I Stand Here Ironing By Tillie Olsen

Tradition controls the actions of both the town and Emily herself.  “A Rose for Emily” captures the importance tradition holds for her Southern community.  The Civil War was an issue of lifestyle.  Southerners hung to the lifestyle they had, with the slaves. Tradition was the reason Emily didn’t pay her taxes. Her father was aristocracy and paid no taxes , therefore , Emily refused. When the slavery era passed, the South fell, the lifestyle was torn apart and the economy changed.  Old-time families, like Emilie’s, lost their position with their

The narrator seems unable to establish direct contact with Emily, either in the recovery center or their home life. The narrator notes how Emily grew slowly more distant and emotionally unresponsive. Emily returned home frail, distant, and rigid, with little appetite. Each time Emily returned, she was forced to reintegrate into the changing fabric of the household. Clearly, Emily and the narrator have been absent from each other’s lives during significant portions of Emily’s development. After so much absence, the narrator intensifies her attempts to show Emily affection, but these attempts are rebuffed, coming too late to prevent Emily’s withdrawal from her family and the world. Although Emily is now at home with the narrator, the sense of absence continues even in the present moment of the story. Emily, the narrator’s central

Emily was kept confined from all that surrounded her. Her father had given the town folks a large amount of money which caused Emily and her father to feel superior to others. “Grierson’s held themselves a little too high for what they really were” (Faulkner). Emily’s attitude had developed as a stuck-up and stubborn girl and her father was to blame for this attitude. Emily was a normal

In spite of her suffering, it is almost shocking how Emily behaves extraordinary well even in stressful situations. When she is left at nursery school, she acts unexpectedly contrary to most kids her age. “‘She did not clutch and implore “don’t go Mommy” like the other children’” (Olsen 291). She prefers to stay at home but even while trying to convince her mother to let her stay, she does it subtly, “‘Never a direct protest, never rebellion’” (Olsen 292). Does Emily behave well by choice? Her mother is worried and wonders, “What in me demanded that goodness in her? And what was the cost, the cost to her of such goodness?” (Olsen 292).

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.

The treatment by Emily’s father affected her as an adult in many ways. I feel that her father actions caused her to isolate herself from society and not able to adapt to change. In the story, “A Rose for Emily”, Emily lived with her father and had little interactions with anyone else. Emily’s father was very controlling over her life by not allowing her to do things on her own, which resulted in Emily being reserved from society. Her father kept her shielded, and believed that no young man was good enough for his daughter. The narrator stated, “We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will” (Faulkner, 1931, 84). After his death

"You think because I am her mother I have a key, or that in some way you could use me as a key? She has lived for nineteen years. Over and over, we are told of the limitations on choice--"it was the only way"; "They persuaded me" and verbs of necessity recur for descriptions of both the mother's and Emily's behavior. " In such statements as "my wisdom ! came too late," the story verges on becoming an analysis of parental guilt. With the narrator, we construct an image of the mother's own development: her difficulties as a young mother alone with her daughter and barely surviving during the early years of the depression; her painful months of enforced separation from her daughter; her gradual and partial relaxation in response to a new husband and a new family as more children follow; her increasingly complex anxieties about her first child; and finally her sense of family balance which surrounds but does not quite include the early memories of herself and Emily in the grips of survival needs. In doing so she has neither trivialized nor romanticized the experience of motherhood; she has indicated the wealth of experience yet to be explored in the story’s possibilities of experiences, like motherhood, which have rarely been granted serious literary consideration. Rather she is searching for

“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.

     Emily’s mother felt like she was forced to neglect Emily. Her excuse was that the time was hard, it was the age “of depression, of war, of fear” (Olsen 262). Although things were not under Emily’s mother’s control, she takes responsibility anyway. In society, parents are thought to provide physical and emotional support so that their children can advance through life with prosperity. This paper is the property of Virtual Essays .com Copyright ©

Emily is a very dependant woman who can’t take care of herself. She is so used to having her father around and to tend to her. At age thirty Emily is

Emily is very vulnerable mostly because of her appearance. "She tormented herself enough about not looking like the others, there was enough of the unsureness, the having to be conscious of works before you speak, the constant caring-what are they thinking of me? Without having it all magnified by the merciless physical drivers" (Olson 603). Emily is a skinny, fragile, and sick child, and in the outer world, other kids without values would point her out. Emily is always insecure about what she says, or does in front of others. The insecurity of not being able to be her own person is always on her mind.

The mother-daughter relationship is often scrutinized, publicized, and capitalized on. Whether from tell-all biographies, to humorous sit-coms, or private therapy sessions, this particular relationship dynamic gives some of the most emotion-activating memories. When female authors reflect and write about their relationships with their mothers, they have a tendency to taint their reflections with the opinions they have as an adult, reviewing the actions of their mother when they were young. These opinions set the tone of the story independently and in conjunction with the relationship itself and manifest in creative literary styles that weave an even more intricate story. Case in point, when reviewing the two literary works “I Stand Here

Emily is angry and resentful. She is angry at her mother and blames her for her life and the way she has turned out. Her mother has always put her down and constantly tell her that she was

“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.