I Stand Here Ironing by Tillie Olsen, Book Review Example

‘I Stand Here Ironing by Tillie Olsen’ is a story revolving around a nuclear family. The story features a woman who ends up running her family single handed after being abandoned by her husband when their first born is barely a year old.

The mother who serves as the head of this household plays a great role in bringing up their five children. As a matter of fact, she is very caring in the manner she fends for the family. Hardly does Emily turn eight months when she seeks for a job to help her provide for the family. This shows how industrious she is. She is loving and responsible in the way she looks at Emily with love. She is responsible to the extent that she even takes her children to school.

However, at some point she seems negligent when she lets her children especially Emily abscond school without a convincing reason.

Back to the main character, it so happens that it is Emily, who is a nineteen-year old girl. She is described as weakly,  “she stayed skeleton thin.” (Olsen 12) She is the first born in the family of five children. Some of her siblings include Susan and Ronnie. She is described as being beautiful “…that was beautiful at birth.” (Olsen 4)

Looking at her character traits, to start with, she is shy. Her mother puts forward that “I only recognized her that first moment thin, shy, she almost……” this is in response to her behavior on stage (Olsen 46).

Secondly, she is crafty or what one can say a liar. She could abscond school without apparent reasons but could go ahead and give flimsy excuses. For instance, she could say “…the teachers aren’t there today, they are sick…..” It is totally unimaginable that all the teachers can fall sick at ago (Olsen 14)

Thirdly, she is creative. She used to perform live on stage. She could make people entertained and thus make them laugh; to an extent that she used to be invited to perform in other high schools and even colleges “…rouses a laughter out of the audience so clear they applaud and applaud and do not want to let her go…”(Olsen 17)

She is also secretive. The mother tells us that there were years “… she kept too much to herself… She is sad in most cases. In the story, we are told that she does not smile easily. “Her face is closed and somber.”(Olsen 7)

She is also seen as someone who is loving. This is portrayed in the letter she writes to enquire on the welfare of the family in which she even indicates that she loves them. The way she handles the boy she loved in school (taking her mother’s pennies to buy him candy)

Lastly, she was gullible. She fell in love for a boy who never loved her but instead the boy loved someone else. She went to greater lengths to please him only to realize that love cannot be bought but it is only earned, something that she had forgotten.

Works Cited

Olsen Tillie. “I Stand Here Ironing” Short Story Classics. April 2^nd, 2006 retrieved on February 11^th, 2010 from <http://members.multimania.co.uk/shortstories/olsenironing.html>