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Growth Of A Chrysanthemum

Growth of a Chrysanthemum

D. H. Lawrence's 1914 short story, "Odour of Chrysanthemums", is still in print and considered worth reading in 1999. Perhaps it's printed and reprinted as a matter of habit. Perhaps editors like it because other editors have. But maybe it's a success because it's an exceptional work. Of these three possibilities, the last is certainly the most appealing. Luckily, it seems most likely to be true. Lawrence made a conscious effort to improve and focus the story, as differences between the 1910 draft and the 1914 final version reveal. Lawrence succeeded in this endeavor, carefully revising an already excellent work to create a classic.
The claim that "Odour of Chrysanthemums" is a well-crafted story is hardly brave or risky, for many would agree. For instance, the man who in a sense discovered Lawrence, English Review editor F. M. Ford, said this about "Odour of Chrysanthemums":
The very title makes an impact on the mind. You get at once the knowledge that this is not, whatever else it may turn out, either a frivolous or even a gay springtime story. Chrysanthemums are not only flowers of the autumn: they are the autumn itself . . . This man knows what he wants. He sees the scene of his story exactly. He has an authoritative mind. (Ford 257)
As a fiction editor, he is quite receptive to Lawrence's descriptive gifts. He is impressed with Lawrence's sense of purpose. But readers needn't assess the short story by Ford's methods alone. Modern readers have a very different perspective than Lawrence's contemporaries, ensuring that many different analyses of "Odour of Chrysanthemums" are possible.
However, the plot itself is very simple. In the 1914 version, Elizabeth Bates spends most of the story waiting for her husband to return from the mine, fretting that he is once again dallying at a favorite pub. His coworkers drag him home, but he is not in a drunken stupor. He is dead, suffocated in an accident at the mine. Initially it...