By what means do you learn about the main character? Please support with quotations. "The Chrysanthemums" by John Steinbeck

Having written of his
story,

It is
entirely different and designed to strike without the reader's
knowledge

it is only through
minimal indirect characterization that the reader learns of Elisa in "The
Chrysanthemums." With the use of a limited third person narrator, the description of
Elisa Allen is merely objective:

readability="11">

She was thirty-five.  Her face was lean and
strong and her eyes were as clear as water.  Her figure looked blocked and heavy in her
gardening costume, a man's black hat pulled lowdown over her eyes, clod-hopper shoes, a
figured print dress almost completely covered by a big corduroy apron....She wore heavy
leather gloves to protect her hands while she
worked.

As she works, Elisa
glances at the men talking with her husband, then she is startled at the sound of her
husband's voice because he had neared her quietly.  The conversation between her and her
husband is clipped and told without explanation since the narrator is third-person
narrator.  It is as though the reader hears as Elisa and Henry hear each other and must
guess at the meaning of the words along with them:

readability="9">

"...I mean you look different, strong and
happy."

"...I'm strong," she boasted.  "I never knew before
how strong."

Before this
conversation between Elisa and Henry, the tinker arrives and engages Elisa in talk about
her flowers; then, she surprisingly reveals her aesthetic soul as well as her
suppressed passionate nature.  For instance, Elisa's voice grows "husky" as she
describes looking at at the sky at night,

readability="10">

"...When the night is dark--why, the stars are
sharp-pointed, and there's quiet.  Why, you rise up and up!  Every pointed star gets
driven into your body.  It's like that. Hot and sharp
and--lovely."

Her actions,
too, indicate the yearning of Elisa to express her womanly passion. For example, Elisa
kneels on the ground looking up at the tinker with "[H]er breast swelled passionately"
and "[H]er hesitant fingers almost touched the cloth" of his trousers as she "crouched
low like a fawning dog."  As the tinker leaves, "[H]er shoulders were straight, her head
thrown back, her eyes half-closed" and Elisa whispers, "That's a bright direction,
There's a glowing there," but the narrator reserves
comment.

With the use of limited third-person narrator and
the indirect characterization methods of physical description, the character's words and
actions as well as the speech and reactions of others, Steinbeck develops his main
character, Elisa Allen.