Guilt And Dilemmas In Tillie Olsen's I Stand Here Ironing

In Arlie Russell Hochschild’s, “Love and Gold,” she depicts the economic influences that turn choices of mothers in Third World countries into a precondition. Similarly, in Toni Morrison’s, Sula, a recurring theme of the struggle between independence, the ability to choose, and doing what’s best for others, or coerced decisions, is imminent throughout the entire novel and revolved around the main character, Sula. Often times the factor that weighs down choice is responsibility. Choices are seemingly infinite until you factor in what choices will affect which people and why. Both mothers and caregivers have to put their dependent before themselves, therefore limiting their

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.

In the short story "I Stand Here Ironing" by Tillie Olsen the conflict between a mother whose giving is limited by hardships is directly related to her daughter's wrinkled adjustment. Ironing, she reflects upon when she was raising her first-born daughter, Emily. The mother contemplates the consequences of her actions. The mother's life had been interrupted by childbirth, desertion, poverty, numerous jobs, childcare, remarriage, frequent relocations, and five children. Her struggling economic situation gave way to little or no opportunity to properly care for and nurture her first-born child. In spite of the attention and love Emily craved and never received, she still survived, and even made strengths, and talents, out of the

The Single Parents Club is the passion project of two women with first hand knowledge of what it is like to be raised in a single parent household. Suneta Sowemimo was raised by a single mother who quit her job and started an in-home daycare. Suneta’s mother provided the community and other single parents with childcare at an affordable rate. Her passion for this project stemmed at an early age. Suneta noticed that there were very few programs to help single parents and that the current programs available were unsatisfactory. The other driving force behind the Single Parents Club is DaMonique Vest. The oldest of two children raised by a single mother, DaMonique saw how difficult things became when they moved away from their family support system in Florida. Being the oldest she would help out wherever she could. Assisting her brother with his homework, picking him up from school when need be and any other small jobs to help her mother. Being raised in single parent homes these

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.

In this novel Taylor is a dynamic character, we see her transform from a young girl who didn’t want to get married or have kids to an independent single mother. In the beginning we get to know her as a self-owned, determined and a stubborn girl who is focused, ambitious and thinks outside the box; because she knows firsthand what is like to see her mother struggle as a single parent. She learned to value every day because pregnancy was like a disease. An example of her considerate outlook is “believe me in those days the girls were dropping by the wayside like seeds off a poppy seed bun and you learned to look at every day as a prize” (3). This small but

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.

“With what price we pay for the glory of motherhood” (Isadora Duncan). In Defense of Single Motherhood, by Katie Roiphe, is an essay arguing why being a single mother is better than the traditional two parent method. Although Rophie has a moderate expression of ethos, her poor use of logos, and her struggle with pathos concludes this is a weak argument.

Comparing Tillie Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing” and Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl” Daughter and mother relationship is an endless topic for many writers. They meant to share the bond of love and care for each other. Nevertheless, in the real world their relationship is not as successful as it ought to be. The stories “Girl” and “I Stand Here Ironing” are examples of this conflict. The author of the short story “Girl” Jamaica Kincaid use her life story to reflect in the story. In her short story “Girl”, Kincaid presents the experience of being young and female in a poor country. The story is structured as a single sentence of advice that a mother gives to her daughter. The mother expresses her resents and worries about her daughter becoming a woman. The author of “I Stand Here Ironing” is Tillie Olsen, similarly her story portrays powerfully the economic domestic burdens a poor woman faced, as well as the responsibility and powerlessness she feels over her child’s life. Moreover, the woman is grieving about her daughter's life and about the circumstances that shaped her own mothering. Both stories have many features in common. Not only do they explore the troubles that could exist in the relationship between mother and daughter, but also they raise questions about motherhood, especially when a mother lives on a shoestring, the stories explore the difficulties that a young mother has to endure while raising her child in poverty. Although the two stories refer to different place and

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.

Thesis/Central Idea: To understand that there are many parents raising their children alone with no help at all. Many single parents have different circumstances that cause them to raise their children by themselves. Being a single parent is not easy there are good days and bad days and most single parents must make it through no matter what. Many single parents do not realize that their children are looking at them for the rest of their lives.

In “I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen, the simple action of ironing symbolizes covering up flaws and building a protective layer for imperfection, and through the first person interior monologue, readers get to travel on the journey with the narrator as she grows and realizes the uselessness in hiding the truth. Young Emily was a slow developer, who had asthma, an eating disorder, and spent time in a convalescent home. Her never being “glib or quick in a world where glibness and quickness” (25) were interchangeable with competence, reiterates that Emily was a blemished individual. She had a childhood full of pain, depression, and fear, where the opportunity for her to bloom was simply not there. However, Emily wasn't always this way.

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