Analysis Of Tillie Olsen 's ' I Stand Here Ironing ' Essay

Linda Pastan’s poem Marks is a short narrative many women will be able to identify with, as it addresses the tasks by which a stay at home mother is measured. Reduced to a mere extension of her “work,” or family, the female narrator describes in detail not only the domesticity that rules her life, but also the fact that her family has the audacity to assign grades to her efforts. Her husband instrumentalizes her by treating her not as a partner, but as a tool to satisfy his need for to be clothed and fed. He also exhibits fungibility over her in that she is interchangeable with other woman, rather than being her own unique person in the relationship. Finally, he grades his wife even on her performance in the bedroom, reducing her even further to body, vice an active participant in this most intimate facet of their lives. Fortunately, the wife’s self-esteem remains intact, despite her family’s best efforts to dislodge it. In her feminist poem Marks, Linda Pastan highlights the power a husband has over his wife as he subjects her to instrumentality, fungibility, and reduction to body, yet the woman’s inner strength refuses to bow to their systemic oppression.

The short story “I Stand Here Ironing” (1961) by Tillie Olsen is a touching narration of a mother trying to understand and at the same time justifying her daughter’s conduct. Frye interprets the story as a “meditation of a mother reconstructing her daughter’s past in an attempt to express present behavior” (Frye 287). An unnamed person has brought attention and concern to her mother expressing, “‘She’s a youngster who needs help and whom I’m deeply interested in helping’” (Olsen 290). Emily is a nineteen-year-old complex girl who is atypical, both physically and in personality.

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.

The line between being an acceptable and unacceptable parent is often blurry and is seen on different perspectives when it comes to class, culture, and generation differences. Based on the two stories of Amy Tan’s, “Two Kinds” and Tillie Olsen’s, “I Stand here Ironing” we see these two perspectives that derive from different maternal upbringings of the children in the stories. What is found between them is the conflict of being too little or heavily involved in a child’s life has had more negative outcomes during their childhood than positive.

Many people describe the role as a mother and a wife as something that is to be welcomed, a natural stage for women. However for the narrator, it changed from something seemingly beautiful to “old foul, bad...” Motherhood to her is then what creative women were to other people during the 19th century. Creativity was natural for the narrator, unlike motherhood; it was part of her being. Motherhood however, was a prison of domestic

Often times people tend to associate a misbehaved or a distant child with various different factor including home life, personal conflict and many other factors as well. In the short story, I stand Here Ironing by Tillie Olson, the author does an excellent job at portraying a mother-daughter relationship that is not necessarily the “standard relationship”. Throughout the short story, Tillie Olson’s powerful use of words aided in the development of the not-so-perfect mother-daughter relationship with the to main characters in senses of guilt, absence, and the overall development of the daughter’s (Emily’s) life.

The maternal instinct and family affection is woman's most holy attribute, but if she enters industrial life, that is not enough. She must supplement her family conscience by a social and an industrial conscience. She must widen her family affection to embrace the children of the community. She is wrecking havoc in the sewing-trades, because with the meager equipment sufficient for family life she has entered industrial life (Addams 57).

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

“I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen is a depiction of a mother-daughter relationship that lacks involvement and warmth. The whole story composed of the mother’s memory of her relationship with her daughter, Emily. The memory was a painful one comprised mostly of the way the mother was much less able to care for Emily. The forsaken of Emily demonstrates the importance of physical and emotional support.

For centuries, women have had the role of being the perfect and typical house wife; needs to stay home and watch the children, cook for husbands, tend to the laundry and chores around the house. In her short story “Girl”, Jamaica Kincaid provides a long one sentence short story about a mother giving specific instructions to her daughter but with one question towards the end, with the daughter’s mother telling her daughter if she had done all the instructions to become a so called “perfect” woman, every man would want her. Kincaid’s structuring in “Girl,” captures a demanding and commanding tone. This short story relates to feminist perspectives. The mother expects a great deal from her daughter to have a certain potential and she does not hesitate to let her daughter understand that. As a matter of fact, the story is about two pages long, made into one long sentence - almost the whole time the mother is giving her daughter directions to follow - conveys a message to the reader that the mother demands and expects great potential in her daughter. The daughter is forced to listen and learn from what her mother is telling her to do to become the perfect housewife. Throughout the story, Kincaid uses the symbols of the house and clothing, benna and food to represent the meanings of becoming a young girl to a woman and being treated like one in society. Women are portrayed to appeal to a man to become the ideal woman in society, while men can do anything they please.

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.

Tillie Olsen was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1913, the child of political refugees from Russia. Olsen dropped out of school at the age of sixteen to help support her family during the depression. She became politically active in the Young Communist League and was involved in the Warehouse Union’s labor disputes in Kansas City. Her first novel, Yonnondio, about a poor, working-class family, was begun when she was nineteen. While writing the novel over the next four years, she gave birth to her first child and was left to raise the baby alone after her husband abandoned her. She married Jack Olsen in 1936 and had three more children. She remained politically active and held down various jobs while

“I Stand Here Ironing” written by Tillie Olsen is a short story that reflects on the struggles of a single mother who looks back on the past and tries to assess the effect her decisions and circumstances had on her young daughter, Emily. “This story is part of the awarding-winning collection, Tell Me A Riddle, which was first published in 1961” (Wolfe). “This story is considered the most autobiographical of Olsen’s literary works (Piedmont-Marton). The title of the story is taken from the stories opening line, “I stand here ironing, and what you asked me moves tormented back and forth with the iron” (Bauer, Olsen). The story is one of the best examples in literature, and certainly one of the first, to offer readers a glimpse into the lives of the working-class women and families from a woman’s perspective. (Piedmont-Marton) This story “illustrates Olsen’s particular concern with the difficulties faced by women”. (Wolfe) As the story unfolds, Olsen uses distinct character traits, imagery, tone, and style to create a dramatic sense of the mother’s internal debate of her own feelings.

Tillie Olsen published “I Stand Here Ironing” in 1961, and the story focuses on a young single mother who is overwhelmed by the limited financial situation during the Great Depression. Throughout the story, the author depicts the mother’s life, which is unfolding as a permanent struggle caused by the shortcomings. Because of the lack of time she starts to neglect her first born child, Emily, and to deprive her of the maternal love. She remains trapped in this situation for many years. However, after many years she realizes that her absence from Emily’s life has created irreparable damage. Consequently, she begins to feel guilty, but she is aware that is too late and the damage is irreversible. Therefore, throughout the story, the author

Being a single woman with a family to support in the 1930’s was not an easy job. Especially when society had so many chips stacked against them. Tillie Olsen’s “I stand Here Ironing” is a short story that addresses feminine social disorders and inequalities as well as economic disadvantages that people of lower circumstances have to overcome to survive. In the short story it is basically an autobiography of Tillie Olsen’s life told by the narrator (Emily’s mother). Throughout the story the narrator is reflecting the way she brought up her daughter during a depression and feminist era. She feels very regretful reflecting 19 years late because of the decisions she was forced to make because of the absence of Emily’s father. This story can be seen in a feminist perspective as well as a Marxist perspective; even though they are very different from one another both perspectives help interpret Tillie Olsen’s short story. The Marxist perspective helps illuminate Tillie Olsen’s “I stand Here Ironing” when the narrator explains how the capital system negatively affected Emily and her Family. In a feminist perspective the narrator describes her different encounters with men that abandoned her; causing her to have to take on a male dominated role. Because of the societal characteristic she had to take on it caused her to turn away from her daughter in order to survive.