"I Stand Here Ironing" is a powerful story by Tillie Olsen, that tells the hardships of a single mother trying to raise her child. The narrator and her daughter, Emily, endure many conflicts as they go through life. The narrator is ironing the entire time, and soon is prompted to discuss her daughter Emily. After a moment, the narrator begins to reflect on both of their lives. This reflection soon begins a heartfelt story, explain the life of a mother and daughter. In "I Stand Here Ironing" Tillie Olsen uses flashback stories to create a powerful story with multiple themes.
In the beginning of the story, we learn the narrator is a struggling single mother. Even though she is already heartbroken about leaving her baby to work certain hours, her husband abandons the family, she struggles with jobs, and her baby soon develops chicken pox. The narrator is picking up the pieces, and making ends meet. This is a great example of a power theme. The narrator not only is struggling to be a mother of her own, but now she has to take over the father position in her daughter's life as well.
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This feeling takes over through the entire story, creating the second theme. The narrator feels responsible for Emily's upbringing. She regrets ignoring her cries for help, and feels sadness over the way she treated Emily. For an example "Night after night she had nightmares. She would call for me, and I would rouse from exhaustion to a sleepily call back: 'You're all right, darling, go to sleep, it's just a dream,' and if she still called, in a sterner voice, 'now go to sleep Emily, there's nothing to hurt you." Twice, only twice, when I had to get up for Susan anyhow, I went in to sit with
Life is sad and tragic; some of which is made for us and some of which we make ourselves. Emily had a hard life. Everything that she loved left her. Her father probably impressed upon her that every man she met was no good for her. The townspeople even state “when her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her; and in a way, people were glad…being left alone…She had become humanized” (219). This sounds as if her father’s death was sort of liberation for Emily. In a way it was, she could begin to date and court men of her choice and liking. Her father couldn’t chase them off any more. But then again, did she have the know-how to do this, after all those years of her father’s past actions? It also sounds as if the townspeople thought Emily was above the law because of her high-class stature. Now since the passing of her father she may be like them, a middle class working person. Unfortunately, for Emily she became home bound.
The Mother Daughter Relationship in "I Stand Here Ironing" by Tillie Olsen. I stand here ironing, a unique phrase uttered by a woman in her conquest of life. It may seem like an unwanted phrase to many, but it has a deep meaning behind it. This phrase is almost whispered by the narrator of?I Stand Here Ironing,?
Emily’s mother is just a teenager when she had Emily. She did not have the money or resources to take care of her, so she had to let Emily live with her grandparents for a couple of years before she could get Emily back. When Emily was two, her mother finally got her custody of her, but Emily is not the little girl she remembered. When the mother first had Emily, she described her as a beautiful baby (302), but it changed when Emily became sickly and got scars from chicken pox. The mother said, “When she finally came, I hardly knew her, walking quick and nervous like her father, looking like her father, thin, and dressed in a shoddy red that yellowed her skin and glared at the pockmarks. All the baby loveliness gone. (302)” Nevertheless, the mother is never there for Emily as she grew up. Emily tried to show her mother in different ways that she needed her, but she never seemed to catch the hint. For example, when Emily was two her mother sent her to a nursery school. The teacher of the nursery school was mistreating the children, and instead of telling her mother directly like the other kids told their parents, she told her in different ways. She always had a reason why we should stay home. Momma, you look sick. Momma, I feel sick. Momma, the teachers aren’t there today, they’re sick. Momma, we can’t go, there was a fire there last night. Momma, it’s a holiday
This represents her father still hovering over her after his death almost controlling what she does. Emily does not listen to her father’s words of wisdom and appears to fall for a man of lesser stature. With the uncommonness of the relationship along with several other events it is evident that Miss Emily is up to something. With that said, the central theme of Faulkner’s story is madness and insanity, and with supporting evidence from the story, I will be able to prove my case. The first case to prove the theme is when her father dies.
I Stand Here Ironing by Tillie Olsen. A good example of Modernism is a short story called 'I Stand Here Ironing' by Tillie Olsen. This story not only portrays gender roles, but also family roles. Here the narrator is a mother, giving the reader a glimpse into her life, choices she made as a mother, and being a single parent.
The narrator reflects and regrets on her daughter Emily’s past. The narrator feels guilty about leaving Emily at a neighbor’s house, sending her to nursery school and a convalescent facility. In her short story “I Stand Here Ironing”, Olsen describes the convalescent home as she insert “The parents stand below shrieking up to be heard and the children shriek down to be heard, and between them the invisible wall “Not To Be Contaminated by Parental Germs or Physical Affection” (226). When Emily is in the convalescent facility, she is cut off from outside world, including the communication with her mother. Besides the convalescent facility, the iron itself also has a symbolic meaning. In the beginning of the short story, Olsen writes “I stand here ironing, and what you asked me moves tormented back and forth with the iron” (223). The narrator is ironing during a phone conversation with an adult concerned about Emily 's well-being. Toward the end, the author express the Emily’s feeling when she says “Aren’t you ever going to finish the ironing, Mother” (229). The non-stop ironing annoys Emily because her own mother is willing to spend the time on ironing despite it would extend the distance between the two of them. The simple act of ironing not only symbolizes the duty as a mother but also represent the helplessness to change the circumstances. The absences of the narrator and the lack of communication weakens the bond
One example of the theme occurs when the author first introduces the story. “But the summer I was 9 years old, the town I had always loved morphed into a beautifully heartbreaking and complicated place.” (pg. 1). The author is saying that the year she turned nine, she found out something about her town that broke her heart and changed the way she saw it. This quote is important because it supports the theme. It shows that now she is older she has learned something about her town that made her wiser than when she was younger. She is now more informed because the new information changed her and caused her to begin to mature.
Emily had a servant so that she did not have to leave the house, where she could remain in solitary. The front door was never opened to the house, and the servant came in through the side door. Even her servant would not talk to anyone or share information about Miss Emily. When visitors did come to Emily’s door, she became frantic and nervous as if she did not know what business was. The death of Emily’s father brought about no signs of grief, and she told the community that he was not dead. She would not accept the fact that she had been abandoned because of her overwhelming fear. Emily’s future husband deserted her shortly after her father’s death. These two tragic events propelled her fear of abandonment forward, as she hired her servant and did not leave the house again shortly after. She also worked from home so that she never had a reason to leave. Emily did not have any family in the area to console in because her father had run them off after a falling out previously. She also cut her hair short to remind her of a time when she was younger and had not been deserted. Even though people did not live for miles of Emily Grierson, citizens began
As time went on pieces from Emily started to drift away and also the home that she confined herself to. The town grew a great deal of sympathy towards Emily, although she never hears it. She was slightly aware of the faint whispers that began when her presence was near. Gossip and whispers may have been the cause of her hideous behavior. The town couldn’t wait to pity Ms. Emily because of the way she looked down on people because she was born with a silver spoon in her mouth and she never thought she would be alone the way her father left her.
Emily’s isolation is evident because after the men that cared about her deserted her, either by death or simply leaving her, she hid from society and didn’t allow anyone to get close to her. Miss Emily is afraid to confront reality. She seems to live in a sort of fantasy world where death has no meaning. Emily refuses to accept or recognize the death of her father, and the fact that the world around her is changing.
Emily alone that they thought she was crazy, and this scared people. In the beginning they only felt sorry for Miss. Emily, but as the story progresses things become a little weirder. After her father’s death it took three days for her to finally allow them inside to get him. Even though this made them feel sorry for Miss. Emily this proves that she was experiencing some emotional problems. Jack Schering states that “Emily became an emotional orphan in search of the father who had been taken from her.” ( Jack Schering page 400) I am sure that with dealing with all that she had going on she came off as a crazy old lady, Especially to the younger generations. Little did we know though that at the end of the story we would find out the extant of mental
From the beginning of Emily's life she is separated from those she needed most, and the mother's guilt tears at the seams of a dress barely wrinkled. Emily was only eight months old when her father left her and her mother. He found it easier to leave than to face the responsibilities of his family's needs. Their meager lifestyle and "wants" (Olsen 601) were more than he was ready to face. The mother regrettably left the child with the woman downstairs fro her so she could work to support them both. As her mother said, "She was eight months old I had to leave her daytimes" (601). Eventually it came to a point where Emily had to go to her father's family to live a couple times so her mother could try to stabilize her life. When the child returned home the mother had to place her in nursery school while she worked. The mother didn't want to put her in that school; she hated that nursery school. "It was the only place there was. It was the only way we could be toge...
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.
Miss Emily’s refusal to change all started when her father had passed away and when asked about it she was in denial and “she told them her father was not dead.” She didn’t want to come to the realization that the only person in her life that loved her and protected her was gone. The fact that he was so controlling of her life and how she lived made Miss Emily afraid of what was going to happen next. She wasn’t used to making her own life choices.
Emily was kept confined from all that surrounded her. Her father had given the town folks a large amount of money which caused Emily and her father to feel superior to others. “Grierson’s held themselves a little too high for what they really were” (Faulkner). Emily’s attitude had developed as a stuck-up and stubborn girl and her father was to blame for this attitude. Emily was a normal girl with aspirations of growing up and finding a mate that she could soon marry and start a family, but this was all impossible because of her father. The father believed that, “none of the younger man were quite good enough for Miss Emily,” because of this Miss Emily was alone. Emily was in her father’s shadow for a very long time. She lived her li...