I Stand Here Ironing By Tillie Olsen

The first passage reveals the parallel suffering occurring in the lives of different members of the family, which emphasizes the echoes between the sufferings of the father and the narrator. The narrator’s father’s despair over having watched

The short story “I Stand Here Ironing” (1961) by Tillie Olsen is a touching narration of a mother trying to understand and at the same time justifying her daughter’s conduct. Frye interprets the story as a “meditation of a mother reconstructing her daughter’s past in an attempt to express present behavior” (Frye 287). An unnamed person has brought attention and concern to her mother expressing, “‘She’s a youngster who needs help and whom I’m deeply interested in helping’” (Olsen 290). Emily is a nineteen-year-old complex girl who is atypical, both physically and in personality.

In the short story "I Stand Here Ironing" by Tillie Olsen the conflict between a mother whose giving is limited by hardships is directly related to her daughter's wrinkled adjustment. Ironing, she reflects upon when she was raising her first-born daughter, Emily. The mother contemplates the consequences of her actions. The mother's life had been interrupted by childbirth, desertion, poverty, numerous jobs, childcare, remarriage, frequent relocations, and five children. Her struggling economic situation gave way to little or no opportunity to properly care for and nurture her first-born child. In spite of the attention and love Emily craved and never received, she still survived, and even made strengths, and talents, out of the

While James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues” depicts the connection between two brothers, Tillie Olsen’s short story “I Stand Here Ironing” represents the bond between a mother and her daughter. Both Baldwin and Olsen focus on family relationships and how emotional support vs neglect have an effect on family members. Also, each author conveys a message of finding self-identity even amidst adversity, while including the symbolism of everyday objects. Furthermore, Baldwin compares light and darkness throughout his story, and Olsen has the mother scrutinize her actions in an interior monologue.

Women for years have been automatically given the role of the domestic housewife, where their only job is to cook, clean, and take care of the children. Men have usually taken the primary responsibility for economic support and contact with the rest of society, while women have traditionally taken the role of providing love, nurturing, emotional support, and maintenance of the home. However, in today’s society women over the age of sixteen work outside of the home, and there are more single parent households that are headed by women than at any other time in the history of the United States (Thompson 301.)

Comparing Tillie Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing” and Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” Daughter and mother relationship is an endless topic for many writers. They meant to share the bond of love and care for each other. Nevertheless, in the real world their relationship is not as successful as it ought to be. The stories “Girl” and “I Stand Here Ironing” are examples of this conflict. The author of the short story “Girl” Jamaica Kincaid use her life story to reflect in the story. In her short story “Girl”, Kincaid presents the experience of being young and female in a poor country. The story is structured as a single sentence of advice that a mother gives to her daughter. The mother expresses her resents and worries about her daughter becoming a woman. The author of “I Stand Here Ironing” is Tillie Olsen, similarly her story portrays powerfully the economic domestic burdens a poor woman faced, as well as the responsibility and powerlessness she feels over her child’s life. Moreover, the woman is grieving about her daughter's life and about the circumstances that shaped her own mothering. Both stories have many features in common. Not only do they explore the troubles that could exist in the relationship between mother and daughter, but also they raise questions about motherhood, especially when a mother lives on a shoestring, the stories explore the difficulties that a young mother has to endure while raising her child in poverty. Although the two stories refer to different place and

According to statistics, employment in never married mothers increased nearly 50%, single mothers who HS dropouts increased by 2/3, young single mothers nearly doubled (Karger et al., 2007). But the problem is, are these jobs sufficient enough to get these people out of poverty? There are issues with employment of individuals. These issues include a lack of work experience and education as well as poor health (Urban Institute, 2014). Needing to work also impacts parent(s) and their duties for their children because of long hours, stressful commutes, ad stressful working conditions. These types of stress lead kids to take on the responsibilities of their parents to take care of their younger siblings (Boscia, 2010).

I Stand Here Ironing lies in its fusion of motherhood as both metaphor and experience: it shows us motherhood bared, stripped of romantic distortion, and reins fused with the power of genuine metaphorical insight into the problems of selfhood in the modern world. ironing is a metaphor for "the ups and downs, back and forth of pressing pressures to make ends meet and a determination to pass through life's horrors and difficulties by keeping the mind intact and focusing on the beauty and blessings that [lie amidst] the dark times"? So the ironing is like a drug, to keep the mother calm and sedated. The story seems at first to be a simple meditation of a mother reconstructing her daughter's past in an attempt to

“I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen was the best short-short story in my opinion because the storyline, even though in a completely different era, happened to be similar to the various challenges I encounter every day as a single mother. This short-short story shares the difficulty of its character’s life, her warranted and unwarranted choices as a mother, and her relationship with her eldest daughter during the setting of a calamitous, unfortunate, prevalent setting in U.S. history, The Great Depression. The plot conveys to the reader the adversities this family faced, and the outcome of the relationship between a mother and a daughter during this time and thereafter.

“I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen is a depiction of a mother-daughter relationship that lacks involvement and warmth. The whole story composed of the mother’s memory of her relationship with her daughter, Emily. The memory was a painful one comprised mostly of the way the mother was much less able to care for Emily. The forsaken of Emily demonstrates the importance of physical and emotional support.

“I Stand Here Ironing” is almost a mirror story of author Tillie Olsen. Like the narrator she wrote, Olsen also was abandoned by her husband after their first child and later remarried and had more children. Being a mother caused her to put aside her career (writing), which happens to be the opposite of the narrator, who put aside being a mother to be a woman who took care of “womanly” duties around the home. Olsen also uses this story to attack the government by writing how the narrator struggled to fend for herself and her child when they received no governmental help. She also used the narrator’s daughter, Emily, to show what happens when the government does not help their people. This is why I believe that in “I Stand Here Ironing,”

The bond between a mother and child is often spoken of as being unlike any other. Yet there are always exceptions to the rule where this connection isn 't as impenetrable as one might assume. This book is an example of this bond gradually becoming weaker over time. It shows how it affects the child, Bone, and leaves her vulnerable to the abuse of her step-father. Bone’s mother, Anney, had fallen in love with a man who abused her which at first, she’s unaware but eventually comes to realize but still chooses to stay with him. Throughout the book there are instances of Anney’s negligence in recognizing her daughter’s abuse and being of aid to her but wasn 't. In having to deal with her

In the story, “I Stand Here Ironing”, written by Tillie Olsen, the iron symbolizes the role of poverty and loneliness in the mother’s life., hence the title. The iron itself represents the mother’s current circumstances; poverty, loneliness, and other misfortunes whereas the actual motion of ironing represents the mother’s train of thought.

Tillie Olsen published “I Stand Here Ironing” in 1961, and the story focuses on a young single mother who is overwhelmed by the limited financial situation during the Great Depression. Throughout the story, the author depicts the mother’s life, which is unfolding as a permanent struggle caused by the shortcomings. Because of the lack of time she starts to neglect her first born child, Emily, and to deprive her of the maternal love. She remains trapped in this situation for many years. However, after many years she realizes that her absence from Emily’s life has created irreparable damage. Consequently, she begins to feel guilty, but she is aware that is too late and the damage is irreversible. Therefore, throughout the story, the author

Being a single woman with a family to support in the 1930’s was not an easy job. Especially when society had so many chips stacked against them. Tillie Olsen’s “I stand Here Ironing” is a short story that addresses feminine social disorders and inequalities as well as economic disadvantages that people of lower circumstances have to overcome to survive. In the short story it is basically an autobiography of Tillie Olsen’s life told by the narrator (Emily’s mother). Throughout the story the narrator is reflecting the way she brought up her daughter during a depression and feminist era. She feels very regretful reflecting 19 years late because of the decisions she was forced to make because of the absence of Emily’s father. This story can be seen in a feminist perspective as well as a Marxist perspective; even though they are very different from one another both perspectives help interpret Tillie Olsen’s short story. The Marxist perspective helps illuminate Tillie Olsen’s “I stand Here Ironing” when the narrator explains how the capital system negatively affected Emily and her Family. In a feminist perspective the narrator describes her different encounters with men that abandoned her; causing her to have to take on a male dominated role. Because of the societal characteristic she had to take on it caused her to turn away from her daughter in order to survive.