Analytical essay

620 Words2 Pages

Analytical Essay on “I Stand Here Ironing” “I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen, is a story about a mother's struggle to balance the demands of raising children and having to work to make ends meet during the Great Depression. The story’s primary focus is on the relationship between the narrator, a mother, and her first child, Emily. Throughout the story, the narrator reflects on the decisions and mistakes she made while raising Emily. The narrator was detached from Emily almost completely during her younger years, but she desires an emotional connection to her, like she has with her other children. She also wants Emily to have a better life than she had. In the opening of this story, someone, perhaps a teacher, has asked the narrator to talk to them about Emily. The narrator’s response makes it appear that she does not care about her daughter. However, the narrator loves Emily deeply, but feels like she shows it by working to support her. “I wish you would manage the time to come in and talk with me about your daughter. I’m sure you can help and whom I’m deeply interested in helping.” “Who needs help.”… Even if I came, what good would it do? You think because I am her mother I have a key, or that in some way you could use me as a key? She has lived for nineteen years. There is all that life that has happened outside of me, beyond me. (Olsen, 1953-54, p. 814) In a time when most mothers typically stayed home to raise their children, the narrator had to look for work when her husband left their family. With no other daycare options available, the narrator leaves eight-month-old Emily in the care of a neighbor who neglects her. She was a miracle to me, but when she was eight months old I had to leave her daytime with ... ... middle of paper ... ...suaded to send Emily away to live in a convalescent home so that she could get better, and it would free Emily’s mom to care for the new baby. When Emily was released from the convalescent home eight months later, the narrator desired a connection with Emily, “I used to try to hold and love her after she came back, but her body would stay stiff, and after a while she’d push away” (Olsen, 1953-54, p. 817). Emily and her mother lack any real connection or mother-daughter bond because they were apart during most of her childhood. The narrator wants Emily to know that she can rise above and become something great. Looking back, the narrator wishes she could “iron out the wrinkles” from Emily’s upbringing. Works Cited Olsen, T. (1953-54). I stand here ironing. In K. Mays (Ed.). (2013). The Norton introduction to literature (pp. 814-820). New York: W. W. Norton.

Show More
Related

  • Relationships In Our Town

    1206 Words  | 3 Pages

    We see this by how Emily doesn’t say in detail her relationships with others; just her mother. This means on some level, one that Emily doesn’t realize until it is too late, that Emily loves her mother and she appreciates her and her role in Emily’s life. Emily portrays the themes of relationships regarding happiness, regrets, and importance through this epiphany. The relationship I had with my uncle represents the exact same comparison...I realized the impact of the relationship after he passed away, regretted things I didn’t do and say to him, and my happiness would be completely different if he was still here. I would forever be walking around, oblivious to how relationships can really affect the lives of

    Read More

  • The Symbol of the Rose in William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily

    665 Words  | 2 Pages

    The domineering attitude of Emily's father keeps her to himself, inside the house, and alone until his death. In his own way, Emily's father shows her how to love. Through a forced obligation to love only him, as he drives off young male callers, he teaches his daughter lessons of love. It is this dysfunctional love that resurfaces later, because it is the only way Emily knows how to love.

    Read More

  • I Stand Here Ironing: The 1950s Woman

    889 Words  | 2 Pages

    Tillie Olsen makes the narrator contradict the ideal housewife of the 1950s image for a reason. By doing this, she shows that even if you are a less than perfect mother and or housewife, it is not always your fault if things go wrong. For instance, if the narrator in this story exemplified the image of a 50s housewife, we, the readers, would not even consider blaming her for Emily's condition as well as for her relationship with Emily. However, the narrator does not exemplify the ideal image of a housewife. Thus, we, as the audience, are compelled to blame her imperfections. However, as the story goes on, it is realized that the narrator did the best that she could for Emily. She was a first time mother with no safety net. Her situation as a single mother and sole provider during Emily's early years left her with no choice. She did what she had to do.

    Read More

  • Isolation in “Yellow Wallpaper”

    1263 Words  | 3 Pages

    For years Miss Emily was rarely seen out of her house. She did not linger around town or participate in any communal activities. She was the definition of a home-body. Her father was a huge part of her life. She had never...

    Read More

  • Parental Detachment in I Stand Here Ironing

    922 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...ving to raise a child on her own was not the life she had imagined. She had no experience to go by; only what the books told her was right and wrong. She did the best that she was able given her circumstances. The mother tells the person that has asked help to understand Emily to “let her be.” (Olsen) She tells herself that Emily has become all that she is going to become. Because of the world around and the decisions made by her mother, she will not have the opportunity to become more. However, to her mother she is perfect the way she is. She feels she has failed her in a way “my wisdom came too late, she has much to her and probably little will come of it.” (Olsen) Her mother doesn’t want her to settle, “help her to know that she is more than this dress on the ironing board.” (Olsen) She wants better for Emily; she does not have to conform to the world around her.

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast I Stand Here Ironing And Everyday Use

    1087 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • I Stand Here Ironing by Tillie Olsen

    669 Words  | 2 Pages

    As a young mother, the narrator expresses how she wanted to be the best mother, the right mother for her child Emily. She admits that she was a first time mother ? ?with all the rigidity of first motherhood?? She reads books to educate her self and she believes the ?experts? and what makes the best kind of mother. Tillie Olsen writes about how the character, through physical sacrifice, nursed her child. The story raises our awareness of gender and family roles by the comments of the narrator. We become aware of the constraints we place upon ourselves t...

    Read More

  • Character Analysis Of Miss Emily In William Faulkner's A Rose For Emily

    625 Words  | 2 Pages

    Growing up Emily was an all-around vibrant girl. Over time, she becomes a secretive old woman. In a “A Rose for Emily, “she was described as shuttered, dusty, and dark just like the outside of her home. She inherited mental illness from her father side. “She exhibits the qualities of the stereotypical southern “eccentric”: unbalanced, excessively tragic, and subject of a bizarre behavior” (SparkNotes Editors 2007, pg 4). When her father passed away, she refused to give up his body. In all, Emily is a scared soul whose loneliness and co-dependent upbringing let her to remain socially unfit, and unable to make healthy human connections (Enotes, 2016 pg 1). Her upbringing slowly affected her ability to function like the rest of the townspeople. The townspeople never labeled her with a mental illness, but she was constantly talked about because of the relationship she had with Homer, and curiosity of the way Emily was living got the best of the

    Read More

  • Character Analysis of Emily Grierson in A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner

    554 Words  | 2 Pages

    When her father passed away, it was a devastating loss for Miss Emily. The lines from the story 'She told them her father was not dead. She did that for three days,' (Charter 171) conveys the message that she tried to hold on to him, even after his death. Even though, this was a sad moment for Emily, but she was liberated from the control of her father. Instead of going on with her life, her life halted after death of her father. Miss Emily found love in a guy named Homer Barron, who came as a contractor for paving the sidewalks in town. Miss Emily was seen in buggy on Sunday afternoons with Homer Barron. The whole town thought they would get married. One could know this by the sentences in the story ?She will marry him,? ?She will persuade him yet,? (Charter 173).

    Read More

  • Family Relationships: Sonny Blues by James Baldwin and I Stand Here Ironing by Tillie Olsen

    899 Words  | 2 Pages

    Although, a mother’s determination in the short story “I Stand Here Ironing” mother face with an intense internal conflict involving her oldest daughter Emily. As a single mother struggle, narrator need to work long hours every day in order to support her family. Despite these criticisms, narrator leaves Emily frequently in daycare close to her neighbor, where Emily missing the lack of a family support and loves. According to the neighbor states, “You should smile at Emily more when you look at her” (Olsen 225). On the other hand, neighbor gives the reader a sense that the narrator didn’t show much affection toward Emily as a child. The narrator even comments, “I loved her. There were all the acts of love” (Olsen 225). At the same time, narrator expresses her feeling that she love her daughter. Until, she was not be able to give Emily as much care as she desire and that gives her a sense of guilt, because she ends up remarrying again. Meanwhile narrator having another child named Susan, and life gets more compli...

    Read More

  • William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily : Her Father is to Blame

    672 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Alienation and Isolation in William Falukners "A Rose For Emily"

    433 Words  | 1 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Motherhood In Tillie Olsen's I Stand Here Ironing

    764 Words  | 2 Pages

    Social pressure to raise pleasant, good mannered children who become grounded and productive adults has been a driving influence for many generations. If our children do not fit into this mold then we’re considered failures are parents. Emily’s mother is tormented by the phone call which sets off a wave of maternal guilt. Emily’s mother was young and abandoned by her husband while Emily was still an infant so she had to rely on only herself and the advice of others while she raised her daughter. After Emily was born her mother, “with all the fierce rigidity of first motherhood, (I) did like the books said. Though her cries battered me to trembling and my breasts ached with swollenness, I waited till the clock decreed.” (Olsen 174). Then when Emily was two she went against her own instincts about sending Emily to a nursery school while she worked which she considered merely “parking places for children.” (Olsen 174). Emily’s mother was also persuaded against her motherly instincts to send her off to a hospital when she did not get well from the measles and her mother had a new baby to tend to. Her mother even felt guilt for her second child, Susan, being everything society deemed worthy of attention. Emily was “thin and dark and foreign-looking at a time when every little girl was supposed to look or thought she should look a chubby blond replica of Shirley Temple.” (Olsen, 177) she was also neither “glib or quick in a world where glibness and quickness were easily confused with ability to learn.” (Olsen 177), which her sister Susan had in

    Read More

  • A Victim of Society in A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner

    558 Words  | 2 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • Applying Freud's Psychoanalytic Theory to William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”

    550 Words  | 2 Pages

    Growing up Emily’s father, Mr. Gierson, made her stay in the house and not socialize with others. He taught her that he was only trying to protect her from the outside world. Mr.Gierson was a rude man who felt that things should go his way; therefore, his daughter hopelessly fell for him because she did not know any oth...

    Read More

More about Analytical essay

Open Document