Elisa Allen is a very talented woman who has a gift for growing things. She is very good at what she does but has a burning desire to do more. She feels held back and confined in here home in the Salinas Valley. Some how she cannot bare to be limited to her home any more. Elisa Allen reaches out and tries to connect herself to the world outside the Salinas Valley. She fights what many women are still fighting today, equality in a world where men are in control. Elisa wants to create herself as a worthy image that has been associated with men since the beginning of time. Elisa portrays herself in the chrysanthemums she grows, the way she dresses, and the scissor sharpener she meets. She goes on a semi quest to see if she is ready to be a woman who prospers in a man's world.
             Elisa has what her mother called planters hands. She has a garden that she works in each day and among the plants she has planted one stands out above the rest, her chrysanthemums. Her chrysanthemums had grown ten inches across, much wider than the ones before. She cares for her plants and enjoys their prosperity. She takes care of them as she would herself. She stated when she cares for her plants she becomes one with them " ...everything goes right down to your fingertips...you can feel how it is...they never make a mistake. They're with the plant"(250). Her chrysanthemums are like an extension of herself. When the man comes by and becomes interested in her chrysanthemums and wants one she becomes excited and jumps at the opportunity to give him one. Almost saying that if she cannot leave her garden her flowers can, because in a sense she would be taking a baby step into the outside world not as herself but as a representation of herself through her chrysanthemum.
             Elisa's struggle with trying to venture into the man's world leaves her hiding her beauty and feminism with the roughness of a man. I
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