In Tillie Olsen's, "I Stand Here Ironing," a mother stands at her ironing board recollecting the life of her daughter Emily, who is now nineteen. She was not able to spend much time with Emily while she was growing up and feels guilty because of it. However, the mother’s poor parenting and abandonment of her daughter in a neglectful environment lead Emily to find her comedic talent, her ability to be independent and her great appreciation of everything early in life.
Because of Emily’s substandard childhood, she possesses the dark side of comedy. Many people do not understand the dark psychology of being a comedian. Comedians are successful because they can appreciate happiness because they go through depression. Emily comes from a poor and broken family. Her father left when she was nearly one and she was left to family while her mother worked. Emily always “...fretted about her appearance...” because it was popular to be blonde and chunky and she was brown haired and skinny (Olsen, 55). Also, Emily’s mother notices that “she does not smile easily...” and “her face is closed and somber...” (Olsen, 54). However some nights, while her mother was ironing or making food, Emily would
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In fact, studies show that “...exposure to an unpredictable, impoverished environment as a kid leads to faster development whereas children who grow up in a stable environment with more resources tend to have a slower developmental course” (Scientific American). Because of her imperfect childhood, Emily is self- supporting and when Emily had nightmares her mother checked on her at night and her response was always “... I’m all right, go back to sleep mother” (Olsen, 54). Emily self- provided her comfort because she knew that her mother would not always be there and this resulted in her early
Ulf Kirchdorfer, "A Rose for Emily: Will the Real Mother Please Stand Up?” ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews, 10/2016, Volume 29, Issue 4, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0895769X.2016.1222578
The mother in I Stand Here Ironing speaks of Susan, "quick and articulate and assured, everything in appearance and manner Emily was not." Emily "thin and dark and foreign-looking at a time when every little girl was supposed to look or thought she should look a chubby blonde replica of Shirley Temple." Like Dee, Emily had a physical limitation also. Hers was asthma.
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...
I believe this story is based around the hardships of growing up as a woman in the Nineteen-hundreds. It has all the symbolism of being a true feminist short story. As Elaine Orr expresses in her criticism, Tillie Olsen and a Feminist Spiritual Vision, about how?Suddenly Emily is emblematic of all children, of the next generation? (EO 84) that the times were of the early feminist era. When feminists were about conquering oppression and rising above the rest of the doubt that society places upon them.
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
Having to send Emily in her early days to live with her father was a burdensome nuisance. All of Emily's father's attributes were rubbing off on her, "all of the baby loveliness gone," (p.
As time goes on Emily grows up, her mother criticizes and blames herself for the distance between the relationships. It is causing tension in their already rocky relationship. The mother is obviously suffering from guilt on how Emily was raised and the unpleasant memories of the past. Emily was also suffering. We see her shyness towards those who care for her. She was a very depressed teen. She had quietness in her daily duties, and her feelings of not being good enough towards herself. She always felt that she was extremely ugly and not smart compared to her younger sister, Susan. She thought she was perfect. She was the typical “Shirley Temple” image.
... traditions that had been passed by generations before her. But as a black women living in the 1980s, it might have been hard for her to fulfill this duty since the society viewed black people as inferior beings. Her father also reinforced traditions by driving all the men who wanted to marry her. Emily was born in a rich family and her father believed that “None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily” (Chartres 316). The father wanted Emily to preserve the status of her family and he excercised control over her life. Due to the overprotective nature of her father, Emily did not learn how to deal with pressures that confronted her in life. Through her experience, Faulkner illustrates how pressures of the society and the inability to deal with stressors could ruin one's well being and lead to mental illness.
Furthermore, in the short story, the narrator got pregnant at the age of nineteen and conceived Emily during the pre-relief, the pre-WPA world of depression. The economy was in great crisis during the Great Depression period. In addition to the crisis in the economy, the narrator was abandoned by Emily’s father. With the scarcity of jobs and mediocre salary, the narrator strives to provide for her daughter. Emily’s childhood consisted of different unpleasant environments.
Emily’s desperate grasp on the past may have provided her some sort of satisfying complacency, which is not a hard concept to understand. It can be easier to fall back into familiar ways. However, did Emily’s severe nostalgia and forceful attempts to stay in the past really give her more comfort? She ended up hoarding a past lovers rotting corpse in her basement, and snuggling with it. Discussing racism and being open with beliefs may be very uncomfortable and awkward, but it is better than ignoring the archaic beliefs that are unwelcome, yet still exist, in modern times. If anything that riles up inconvenient emotions is swept under the rug, than process will be nonexistent, and racism may linger indefinitely.
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 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...
According to the narrator, childhood is no easy task, but rather a means of survival. The hardships we face as children define the young adults that we become. Instead of reverting into herself and becoming more isolated and dreary, Emily decides to mask all her pain and resentment with comical wittiness. As a reader, this becomes evident when Emily tries out for talent shows as a comedian. Her mother realizes that she is very good, but still doesn’t show her the attention that she is so obviously trying to get from her mother. The narrator states: “I think I said once: “Why don’t you do something like this in the school amateur show?” (424) This could be why she chose to have a love for comedy, because she knew if she couldn’t get the attention she deserved from her mother, she would get it from her pears around her.
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...