I Stand Here Ironing, Research Paper Example

Introduction

Tillie Olsen wrote the short story entitled ‘I stand here ironing’. The author was an activist advocating for the rights of working class women. She devoted most of her life to the support of the feminist movement. In this short story it is a reflection of the narrators life as she considers ways in which she might help a troubled daughter. The paper has a number of themes and contains a degree of symbolism, including that of ironing depicting a life of drudgery and the effort of motherhood. The concept of ironing being how she is removing the creases from her daughters dress but equally how she might try to iron out the troubled relationship with her daughter.

A monologue

The story is essentially a monologue that is delivered by the narrator. She is responding to the request from a school official to try and help her 19 year old daughter. This sets the narrator into a reflective mode whilst ironing and the relationship with her daughter as her mother. She recognises the lack of power and authority she has held over her daughter. The narrator reveals the childhood of Emily (daughter) and an environment of poverty and abandonment. The mother was only 19 when Emily was born and her husband abandoned her. This resulted in the mother leaving Emily with her father’s family for two years before the mother could reclaim her.

As the mother reflects on the relationship with her daughter she realizes that she has made a lot of mistakes. She recognizes the hurt and pain that she has caused her daughter but equally in unsure of how she might have done things differently. It is an honest appraisal by the mother and provides the reader with an insight into the results of poverty and the difficulties a single mother experiences raising her child.

Symbolism

The iron itself is a symbol of drudgery and toil reflected in the life of the mother in her relationship in the upbringing of her daughter. It reflects a period of poverty and sense of isolation of the mother. Food is equally illustrated as a scarce commodity as the mother struggled to find the basic food requirements for her daughter. Food and nutrition are symbolic of the time period of the daughter, a time of fear, depression and war. It symbolizes change to the present day and how the period compounded poverty and inflicted hardship on the mother.

Women in Society

The author reflects upon the role of women and femininity through the lens of how a relationship is formed between that of mother and daughter. It tells a story of poverty and the role of poor housewives as they struggle to raise a family in the time of the great depression. The main consideration focused on the poor working class and the skepticism and lack of care by those who held power i.e. the rich and the government. The story tries to make you more sympathetic to the role of the mother in raising a daughter in times of extreme poverty. The mother recognizers the difficulty and the hurt but is just doing her best in difficult circumstances. There is comparative analysis here to the general lot of women in the struggle for emancipation and recognition of their plight.

The story is part autobiographical with the author and narrator. Olsen gave birth to her first daughter at just 19 years of age and her husband was often not around or really helped in the raising of their daughter; equally Olsen lived apart from her daughter for a period of time. It is clear that this short story was inspired by her own motivations and personal feelings. The story inspires a sense of social realism and focuses on the working of everyday life in the working class people of America. The story illustrates that during the early period there was not a time for reflection owing to the amount of work and chores required. The narrator was too busy dealing with the burden of raising a large family. The situation improved for the mother when she re-married and built a larger family and Emily helped her mother raise the children during the difficult war years. The plot tells of the sacrifice of Emily in helping her mother through those difficult war years and how now the mother wishes for better fortune for Emily in shaping a brighter future for her own life.

It could be argued that the mother might have done more for Emily as a young child but she was a victim of circumstance. She had to work in order to have money to raise the child, the father having left her. It was a period of depression and life was hard. This caused the loss of the primary caregiver early in the life of Emily and it undoubtedly had a psychological impact on the child. The mother had to realize that she left it too late for Emily and it’s not possible to turn the clocks back and remediate the situation.

Analysis

The mother undoubtedly has regrets about Emily’s life. This stems from abandonment, lack of parental care and finally sending her to an uncaring so called “daycare” environment. This at a time when Emily was desperately ill. Although the mother worked hard to keep her new family together it could be argued that she turned her attention to the younger children and neglected the care of Emily. It states that the mother only smiled at the younger children and left you with a feeling that she did not like Emily. Despite this Emily completed many of her mother’s chores and this provides a foundation for the guilt of the mother later in life. This may be a time when the mother became unhappy with her lot in life and Emily was seen as a reflection of her own life and as such created disdain towards Emily. The mother seems unable to accept the fact that she did a poor job in raising Emily and that she was purely a victim of circumstance dictated by hard times and poverty. Emily had a childhood of being uprooted and dispatched from place to place without any real love shown towards her from her parents. The father figures were completely absent in her life and the mother only showed real affection to the young children from her second marriage. The teacher that shows concern for the development of Emily later in life is sharply contrasted to the evil teacher in the daycare home. The mother recognizes that point and hopes that the new teacher will help Emily to have a better life. There is evidence that Emily’s life improved during her teenage years but she remained a haunted child from her troublesome past.

Conclusion

The Narrator expresses a life of egrets with the relationship between herself and her daughter Emily. In this reflection she pauses equally to consider the hope and the future for Emily in her adulthood and hopes that the damage and suffering that has been inflicted upon her as a child will not be an impediment to her development as an adult. Her hope for Emily is that with the help of her teacher she can start to repair the damage and build a new future, putting the experiences of the pas behind her “she is more than a dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron” (Olsen, T. 2012). A rather profound ending to the story depicting both hope for Emily and the loss of the mothers life who she reflects as one of toil and drudgery in the raising of a large family.

References

Olsen, T. (2012, 4 9). I stand here Ironing. Retrieved from http://alexanderbecquer.com/IStandHereIroning.aspx