Elisa Allen is at a point in her life where she has begun to realize that her energy and creative drive far exceed what life has offered her. Her husband, Henry Allen, is a well meaning and essentially good man and is quite pleased to be able to make a decent living. Her marriage is reasonably happy and there is an easy banter between the two of them. While they have settled into a fairly familiar and ordinary routine, they are still responsive to each other's sense of accomplishment and agree to celebrate with a night on the town.

Elisa is earthbound, rooted securely in her garden but also held down by her connection to it. Their house is described as "hard-swept" and "hard-polished," and is the only outlet for her talents. However, Elisa needs something more in her life than a neat house and a good garden. Their marriage is childless

and conventional and she has begun to sense that an important part of her is dying and that her future will be predictable and mundane. Elisa is a barren woman who has transferred her maternal impulses to her garden, a garden full of unborn seedlings.

Steinbeck's use of simple themes and his concern for common human values, stir the reader's thoughts and emotions, and leave them with an awareness of life. "This story has one rare, creative thing: a directness of impression that makes it glow with life."

Steinbeck's short story focuses on the details of the simple lives and hardships of men and women in the Salinas River Valley, bringing the reader into the characters' most private lives and intimate moments. In this story, something as simple and uneventful as a visit by a traveling repairman reveals the tedious and monotonous lifestyle led by a farmer's wife. The reader is drawn into the tale and vicariously experiences the suffering and longing of the lonely housewife. This story reflects the unfulfilled longings of a country housewife, who compensates for her disappointments in her life through her garden.

Elisa is shattered by the heartless manner in which he has drawn something from her secret self and then completely betrayed her gift by not even taking the trouble to hide the flowers. She attempts to override her disappointment, by maintaining a mood of gaiety, suggesting that they have wine at dinner. This is not sufficient to help her restore her feelings of confidence, so she asks her husband if they might go to a prizefight. This request so completely out of character that again her husband is totally baffled. She searches further for that special feeling she held briefly, and asks if men "hurt each other very much." This is part of an effort to focus her own violent and angry feelings, but it is completely hollow as an attempt to sustain her sense of self-control. In a few moments, she completely gives up and her whole body collapses into the seat in a display of defeat. As the story concludes, Elisa is struggling to hide her real feeling of pain from her husband. She is anticipating a dreadful future in which she pictures herself "crying weakly like an old woman."

Elisa is also seen alternately as a part of a larger landscape and as a small figure in an enclosed area. Her warm, three-dimensional character serves to show the human beauty beneath her rough and somewhat masculine exterior. Eli

Some common words found in the essay are:
Henry Allen, Elisa Allen, River Valley, Elisa Allen's, California California, John Steinbeck, elisa allen, town elisa, husband henry,
Approximate Word count = 1647
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)