In the following excerpt from commentary on "Odour of Chrysanthemums," Black suggests some meanings that the reader may be intended to draw from the story's portrayal of Elizabeth Bates's series of thoughts, moods, and emotions as she first angrily, then fearfully, awaits her husband's return, and then strips, washes, and lays out his dead body.

The two great masterpieces among the stories begun in the period 1909-11 are "Daughters of the Vicar" and "Odour of Chrysanthemums." Neither reached its present version easily; it was in drastic revision in the period from 1911 until 1913 and 1914 that they reached the form in which we have them, and the changes that Lawrence made in revising them were crucial. Their completion takes us into the first period of his maturity, so that they represent a substantial advance on Sons and Lovers, in his own grasp of what he wanted to say, and...