Critical Essay of “I stand Here Ironing”
Tillie Olsen presents in “I Stand Here Ironing,” the story a mother’s meditation regarding her attitudes when she was rising Emily, her first child. The story focuses in the early 1950’s, but it constantly moves to the years of the American Great Depression in the 1930s when she gave birth to Emily and the time of World War II in the 1940s. Olsen was born in 1912 and was the second daughter of a Russian Jews couple. In 1932, she suffered of tuberculosis and during her rest, she spent time writing her first novel “Yonnondio,” yet she interrupted her writing after she had her first daughter. “I Stand Here Ironing” contains several autobiographical elements: Olsen was also a young mother, who faced a number of challenges including being abandoned by her child’s father. “I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen tells the story of a woman’s reflections about motherhood and her interior monologue, recreating the time of the American Great Depression when she had her elder daughter, Emily.
In her short story, Olsen’s purpose is to show the vital
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significance of motherhood during the 1930s and the mother responsibility of taking care of their children regardless any distress of the society in general. The story discusses the established ‘norms’ of being a good mother, and according to them, the narrator fails in several aspects. The audience for this story is perhaps predominantly females, especially feminist females, since they can identify themselves with the motherhood experience represented in the story. Besides, the author was a feminist, and published this story during the early 1960s, a decade where numerous laws supporting women at work were passed, which makes an effect to the story. Back in the 1930s, women were supposed to stay at home and raise their children; being a single mother was not well-seen. Working mothers had to both provide economic support to their children and follow society’s standards of a “good motherhood” (“Tillie Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing””). “I Stand Here Ironing” presents the difficulties of being a single mother during the Great Depression, time of hard economic pressure, and later, the time of World War II. “I Stand Here Ironing” narrates a woman’s perception of reality evaluating her role of mother, influenced by Tillie Olsen’s own mother’s selfhood. The story contains several autobiographical elements, thus can be easily associated with the author’s mothering. Olsen shares and examines her own reflections through the narrator, who concerns about her limitations on her capacity to care for and support her family (Frye 288). She and Emily’s mother came across numerous social and political difficulties when raising their children: they were working-class mothers abandoned by her daughter’s father during the depression, and hence they could not spent much time with their elder daughters. The moment Olsen had her first daughter, she found a valuable job in Los Angeles, and had to move alone leaving her daughter in the care of relatives. Olsen represents in the story her challenging separation from her daughter by introducing a distant working-mother who had to separate from her children to support them economically. “She has lived for nineteen years. There is all that life that has happened outside of me, beyond me” (Schilb). The story exposes challenges of the author’s personal life as socioeconomic struggles of the era. “I Stand Here Ironing” tells the story of a mother facing times of economic obstacles and times of fear. The story has a long time period, which covers from the American Great Depression through World War II. From the narrator’s memories, the audience is able to perceive her mother’s development, such as, her difficulties of being a young mother barely surviving the early years of the depression (Frye 287-288). “I was nineteen. It was the pre-relief, pre WPA world of the depression.” (Schilb). Olsen expresses her own concerns and blame for her faults as a mother, but she also shows how general troubles in society affects children’s development. The Great Depression was a time of challenging economic conditions, and it extremely affected families in America, even the ones where the father was present.
In the 1930s, mothers have an “even more monumental weight on their shoulders,” especially single mothers such as the narrator (“Tillie Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing””). Families changed dramatically: the divorce’s rate dropped significantly because of the high cost of the legal procedures, nonetheless, the rate of abandonments increased. The traditional gender roles established men as the “head of the family,” so they were responsible for providing for the family, an immense pressure for many which induced them to abandon their families. The roles in families evolved as a result of the depression since several women had the necessity to find a job to support their families, and the only ones available for females were low-paying
jobs. The depression’s worst moments lasted until the beginning of World War II, where the narrator marries again and has her younger children. It was the beginning of the 1940s when Emily’s mother experiences another challenge: her second husband, Bill, goes away to fight at the war, which is another aspect based on the author’s personal life. Despite Olsen never specifies this information, it is implicit when the narrator mentions writing V-mails to her husband, one safe method of communication during World War II. “I would be ironing, or preparing food for the next day, or writing V-mail to Bill, or tending the baby” (Schilb). As numerous men entered to the military services, the role of women changed permanently this time. Single mothers had to assume the role of the “head of the house,” similar to the narrator’s situation. The present-day of the story focusses on the 1950s after World War II, and presents another socioeconomic impact, the second-wave of the feminist movement. Since men left their jobs to fight at war, women became more involved in the workplace, indeed, several laws supporting women at work were passed in the following years. In the story, Olsen demonstrates that women who do not follow the typical models of “good motherhood” the society establishes, are not necessarily uncaring mothers. “I Stand Here Ironing” tells the story of a mother’s meditations on whether or not she is a considerate mother since she was struggling to take care of her family while working at the same time. At the end, the narrator realizes she did well with her family considering all the adversities she handle alone as a single mother. The story contains numerous feminist elements since is about a woman providing for her family without a male figure. Mothers were expected to have a strong relationship with their children because they were the ones who spent the majority of time with the children. In case of the narrator, however, there is no strong connection of mother-daughter as it was supposed according to the society’s standards of motherhood, which represents a feminist position. “You think because I am her mother I have a key, or that in some way you could use me as a key?” (Schilb). Nevertheless, despite the narrator was not a traditional mother for the time due to working, she still did housework and “mother’s duties.” In fact, the narrator did not stop ironing throughout the story until Emily arrives. “Aren’t you ever going to finish the ironing, Mother? Whistler painted his mother in a rocker. I’d have to paint mine standing over an ironing board.” (Schilb). Olsen, throughout the story, makes a clear reference to the characteristic gender roles from the 1930s through the 1960s in America. Indeed, from the title, “I Stand Here Ironing,” the audience can deduce the story is more likely about a woman because of the traditional gender roles defining the women’s duties, such as: getting married in their early 20s, being good mothers and wives, staying at home doing the housework, and taking care of the children. For this reason, mothers are blamed in case of any breakdown in their children regardless how complicated their living conditions are. In the beginning of the story, for example, the narrator feels guilty for her daughter’s somber nature because she was not able to spend more time taking care of Emily as mothers were supposed to in the America of 1930s. Nevertheless, the only reason she was absent a great part of her children’s lives, especially during Emily’s childhood, was to provide financial support for them: “It was the only way we could be together, the only way I could hold a job” (Schilb). During the 1930s, women were considered opportunistic and bad mothers in case they attempted to improve their positions in the workplace to earn more income, while men who tried to advance at work would be appreciated as motivated individuals and good fathers. By the time Emily was born, the narrator’s role as mother was to attend the new baby; nevertheless, Emily’s father abandons her, leaving her no other choice than finding a job to support her daughter. Despite women at work were hardly discriminated compared to men, the narrator manages her time to work and raise Emily and her following children. The narrator cannot be considered either a negligent parent or a “failure” in Emily’s life, as a matter of fact, mothers are not the only parental figure in a child’s life. Any adult assigned by society or nature to take care of a child, is responsible for the child’s nurture (“Tillie Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing””). Emily’s father abandoned his family because he “could no longer endure” while Emily’s mother stayed with her and did all she was able to take care of her. She was a responsible mother, which she demonstrates by braking gender roles of society in order to support her children. “I Stand Here Ironing” present women’s identity and mothers’ roles during difficult times in society. Olsen shows motherhood “bared, stripped of romantic distortion, and reinfused with the power of genuine metaphorical insight into the problems of selfhood in the modern world” (Frye 287). The story makes clear references from notorious times in America from the depression to World War II, and the impact these events brought to families and women especially. Olsen represents her own experiences and challenges in the story, noticed from the similarities the story has with her own life, and she also shares her feminist beliefs, which can be perceived even from the title. In her story “I Stand Here Ironing,” Tillie Olsen states the difficulties of motherhood in times of socioeconomic pressure, especially for single mothers, and she also shows how women have to achieve certain standards to be considered ‘good mothers.’
Hollingsworth and Tyyska discuss the employment of women in their article, both wage work and work performed outside of the “paid labour force.” (14). They also look at work discrimination of women based on gender and marital status. They argue that disapproval of married women working for wages during the Depression was expressed not only by those in position of power, such as politicians, but also by the general public and labour unions. They suggest that the number of women in the workforce increased as more young wives stayed working until the birth of their first child and older women entered the workforce in response to depression based deprivation. Hollingsworth and Tyyska also give examples of work that married women did that was an extension of their domestic duties such as babysitting for working mothers or taking in laundry. They also state that some women took in boarders, sold extra produce from gardens, or ran make-shift restaurant operations out of their homes.
Although, a mother’s determination in the short story “I Stand Here Ironing” mother face with an intense internal conflict involving her oldest daughter Emily. As a single mother struggle, narrator need to work long hours every day in order to support her family. Despite these criticisms, narrator leaves Emily frequently in daycare close to her neighbor, where Emily missing the lack of a family support and loves. According to the neighbor states, “You should smile at Emily more when you look at her” (Olsen 225). On the other hand, neighbor gives the reader a sense that the narrator didn’t show much affection toward Emily as a child. The narrator even comments, “I loved her. There were all the acts of love” (Olsen 225). At the same time, narrator expresses her feeling that she love her daughter. Until, she was not be able to give Emily as much care as she desire and that gives her a sense of guilt, because she ends up remarrying again. Meanwhile narrator having another child named Susan, and life gets more compli...
A main theme in this small town’s culture is the issue of gender and the division of roles between the two. Not uncommon for the 1950’s, many women were taught from a young age to find a good man, who could provide for them and a family, settle down and have children – the ideal “happy family.” As Harry states after singing the showstopper “Kids,” “I have the All-American family: A great wife, 2 wonderful kids and a good job.”
May begins by exploring the origins of this "domestic containment" in the 30's and 40's. During the Depression, she argues, two different views of the family competed -- one with two breadwinners who shared tasks and the other with spouses whose roles were sharply differentiated. Yet, despite the many single women glamorized in popular culture of the 1930's, families ultimately came to choose the latter option. Why? For one, according to May, for all its affirmation of the emancipation of women, Hollywood fell short of pointing the way toward a restructured family that would incorporate independent women. (May p.42) Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday and Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, for example, are both forced to choose between independence and a happy domestic life - the two cannot be squared. For another, New Deal programs aimed to raise the male employment level, which often meant doing nothing for female employment. And, finally, as historian Ruth Milkman has also noted, the g...
In contrast to many other Depression-era novels, in which the teamwork of the common man is seen as society's glue, Tillie Olsen's Yonnondio looks with great admiration at one family's struggle to keep above water. Through the travails of a coal-mining/farming family, Anna Holbrook becomes the one constant in a society that turns man against himself, and where fortune is evanescent.
The two works of literature nudging at the idea of women and their roles as domestic laborers were the works of Zora Neale Hurston in her short story “Sweat”, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Whatever the setting may be, whether it is the 1920’s with a woman putting her blood, sweat and tears into her job to provide for herself and her husband, or the 1890’s where a new mother is forced to stay at home and not express herself to her full potential, women have been forced into these boxes of what is and is not acceptable to do as a woman working or living at home. “Sweat” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” draw attention to suppressing a woman’s freedom to work along with suppressing a woman’s freedom to act upon her
May argues that “the depression thus paved way for two different family forms: one with two breadwinners who shared tasks and the other with spouses whose roles were sharply differentiated.” In the latter form the father would have earned a “family wage” while his wife would have been responsible the children and their home, only working if it was necessary to supplement her husband’s income. This trend was caused mainly by two factors. During the financial strain of the depression, marriage and birth rates were much lower than they had been in the previous decade while the divorce rate was much higher. Young men of the time were afraid that they would not be able to provide for their new families and chose not to get married. While young women on the other hand, encountered an employment boom that allowed them to gain a sense of economic freedom that allowed them to not feel compelled to marry. This new single woman was glamorized by Hollywood during the 1930s. However, families tended toward choosing a life with the husband earning a “family wage” with the wife at home. Why? May concludes, "for all its affirmation of the emancipation of women, Hollywood fell short of pointing the way toward a restructured family that would incorporate independent women." Films from the 1930s like Gone with the Wind and His Girl Friday portrayed strong female leads that had to choose between their independent working life and domestic happiness, as it seemed that both could not coexist in their lives. Another cause for this were the programs implemented during the New Deal Era. Such programs aimed to raise male employment levels and often did nothing for female employment. Men had become embittered during the depression when women
As mentioned before, sociologists Coontz and Hochschild further elaborate upon Parsons and Bales’ concepts of the American family, but they mostly critique the idea of the male-breadwinner family. One of the main arguments Coontz and Hochschild present is the decline of the male-breadwinner family due to the economic changes of the United States and the arising social norms of consumerism. Because Parsons and Bales never considered how the changes throughout society would affect family, they believed the male-breadwinner family would continue to be a functional type of family for everyone. However, within her text, “What We Really Miss about the 1950s,” Coontz specifically discusses the major expense of keeping mothers at home as consumption norms...
The stories “I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen and “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, are different in many ways, but are also similar. “I Stand Here Ironing” and “Everyday Use” both focus on the relationships of the mother and daughter, and on the sibling’s relationships with each other. Emily from “I Stand Here Ironing” and Maggie from “Everyday Use” have different relationships with their mothers, but have similar relationships with their sisters. Although the stories are similar in that Emily and Maggie are both distant from their sisters, they differ in that the mother is distant from Emily in “I Stand Here Ironing,” while the mother is close to Maggie in “Everyday Use.”
Kuttner also agrees, “a lot of ugly realities were concealed by “traditional values”; the legal and economic emancipation of women was long overdue, and the task now is to reconcile gender equality with the healthy raising of the next generation.” (124). Before the 1890s, females had no other options but to live with their parents before marriage and with their husband after marriage. They couldn’t work and if they did, their wages were way lower than men.
In the short story "I Stand Here Ironing" by Tillie Olsen, the reader is introduced to a mother living in the midst of the Great Depression dealing with angst and anxiety towards her daughter Emily. Because this story looks back during the Great Depression when Emily was born the mother's trauma is coming between the both of them. The mother wants her daughter to live a beautiful life, however, poverty, depression and dislocation has built a wall between the two women.
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 deprivations she had endured.
During the Great War and the huge amount of men that were deployed created the need to employ women in hospitals, factories, and offices. When the war ended the women would return home or do more traditional jobs such as teaching or shop work. “Also in the 1920s the number of women working raised by fifty percent.” They usually didn’t work if they were married because they were still sticking to the role of being stay at home moms while the husband worked and took care of the family financially. But among the single women there was a huge increase in employment. “Women were still not getting payed near as equally as men and were expected to quit their jobs if they married or pregnant.” Although women were still not getting payed as equally it was still a huge change for the women's
Motherhood in never guaranteed to by easy. Children definitely do not come with instruction manuals and even if they did there are so many variables, such as the national economy and unexpected single motherhood, that are beyond our control. The choices a mother has to make can cause numerous moments of second guessing and immense guilt. “I Stand Here Ironing” explores the perceived failures and gnawing guilt of a post- Depression era mother as she contemplates the childhood circumstances of her oldest, overlooked, and seemingly troubled child. Throughout the story Tillie Olsen takes us through the depths of a mother’s guilt due to pressures of the economy and society on parenting during her time and how much blame she puts on herself for her
Motherhood is a traditional role for women. From the time they are young, girls are taught to grow up, marry and become mothers. Of course they can do other things with their lives like play sports, have careers, and travel, but an overwhelming amount of women want to be mothers no matter what else they accomplish with their lives. It is common knowledge that being a good mother is one of the hardest jobs in the world. It is to forever have a special link with another person or people and have a tremendous influence, maybe the most tremendous influence over their lives. Motherhood is a roller coaster ride for women, full of ups and downs, fears and accomplishments. But what happens when motherhood defines who a woman is? All children grow up, and while a woman is always a mother, children need their mothers less and less until eventually their dependence is very minimal. What happens to the woman whose singular role and purpose is no longer needed? In The Summer Before The Dark, and The Fifth Child, the maternal roles of Kate Brown, and Harriet Lovatt are analyzed and traditional motherhood behavior is deconstructed due to these characters’ experiences and relationships with their children.