I Stand Here Ironing: Time and Change
Sometime in 1932, Tillie Olsen began a 42 year journey on a novel that would later be recognized as possibly the single most important work about the 1930’s. Almost 30 years into this journey, she published the novella “Tell Me a Riddle” along with three other novella’s including “I Stand Here Ironing”; the prior earning her the O. Henry Award as the best American story of 1961. The latter, however, is no less spectacular as it flows seamlessly from paragraph to paragraph for four pages and encompasses 19 years of life. “I Stand Here Ironing”, the focus of this paper, is found in Prof. Helton’s “moral choice” section of his Humanities 212 class. Unless you began reading this novella with this avocation in mind, it is easy to miss how this story ties into moral choice or even belongs in the section. However, for the majority of this selection, the author goes into relatively fastidious detail exploring how both the nature and nurture spheres of her first born daughter’s rearing has failed her. It is obvious the mother feels a rather cumbrous burden of guilt for her Emily’s rearing; however, through this reminiscence by the mother and the ingenious writing of the author, the reader suffers along with
The truth, if there is such a thing in such a fictional hypothetical situation, is the only rational or reasonable “blame” or lesson to be learned here is in fact to be financially prepared to have a family and have children before you do so. Being such a young single mother during the depression…she did as best as she knew to rear her child and keep herself alive as well. Emily’s mother was young, desperate and alone…but she did learn from her mistakes with Emily. Certainly there is an inevitable burden of guilt her mother will be stuck with for her entire life, and that is a perfectly valid feeling, it is just not mandatory. All that can be done for the mother here is to praise her for her tenacity and the dynamics of her motherhood, and feel sorry for the cost the misfortune had on her oldest daughter. Emily’s performance led to the curiosity of a teacher who got in touch with the mother which led to this entire train of thought. At last, at the end, the mother comes to a conclusion, an answer more or less to the question posed at the beginning of the selection. She concludes that she “will never total it all. I will never come in to say: She was a child seldom smiled at. Her father left me before she was a year old. I had to work her first six years when there was work, or I sent her home and to his relatives. There were years she had care she hated. She was dark and thin and foreign-looking in a world where the prestige went to blandness and curly hair and dimples; she was slow where glibness was prized. She was a child of anxious, not proud, love. We were poor and could not afford for her the soil of easy growth. I was a young mother, I was a distracted mother. There were the other children pushing up, demanding. Her younger sister seemed all that she was not. There were years she did not let me touch her. She kept too much in herself, her life was such she had to keep too much in herself. My wisdom came too late. She has much to her and probably little will come of it. She is a child of
Some topics in this essay:
Child Care,
Prof Helton’s,
Tillie Olsen,
Award American,
Stand Ironing”,
emily’s mother,
moral choice,
,
“i stand ironing”,
single mother,
emily’s life,
emily’s rearing,
burden guilt,
father left,
stand ironing”,
mother stuck,
“i stand,
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Approximate Word count = 1379
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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