy and compassion for him. She now knew how awful it had been to be a wife, and how awful it must have felt to him to be a husband. If they met in the next world, he would be a stranger to her. The children did not unite them. Eternally, he had nothing more to do with her. “Now he had withdrawn.” I take this to mean that he had voluntarily left his life. I’m not sure what Lawrence totally means by his description of Elizabeth’s insight. As I understand it, they had not been really meant for each other and should not have married, since they were so different. Now, at any rate, they had nothing to do with each other. But I feel Lawrence is contradicting himself; because though she now feels they were so different and separate beings, she still for the first time feels empathy for him. The final sentence is: “From death, her ultimate master, she winced with fear and shame.” Why was she fearful and shameful? I cannot see the need for fear; is she shameful because she did not previously see him as he really was? And what does she mean by this? Re the title, in some European countries, chrysanthemums are only given in time of mourning. Elizabeth had previously received them when she married Walter, and the first time they brought Walter home drunk he had chrysanthemums in his button-hole. So this is perhaps why the author uses the word ”odour”” instead of the usual word “scent”. I didn’t quite understand this story, but Elizabeth’s insight is its crucial part. I did not previously realize what a gifted writer D.H. Lawrence was.