Persistent Struggles: A Mother's Reminiscence in The Great Depression

Most parents want the best for their children: financially, emotionally, and physically. However, sometimes there are external barriers that prevent full growth in these areas. These are the limitations that no parent feels comfortable speaking about because all they do is bring back memories of attempted success, yet never quite reached. In Tillie Olsen’s narration, I Stand Here Ironing there is a mother who is concerned for her daughter, Emily after a full nineteen years have passed. She begins to remember what her socioeconomic standings represented through the eyes of Emily, who is only now like a blossomed flower. There were struggles from both ends. Mother had to raise her daughter without the father, who had left due to poverty and mother also had to continue working a job to provide for food and for other survival necessities, which seemed to affect Emily’s happiness- which mother is now reminiscing about. Set during the Great Depression, the reader can understand that there will be financial shortcomings and many challenges that go along with this

Olsen presents mother in I Stand Here Ironing as a woman of compassion because she is bringing back all of her memories of her daughter, Emily’s life and putting them into perspective of how the cards that she was dealt in life could not have been changed because the situation was just that, she was low on money and too young to fully grasp what being a mother was all about without reading from