Imagery connoting a constrained environment describes Salinas Valley and the gated environment in which Elisa inhabits while watching men on the outside of the fence. Steinbeck describes the "high gray-flannel fog" as "a lid" that "made [...] the great valley a closed pot" (1). From the start, the world of Salinas Valley seems suffocating. A valley even without the fog is a place connoted by separation from the outside world. Life for Elisa was not only confined, but also contained. Her work was "over-powerful" as she tended to "the Chrysanthemum stems [that] seemed too small and easy for her energy" (3). Elisa was a powerful woman confined to tending to delicate flowers in a pretty garden. Not only was she too strong for her task, but also she was "over-eager" as she worked (3). This woman was yearning for more and longing for a challenge, too eager and too strong for the task at hand. As a signal of her frustration, "she took off a glove" to expose her "strong fingers" (3). She did not need the protection of the "heavy leather gloves" and literally wanted to get her hands dirty (2). The image of clean hands plunging "down into the forest" depicts a sort of wild, and rebellious spirit. It is this spirit that is trapped in the garden that was in the valley cut off from the rest of the world.
Throughout the story, her world seems to be very different than his his world - and very separated. As the men talked by the "tractor shed", Elisa tended to a garden by a "neat white farm house [...] with hard-polished windows, and a clean mud-mat" (3). Tractors bring to mind the farm work by which Henry makes his living. Tractors are symbols of power and strength. Masculinity teems in the image of a group of men making a business deal by a tractor shed. This imagery and the dirty work that is associated with a tractor are juxtaposed next to Elisa's world. Instead of a shed, there is a pristine house. Everything from it's color to the condition of its windows seems to contrast the notion of a shed. Even the mud-mat is clean. Elisa does her work next to a building of purity and cleanliness while the men do theirs by a building of work and dirt. After finishing his business, Henry "lean[s] over the wire fence that protected her flower garden from cattle and dogs and chickens" (4). Instead of the white picket fence that would seem fitting with the pristine farm house, there is a wire fence - almost the type of fence one would associate with a prison. This fence, however, wasn't used explicitly to imprison Elisa, but rather to protect her garden from the animals. These animals, like the tractor, are symbols of the masculine world in which Henry makes his living. They create an image of dirty farm work. How could one allow a woman's pretty garden to be destroyed by men's dirty animals? The fence was necessary to protect, of course, not to confine. Either way, however, the fence creates a physical divide between the lives of Henry and Elisa.
The world of the men and women is both different and divided, but this isn't made especially significant until the realms blur. When Henry leans into her world, Elisa "pull[s] on the gardening glove again" (4). Elisa restrains her wild, eager desires in front of her husband; she puts back on her protective gloves in order to appease her husband even though she prefers to work without them when he isn't around. This suggests that there is a conflict in the way she wants to behave and the way she must behave because of her husband. Her husband evidently is confining her, at least to some extent. After he leaves, a rickety "old spring-wagon with a round canvas top on it like the cover of a prairie schooner" pulls up to "Elisa's wire fence" (6-7). In contrast to the stable farm house in which Elisa inhabits, the repairman lives with mobility. Specifically, he lives in something that is compared to the symbol of the American frontier and the days of the pioneer. This choice of imagery conveys the message that the repairman is a self-sufficient pioneer roughing it up in the unknown world beyond Elisa's prison-like wire fence. By contrast Elisa lives dependent on her husband, tending to her stationary, pristine farm house in a world of confinement. The description of the man inside is quite opposite to the Steinbeck previous description of Elisa. His "black suit [...] was spotted with grease", his "eyes were dark", and his hands were "calloused" (7). Elisa, in contrast wore "a figured print dress almost completely covered by a big corduroy apron", had "eyes [...] as clear as water", and wore "heavy leather gloves to protect her hands" (2). These contrasts are neither accidental nor coincidental. Everything about Elisa's physical description seems to fit with the pristine farm house and beautiful garden that is her world. Her pretty dress and her strong hands are protected by a thick apron and heavy gloves in much the same way that her pretty garden and clean house is protected by a prison-like wire fence. By contrast, his attire has been allowed to be dirtied by grease. His eyes were not pure and innocent, but rather dark - perhaps dirtied by the outside world from which Elisa had been protected. His hands, were not clean and protected inside of gloves, but rather weathered by hard work. Just as there is a difference of the Elisa's protected world and the men's dirty, dangerous one, there is a difference in the way that world has shaped the appearance of the two. The repair man was free as a pioneer to get his hands dirty. Elisa was forced to protect herself from this - so long as her husband was looking - although she yearned for some grease. Whether or not it was better to be dirty or to be clean was something with which Elisa struggled with throughout the story; she had yet to experience the world of the men. Her curiosity, leads her to change that.
