Lawrence’s writing style in “Odour of Chrysanthemums” is lyrical and highly descriptive. He uses a large amount of emotional, figurative language alongside detailed descriptions of the characters’ movements within a scene, thereby allowing readers to both feel and visualize their way into the story. The following passage—which comes as Walter’s mother and Elizabeth start to clean Walter’s corpse—showcases these different elements of Lawrence’s style:
“Let me wipe him!”—and she kneeled on the other side, slowly drying as Elizabeth washed, her big black bonnet sometimes brushing the dark head of her daughter. They worked thus in silence for a long time. They never forgot it was death, and the touch of the man’s dead body gave them strange emotions, different in each of the women; a great dread possessed them both, the mother felt the lie was given to her womb, she was denied; the wife felt the utter isolation of the human soul, the child within her was a weight apart from her.
This passage opens with Lawrence taking the time to describe the specific movements of Elizabeth and her mother-in-law in this moment so that readers can effectively visualize what is happening: Elizabeth washes her husband, Walter’s mother dries, and his mother’s hat “occasionally brush[es]” against Elizabeth’s head.
The passage then shifts into a more poetic and lyrical place, as the narrator notes how the two women “never forgot it was death” and began to feel “possessed” by “a great dread,” with Walter’s mother feeling “the lie” that was “given to her womb” and Elizabeth experiencing “the utter isolation of the human soul.” (“The lie” that Walter’s mother feels was “given to her womb” is likely a reference to the idea mothers have that their children will outlive them.) Lawrence switches into this more lyrical register in order to help readers understand the weight of this moment, and the particular grief of both mothers and wives when losing their husbands and sons.
