Women’s Ways to Nature: Steinbeck’s (Mock)Pastoral Diptych of Gardening (& Childless) Wives in The Long Valley

The essay is an ecocritical reading of the two short stories that open John Steinbeck’s The Long Valley (1938), “The Chrysanthemums” and “The White Quail.” It maintains that Steinbeck’s pastoral diptych seems to restage the coming of age of an American biocentric consciousness. Moreover, by depicting two opposite female figures of eros and frigidity, and of fertility and barrenness, Steinbeck explores a way out of the decadence of the ideal of westering in his times into the idea of a civilizing art. This art should go back to its roots in the territory by coming close again to the earth, the body, and a holistic view of life. Mary and Elisa are both figures of the artist, but while Mary uses nature as a means of self-expression, Elisa is a means for nature to express itself. They face each other as portraits of the egocentric versus the ecocentric artist.