Abstract
The Long Valley, the collection of John Steinbeck's short stories, contains " The Chrysanthemums " and " The White Quail " as its opening stories, both of which have aroused many critics' abiding interest since its publication in 1938. The two female protagonists, Elisa (" The Chrysanthemums ") and Mary (" The White Quail "), have been the subjects of discussions for nearly sixty years. Still some important phases of these works call for further clarification. In the present study I have taken up two recurrent questions: (1)why was Elisa " crying weakly like an old woman " in the final scene and (2) what made Mary's husband, Harry Teller, shoot the white quail instead of the cat?My solution of these questions made use of insights culled from some basic Freudian theories particularly on dream symbols and the unconscious in order to analyze the protagonists' personalities and behaviors as well as dramatic situations. The results were found revealing. For I have eventually reached " a dark speck " symbolism as a key imagery of the betrayed female victims uniting the seperate stories into an organic whole. In " The White Quail " (1935) " the dark speck " significantly shows itself as the dead body of the murdered bird " thrown " into the depth of the hillside shrub, thus left to decay in the dark; in " The
