Actually let me flesh out that observation. Throughout part I I see two motifs running, the motif of the fire and the motif of the Chrysanthamums. First the fire. I pointed out several occurances. Let me highlight the ones that are most suggestive:
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The kitchen was small and full of firelight; red coals piled glowing up the chimney mouth. All the life of the room seemed in the white, warm hearth and the steel fender reflecting the red fire
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and
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Indoors the fire was sinking and the room was dark red. The woman put her saucepan on the hob, and set a batter pudding near the mouth of the oven.
and
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They sat down to tea. John, at the end of the table near the door, was almost lost in the darkness. Their faces were hidden from each other. The girl crouched against the fender slowly moving a thick piece of bread before the fire. The lad, his face a dusky mark on the shadow, sat watching her who was transfigured in the red glow.
"I do think it's beautiful to look in the fire," said the child.
"Do you?" said her mother. "Why?"
"It's so red, and full of little caves--and it feels so nice, and you can fair smell it."
"It'll want mending directly," replied her mother, "and then if your father comes he'll carry on and say there never is a fire when a man comes home sweating from the pit.--A public-house is always warm enough."
There was silence till the boy said complainingly: "Make haste, our Annie."
"Well, I am doing! I can't make the fire do it no faster, can I?"
"She keeps wafflin' it about so's to make 'er slow," grumbled the boy.
"Don't have such an evil imagination, child," replied the mother.
A number of things here. The fire is associated with domesticity, the kitchen, the hearth, sitting around the table, mother and children waiting for father. Second it provides nourshment, tea and bread are warmed by it. Nourishment is the heart of family, and they are "transfigured" by it. Now this is an early Lawrence story, so the word "transfigure" (as you can see it comes up repeatedly in Lawrence's works) does not yet carry the same religious weight that occurs in the later Lawrence stories. Nonetheless it shows the power of the hearth fire. Third, the fire is symbolic for life. From the very first quote I presented here: "All the life of the room seemed in the white, warm hearth and the steel fender reflecting the red fire." The fire is what holds life together and is also symbolic for life burning on. As those who have completed the story know, the fire of the father's life has run out. Something else too. The mother is outraged at what she perceives as her husband whittling his time away at a bar drinking:
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Soon the room was busy in the darkness with the crisp sound of crunching. The mother ate very little. She drank her tea determinedly, and sat thinking. When she rose her anger was evident in the stern unbending of her head. She looked at the pudding in the fender, and broke out:
"It is a scandalous thing as a man can't even come home to his dinner! If it's crozzled up to a cinder I don't see why I should care. Past his very door he goes to get to a public-house, and here I sit with his dinner waiting for him--"
This is a domestic crisis, the husband coming home drunk and wasting his money away in drink. But the irony that runs through here is that it will be an even greater domestic crisis than is at first perceived. A dead husband is one who cannot take care of the family. The fire in the hearth does not burn from fire wood, but from coals. As a miner, the father brings home coals to provide nourishment to the family. Some of you have commented on the ugly industrialism versus nature element in the story. I personally don't feel that this is the theme of the story. This story to me is a story of realism, of work and family and death. The description of the mining town isn't tinged with moral imperative, but as a realistic setting to the story.
Now to the Chrysanthamums.
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Beside the path hung dishevelled pink chrysanthemums, like pink cloths hung on bushes. A woman came stooping out of the felt-covered fowl-house, half-way down the garden. She closed and padlocked the door, then drew herself erect, having brushed some bits from her white apron.
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As they went slowly towards the house he tore at the ragged wisps of chrysanthemums and dropped the petals in handfuls along the path.
"Don't do that--it does look nasty," said his mother. He refrained, and she, suddenly pitiful, broke off a twig with three or four wan flowers and held them against her face. When mother and son reached the yard her hand hesitated, and instead of laying the flower aside, she pushed it in her apron-band. The mother and son stood at the foot of the three steps looking across the bay of lines at the passing home of the miners. The trundle of the small train was imminent. Suddenly the engine loomed past the house and came to a stop opposite the gate.
and
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Nevertheless she took a paper spill from a sheaf on the mantelpiece and proceeded to light the lamp that hung from the ceiling in the middle of the room. As she reached up, her figure displayed itself just rounding with maternity.
"Oh, mother--!" exclaimed the girl.
"What?" said the woman, suspended in the act of putting the lamp glass over the flame. The copper reflector shone handsomely on her, as she stood with uplifted arm, turning to face her daughter.
"You've got a flower in your apron!" said the child, in a little rapture at this unusual event.
"Goodness me!" exclaimed the woman, relieved. "One would think the house was afire." She replaced the glass and waited a moment before turning up the wick. A pale shadow was seen floating vaguely on the floor.
"Let me smell!" said the child, still rapturously, coming forward and putting her face to her mother's waist.
"Go along, silly!" said the mother, turning up the lamp. The light revealed their suspense so that the woman felt it almost unbearable. Annie was still bending at her waist. Irritably, the mother took the flowers out from her apron-band.
"Oh, mother--don't take them out!" Annie cried, catching her hand and trying to replace the sprig.
"Such nonsense!" said the mother, turning away. The child put the pale chrysanthemums to her lips, murmuring:
"Don't they smell beautiful!"
Her mother gave a short laugh.
"No," she said, "not to me. It was chrysanthemums when I married him, and chrysanthemums when you were born, and the first time they ever brought him home drunk, he'd got brown chrysanthemums in his button-hole."
Chrysanthemums are a flower that blossom in the fall and are associated with death. We put mums in front of tombstones in the fall. The bright Mum flower will foreshadow the bright dead body of the father when it is brought home. The breaking of the flowers into petals accentuates the death association. Interesting how the mother exclaims, "One would think the house was afire," when the daughter spots a broken flower in her apron. But more importantly is this statement by the mother:
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"It was chrysanthemums when I married him, and chrysanthemums when you were born, and the first time they ever brought him home drunk, he'd got brown chrysanthemums in his button-hole."
And we ironically can finish that statement with "it was chrysanthemums when he died." Something that confuses me, though. I have planted Chysanthemums and every time I do or come across them, I sniff them only to find they have no odor or scent of any kind. I always think of this story when I do. Am I wrong in assuming that Mums don't have a scent or is it just the ones here in New York? Do Mums in England have any scent?
Nonetheless we see the two symbols interweaved in part I.
