I Stand Here Ironing By Tillie Olson Essay

An important idiosyncrasy of Emily's that will help the reader to understand the bizarre finale of the story, is her apparent inability to cope with the death of someone she cared for. When deputies were sent to recover back taxes from Emily, she directed them to Colonel Sartoris, an ex-mayor that had told her she would never have to pay taxes, and a man that had been dead for ten years. Years before this incident, however, after her father had died, she continued to act has if he had not, and only allowed his body to be removed when threatened with legal action. Considering the fate of her lover's corpse, one suspects she would have kept her father's corpse also, had the town not known of his death.

The day after her father's death, the women of the town went to give their condolences to Miss. Emily. To their surprise, Miss. Emily was "dressed as usual" and had "no trace of grief on her face (Perrine's 285)." Emily told the women that her father was not dead. Finally after three days of trying to hold on to her father, "she broke down, and they buried her father quickly (Perrine's 285)." The town's people tired to justify Miss. Emily's actions, by saying that she had nothing left, and was clinging to the one thing that had robbed her for so long they convinced themselves that she was not crazy.

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

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.

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.

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.

The very beinning of the story is extraordinary. It begins with the burial of Emily, the residents around her coffin did not feel anything, most of them were curious. There were neither friends nor relatives, nobody who was in mouring for her, only inquirers. The readers can ask, what kind of person was Miss Emily? Why the others did not feel sadness? Perhaps there is a bigger question: what was the reason that nobody went to her house more than ten years (except her slave, Tobe).

This reality sends panic and fear through her because now she has nowhere to turn and no one to tell her what to do, no one to command her life. Not only is she stricken with the loss of her father but now she is cut off to the outside world, because her only link has passed on. Emily immediately goes into a state of denial; to her, her father could not be dead, he was all that she had and she would not let him go.

"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.

“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.

The bond between a mother and child is often spoken of as being unlike any other. Yet there are always exceptions to the rule where this connection isn 't as impenetrable as one might assume. This book is an example of this bond gradually becoming weaker over time. It shows how it affects the child, Bone, and leaves her vulnerable to the abuse of her step-father. Bone’s mother, Anney, had fallen in love with a man who abused her which at first, she’s unaware but eventually comes to realize but still chooses to stay with him. Throughout the book there are instances of Anney’s negligence in recognizing her daughter’s abuse and being of aid to her but wasn 't. In having to deal with her

The story is based on a child named Emily that has a physical disability. Emily lived in a family of five children. "She always had a reason why we should stay home" (Olsen 601). Emily is lonely. When she was a toddler, she was left in a day care so Emily's mom could bring income to the house. Emily is a child that, as many others, grew up mostly on day care. Emily was

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