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Situational Irony
Key Examples in Odour of Chrysanthemums
Part 2
Explanation and Analysis:
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.
Related Themes:
