I Stand Here Ironing

“I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen was very hard to understand at first. I was thinking who is talking? And what are they talking about? It seems like the mother has given up on her daughter. She states, “You think because I am her mother I have a key, or that in some way you could use my key.” I was still wondering who she was talking to at this point and even more importantly what had her daughter done to be spoken about like this. The way the mother speaks also suggests a time period that has passed, 1953.

The mother was only nineteen when she had her 1st and most beautiful child at birth, as she said, the father “could no longer endure sharing want with us.” She seemed to take this hard and probably had an everlasting headache because of work and a crying baby, Emily. The mother got a job at night to be with her daughter during the day; Emily went to stay with her father. Her struggle mother didn’t have the money to pay for her fare back and when she returned she barely recognized her. I think it was interesting how the daughter at such a young age tried to avoid going to daycare but was never up front about it.

The mother doesn’t smile enough as Emily, and as a result Emily doesn’t really smile, there is no emotional connection. When Emily fell sick, the mother was convinced to send her away. It is never made clear what Emily has, just that she had a fever, barely ate, and was becoming very skinny. The place she was sent to stay was no better because she was still loosing weight. I thought it was sad because Emily was only seven years old at the time. When she returns home, only after gaining seven pounds, she has a hard time returning love to anybody. She was taken away from a love environment for so long that she probably forgot, she said, when she was away, “They don’t like you to love anybody here.”

I think that this is a story of a young girl who longs for the attention of here mother and a mother who does not understand her daughter; but tries her hardest. Emily was different than her siblings, who had blonde, curly hair and dimples. The ending is very well put, Emily was depressed, her mother young, distracted.