The mood of “Odour of Chrysanthemums” is depressing and bleak. The story opens with a wife (Elizabeth) feeling abandoned by her husband—who she believes went straight to the pub after work rather than coming home for dinner—and only gets more dismal, as she learns that he actually died in a mining accident and ultimately receives (and cleans) his dirty coal-covered corpse.
The following passage, which comes as Elizabeth and her mother-in-law receive Walter’s body, captures the bleak mood:
He was still warm, for the mine was hot where he had died. His mother had his face between her hands, and was murmuring incoherently. The old tears fell in succession as drops from wet leaves; the mother was not weeping, merely her tears flowed. Elizabeth embraced the body of her husband, with cheek and lips. She seemed to be listening, inquiring, trying to get some connection. But she could not. She was driven away. He was impregnable.
The descriptions of Walter’s mother “murmuring incoherently” with her tears falling “as drops from wet leaves” and of the crying Elizabeth “trying to get some connection” from her husband only to be “driven away” all combine to create a depressing mood. While Lawrence could have made this moment cathartic for Elizabeth, allowing her to break down crying and receive some relief from her grief, he decides to have her, instead, emotionally shut down after finding Walter to be “impregnable.” This adds an unresolved and emotionally blocked energy to the mood at the end of the story and is likely Lawrence’s way of communicating that some relationships are too impaired to be properly grieved.
