The Iron Is Responsible For Emily Analysis

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.

Emily’s upbringing is plagued with difficulties. She is the first-born of a young mother and the eldest of five brothers and sisters. As a baby, she is

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.

In the end, with her death, which is where the story begins, Miss Emily is the talk of the town. Not because people truly mourn her, but because people are curious about the life she had lived in secret, in her big house, for all those years. People pitied her, it was as had been left alone in the world and seemed to have wished it that way.

While Sonny was physically locked up in jail for his addiction to drugs, his older brother was confined to the racism in Harlem and unable to express his emotions towards his brother until his daughter passed away. It’s ironic that they were imprisoned in opposite ways. While the narrator never got addicted to drugs like most of the men in the community, Sonny got to escape Harlem and create a new life. Until the brothers shared a drink at the end of the story, they hadn’t found salivation from their self-imprisonment. On the other hand, in “I Stand Here Ironing” it was almost as if the iron was the mother’s imprisonment. The narrator was trapped by the daily tasks she had to perform to effectively care for her family, but ironically it was these chores that weakened her relationship to Emily. “Help make it so there is cause for her to believe that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron,” pleads the narrator (Olsen, 7). The mother ends her monologue with a cry of hope that her daughter won’t be imprisoned by the iron that trapped

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 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

A subtle use of symbolism occurs when the mother uses the iron. The iron is described to have never made direct contact with the ironing board this is because a piece of clothing in the way acting as a barrier. This is the same in relation to the narrator and Emily, the mother can never show Emily the love she wants and needs because over time so man barriers has come between them. In addition to the iron, another use of symbolism occurs at the convalescent home that Emily is brought to after she gets ill. This in turn represents the mother’s inability to properly take care of her daughter. The balcony that the girls stand on is an emotional representation of the distance that has now surfaced from the lack

     Emotional support also plays an important role of Emily’s well being. The idea mother suppose to care, support, and value their children needs. Emily needed this nourishment. She needed her mother to smile at her in order for her to feel a connection with the person that she supposed to be able to depend on. Emily’s mother did not know how to communicate with Emily. The mother-daughter relationship has an element of coldness, it lacks warmth. “There were years she did not want me to touch her” (Olsen 262). Emily’s mother inability to interact with her, leaves Emily unloved and in return, she shall not express any love toward her mother. Emily’s mother feels her “wisdom came too late” (Olsen 262). With this thought in mind, Emily’s mother shall never show communication or love to Emily, therefore the relationship shall continue to be doomed.

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

Two of the main literary devices used in the story were irony and symbolism. The iron in the story was very symbolic. Not only was ironing literal in the story, but it was also figurative. The ironing represented the imperfections and frustrated desires of Emily’s mother (“I Stand,” Short). When Emily said, “Aren’t you ever going to finish ironing, Mother?”

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 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