“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,” Olsen levels a sustained attack on a heartless, bureaucratic government.
Olsen starts this attack by having the government not help the narrator when her first husband left her with an infant child. One of the first things we learn in “I Stand Here Ironing” is that the narrator’s husband left her and their infant child, Emily, because he “could no longer endure sharing want with [them]” (Olsen, paragraph 8.) Olsen adds blame on the government for why the narrator’s husband left by telling us that this happened before the Work Progress Administration, as to say it is the government’s fault for acting too late. When the narrator finally finds a job, she could not get one with hours well enough to be with her child. The narrator loved the way her baby reacted to the lights, colors, and music and was understandably crushed that she had to leave her baby with a neighbor so she could work (Olsen, Paragraph 8). Olsen uses this to blame the government for not coming up with a plan to help single mothers...
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...he ironing board,” that is, she hopes Emily learns her self-worth and does not allow herself to care more about getting wrinkles out of clothes than caring for her children.
Olsen used Emily as an example of how the government cares more about business than people, thus why I believe she sustained an attack on a heartless, bureaucratic government in “I Stand Here Ironing.” She writes about how the government left the narrator to fend for herself and her child when her husband left her to escape the poverty they were in. She also uses Emily to show what happens to a child and a mother when the government does not help them stay together. Olsen then shows that punctuality is important to help people by showing that the government’s want to help Emily, now a teenager, is futile. These statements are all results of a bureaucratic government with no care for its people.
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.
Tillie Olsen's I Stand Here Ironing, and Alice Walker's Everyday Use, both address the issue of a mother's guilt over how her children turn out. Both mothers blamed themselves for their daughter's problems. While I Stand Here Ironing is obviously about the mousy daughter, in Everyday Use this is camouflaged by the fact most of the action and dialog involves the mother and older sister Dee. Neither does the mother in Everyday Use say outright that she feels guilty, but we catch a glimpse of it when Dee is trying very hard to claim the handmade quilts. The mother says she did something she had never done before, "hugged Maggie to me," then took the quilts from Dee and gave them to Maggie. In I Stand Here Ironing the mother tells us she feels guilty for the way her daughter Emily is, for the things she (the mother) did and did not do. The mother's neighbor even tells her she should "smile at Emily more when you look at her." Again towards the end of the story Emily's mother admits "my wisdom came too late." The mothers unknowingly gave Emily and Maggie second best.
The two works of literature nudging at the idea of women and their roles as domestic laborers were the works of Zora Neale Hurston in her short story “Sweat”, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Whatever the setting may be, whether it is the 1920’s with a woman putting her blood, sweat and tears into her job to provide for herself and her husband, or the 1890’s where a new mother is forced to stay at home and not express herself to her full potential, women have been forced into these boxes of what is and is not acceptable to do as a woman working or living at home. “Sweat” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” draw attention to suppressing a woman’s freedom to work along with suppressing a woman’s freedom to act upon her
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,?
This ESSAY discusses the female Lowell factory worker as portrayed in the Offering. Although the magazine never expressed an overtly feminist view of the factory girls' condition, nor invoked a working-class consciousness similar to later labor expressions in Lowell, there is evidence of a narrative strategy and ideology speaking both to the factory women and the middle-class readership outside of the mill town. The paper's short stories, epistolary narratives and commentaries seek to legitimize an operatives' role within the feminine ideal of domesticity. In conforming to the norms of feminine literature, the Offering reconstructs the operatives' character. It subordinates the evidence for independence or autonomy to relate stories of familial or sentimental ties binding the factory girl to the world outside of factory life. The magazine sought to provide an answer to this question: given her new liberties, what kept the "factory girl" from losing contact with her moral sentiments?
The stories “I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen and “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, are different in many ways, but are also similar. “I Stand Here Ironing” and “Everyday Use” both focus on the relationships of the mother and daughter, and on the sibling’s relationships with each other. Emily from “I Stand Here Ironing” and Maggie from “Everyday Use” have different relationships with their mothers, but have similar relationships with their sisters. Although the stories are similar in that Emily and Maggie are both distant from their sisters, they differ in that the mother is distant from Emily in “I Stand Here Ironing,” while the mother is close to Maggie in “Everyday Use.”
The mother is doing everything she can to make Emily's life worth living. However, because the mother is trying so hard to juggle more than one job at a time she has less time with her daughter. During the Great Depression it was next to impossible to find a job. The mother would have less stress in her life if she had a strong dependable job with flexible hours so she could be with her daughter. The mother cannot care for her daughter to her full potential when all she is doing is working just to keep her daughter nourished, healthy and safe. The mother's character is living in a world where the word well-off is next to impossible to comprehend, "[she] found a job hashing at night so [she] could be with her days." (p.158). The mother wishes making money would not have to be the life she lived just to be next to her daughter. During the Great Depression this wish was impossible to fulfil. Thus leaving the mothers character in a lack of hope for a better future.
Margaret Atwood's renowned science fiction novel, The Handmaid's Tale, was written in 1986 during the rise of the opposition to the feminist movement. Atwood, a Native American, was a vigorous supporter of this movement. The battle that existed between both sides of the women's rights issue inspired her to write this work. Because it was not clear just what the end result of the feminist movement would be, the author begins at the outset to prod her reader to consider where the story will end. Her purpose in writing this serious satire is to warn women of what the female gender stands to lose if the feminist movement were to fail. Atwood envisions a society of extreme changes in governmental, social, and mental oppression to make her point.
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.
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...
Throughout the story, Faulkner so painstakingly attempted to maintain as much attention to detail so the reader would not loose sight of her plight of the times. The poor woman, once a pillar of society in her fathers' eye, had no one left once he was gone. Her feeble attempts to maintain a sense of serenity and purpose were always shutdown from within herself. While the world changed outside, Miss Emily's mind never changed from that early state that was bore in her soul.
Quilts symbolize a family’s heritage. Maggie adheres the tradition by learning how to quilt from her grandmother and by sewing her own quilts. Maggie also puts her grandmother’s quilts into everyday use. Therefore, when Dee covets the family’s heirloom, wanting to take her grandmother’s hand-stitched quilts away for decoration, Mama gives the quilts to Maggie. Mama believes that Maggie will continually engage with and build upon the family’s history by using the quilts daily rather than distance herself from
Motherhood in never guaranteed to by easy. Children definitely do not come with instruction manuals and even if they did there are so many variables, such as the national economy and unexpected single motherhood, that are beyond our control. The choices a mother has to make can cause numerous moments of second guessing and immense guilt. “I Stand Here Ironing” explores the perceived failures and gnawing guilt of a post- Depression era mother as she contemplates the childhood circumstances of her oldest, overlooked, and seemingly troubled child. Throughout the story Tillie Olsen takes us through the depths of a mother’s guilt due to pressures of the economy and society on parenting during her time and how much blame she puts on herself for her
Wives had the jobs of housekeeping, childcare, and spending an average of 55 hours a week on domestic chores. This lifestyle however was completely contrasted by the main character in “I Stand Here Ironing”, a short story written by Tillie Olsen. The narrator is a single, working class mother during the Great Depression and during a time where women were expected to stay home and care for their children. The story follows the mother’s economic hardships and struggle to be a good mother for her daughter while facing the difficulties of inequality. This short story highlights the challenges of working-class women and represents the struggle of American women during this
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...