An Analysis of the Mother in Tillie Olsen's Story, "I Stand Here Ironing"

She is truly overcome with grief and overflowing with uncontrollable emotion. She is asking for sympathy and understanding when she says, "Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate." In addition, she passes the blame when she says, "Though why should I whine, / Whine that the crime was other than mine?" This suggests that she was pressured from another source -- a boyfriend, family member, or society.

It is difficult to understand, even surprising, how she neither shows nor expresses being upset even though she experiences plenty of justifiable situations. She acts calm when she is left alone at night, when under normal circumstances it would be upsetting to any other kid. She is collected while confronting unfair situations and Olsen makes it extraordinary easy to visualize when Emily’s mother recalls, “Susan telling jokes and riddles to company for applause while Emily sat silent (to say to me later: that was my riddle, Mother, I told it to Susan)” (Olsen 294). She has the right to get angry and to express it

This was the only way she felt she could do both. Harder still was that Emily would cry and beg her mother not to that nursery school. As these separations press on Emily and her mother, the mother feels guilt and her child is torn by a separation made even worse as she's placed in several undesirable locations.

Emily comes from a family with high expectations of her a sort of “hereditary obligation” (30). Emily has been mentally manipulated by her as so indicated in the line of the story “we did not say she was crazy then we believed she had to do that we remember all the young men her father had driven away” (32). There is already proof of mental illness in the family “remembering how old lady Wyatt, her great aunt, had gone completely crazy last” (32).

While James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues” depicts the connection between two brothers, Tillie Olsen’s short story “I Stand Here Ironing” represents the bond between a mother and her daughter. Both Baldwin and Olsen focus on family relationships and how emotional support vs neglect have an effect on family members. Also, each author conveys a message of finding self-identity even amidst adversity, while including the symbolism of everyday objects. Furthermore, Baldwin compares light and darkness throughout his story, and Olsen has the mother scrutinize her actions in an interior monologue.

Although the mother may have been trying to help Emily, the mother should have tried to take care of Emily better instead of sending her off as the only solution. One of the other effects of her mother’s unavoidable neglect is Emily’s failure to be on the same pace as her peers in class. She is at a state of illiteracy that is uncommon for her age at the time which may be a result from staying at home instead of going to class to take care of the household. In addition to the mother’s neglect, having a sister who was the ideal poster child may have caused self confidence problems as she grew older being the odd one out in the family. Emily’s mother should have made sure she was able to take care of Emily first before deciding to give birth to another child. What the mother thought would be the best option for Emily had a more clear negative effect on Emily after she grew older still not having any clear direction in her life.

My ultimate take is that Faulkner portrayed her to have a dark soul. Emily lived in disgust for someone who held themselves to such a higher standard than most people. He portrayed this not only by her actions but also on the description of her home inside and out. The people in the town felt sorry for her quite possibly because she was alone, perhaps this is why they put up with her in the manner they

When Emily asks “ do any human being ever realize life while they live? - every, every minute?” The stage manager replies “ No” and goes on to say “ The saints and poets, maybe -- they do some.” It's kinda like how we as people don’t realize what's going around or how important things are until they are gone. Emily keeps on saying “ Oh, Mama, just look at me one minute as though you really saw me. Fourteen years have gone by…we’re happy”, at that moment she wanted her mother to look at her. She knows the future so she is trying to tell her mother to not to take her presence for granted. It also makes her realize how much she didn’t pay any attention to the details and how unimportant it had seemed to her. She realizes how she took her family

I Stand Here Ironing lies in its fusion of motherhood as both metaphor and experience: it shows us motherhood bared, stripped of romantic distortion, and reins fused with the power of genuine metaphorical insight into the problems of selfhood in the modern world. ironing is a metaphor for "the ups and downs, back and forth of pressing pressures to make ends meet and a determination to pass through life's horrors and difficulties by keeping the mind intact and focusing on the beauty and blessings that [lie amidst] the dark times"? So the ironing is like a drug, to keep the mother calm and sedated. The story seems at first to be a simple meditation of a mother reconstructing her daughter's past in an attempt to

“Only help her to know-help make it so there is cause for her to know that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron” (Tillie Olsen). The last sentence of a story might not mean a lot to some readers however, for most reading this story, the last sentence makes one rethink the whole perspective of Emily’s mother. Is she really this awful mother who only took care of her daughter, Emily, half of the time? Did she actually care for her daughter and didn’t know how to show it until it was too late? In “I Stand Here Ironing” Tillie Olsen uses symbolism, flashbacks, and theme to develop the narrator as an unsympathetic mother who is unable to treat her daughter, Emily, with the attention and care that she needed to blossom into adulthood.

The mother was an invisible parent for Emily. Her reason for not being there for Emily was because she was a “young and distracted mother” (Olsen 262). The real reason she was inattentive was because she was inexperienced. She lacks the understanding of how essential it is to be there physically for Emily. Emily needed her mother for

In the story, “I Stand Here Ironing”, written by Tillie Olsen, the iron symbolizes the role of poverty and loneliness in the mother’s life., hence the title. The iron itself represents the mother’s current circumstances; poverty, loneliness, and other misfortunes whereas the actual motion of ironing represents the mother’s train of thought.

The narrator was not a very maternally loving mother to Emily. "The old man living in the back once said in his gentle way: `You should smile at Emily more when you look at her'" (200). Unlike the mom's portrayed in the 1950's, the narrator could not

While reading through “I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen one can pick up on the struggles not only women but single mother’s had in the 1930’s. Usually the demand of women consisted of taking care of the house, children, and maintaining a job. Olsen relates to her own trials that she went through when she was a mother that worked. Having to leave her child to others to help pay bills was something she may not have wanted to do, but you have to do whatever it takes to make it through. Olsen’s stories favored the challenges women faced when they were not considered a dominant individual. She also includes in the story that Emily finally gained the attention she was thirsting for near the end of the story when she performed in the school

I loved the way, the author depicted a different side of motherhood that isn't seen or heard about often. In our modern day society, motherhood is glamorized. It is a 24/7-365 day job, that you must be good at or else you're perceived as a bad mother. Mothers aren't allowed to be human. I'm not supporting Emily's mother's behavior towards her, but I think that if mothers were reassured that its completely normal to be selfish sometimes it would be easier for them to move past their mistakes and forgive themselves, in order to repair the broken relationship they have with their children. Being a mother is a job that requires a lot of patience, but it's also