Response for “I Stand Here Ironing”

by Elizabeth Rangel

Tillie Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing” portrays the struggles of young motherhood and the hardships that rise in the midst of it all. The narrator in the story reflects back on the upbringing of her first child, all the while reflecting on her own behavior as a young naive parent. There is a guilt in the narration, and through the mother’s description of her daughter we can see how the narrators own inadequacies as a young mother appear in Emily.

The mother’s name is never mentioned in the short story, I think Olsen purposefully left out her name in to portray the mother’s own feeling of insignificance. As a matter of fact, the story start and end with the statement, “I stand here ironing.” I think this statement is a metaphor of the mother’s attempt at “de-wrinkling” her own life as well as her children’s only to be met with resistance, more labor, and self-doubt everyday. Mothership has taken a toll on the narrator.

The narrator describes the difficult decisions she’s had to make as a single mother, from sending her child away to live with her father as she worked a job to support herself, to sending her child away again to a convalescent home at the recommendation of a nurse in clinic. There is clear remorse in her narration of child’s upbringing but at the same time there is a certain helplessness and apathy in her tone, that I assume comes from not being able take control of her own life. Though of course it was the narrator’s intent to give her daughter the best life she possibly could, her child clearly suffered abuse as a result of being sent away, and thought the narrator is aware of this, to an extent she seems emotionally disconnected from it all. It appears as if she is in a constant dissociative state, perhaps trying to deflect her feelings of remorse.

The narrator comes to find out that her daughter, though having undergone a series of trials, is a beautiful and interesting person. However, it seems like concept that is difficult for our narrator to grasp, perhaps she sees her own short comings in her daughters newfound “arrival” or she feels as if she’s had nothing to do with her daughter’s emotional wellbeing.

The story ends with the narrator anticipating a similar life for her daughter as she’s lived.