The Irony of Ironing in Olsens I Stand Here Ironing - Essay Example

20 February The Irony of Ironing in Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing” To be a woman is to be wretched, but to be a poor single mother is the most wretched life of all. In “I Stand Here Ironing,” Tillie Olsen describes a mother’s struggles to keep her growing family together, especially during the years that she was a single mother and welfare does not exist. Olsen uses irony, image, and characterization to illustrate that the mother’s life is filled with woes. She has dreams for herself that she cannot realize, while her children will soon be hopeless like her. Ironing is critical to the story because it marks her social class, where poverty is heat that never leaves them alone. Ironing depicts the situational irony of being a mother and being poor, because although it concerns work that smoothens something, it sharply contrasts to the reality that one’s life is horribly and almost permanently creased because of poverty that becomes an entire family’s hindrance against fulfillment and happiness. Ironing reflects action, but the reverse happens because the mother is helpless against their poverty. Olsen shows that poor and working-class families cannot hold high hopes for economic development in their lives. Poor parents cannot earn enough money to provide the basic needs of their children, which makes them physically vulnerable. Emily gets sick with measles and the mother is forced to send her to the only convalescent home that she can afford. The irony is that Emily might have felt better physically to some extent, but she grew thin from bad food and bad love. Emily reveals to her mother that she barely eats because of bad food: “They had runny eggs for breakfast or mush with lumps…” (Olsen 4). The image of runny eggs and mush represent something that is not properly cooked, like her children. They can never have enough basic necessities because the mother cannot sufficiently provide it. Aside from bad food, Emily gets bad love. The mother believes that a rule quietly hangs before the parents: “Not To Be Contaminated by Parental Germs or Physical Affection” (Olsen 4). Nowadays, medicine is calling parents to show affection toward their children, like kissing and hugging them, because it can help their children grow healthy or recover from illnesses. Paradoxically, in the convalescent home, children hardly get well because of these rules against physical affection. But the mother cannot do anything about it. She is always ironing. In other words, she is always working. Her work keeps her family afloat and broken at the same time. Ironing is a woman’s job, like the rest of the jobs that becomes more challenging when the protagonist is a poor working-class single mother. As a woman, the mother does various household chores, such as ironing and feeding her children, but it gets more difficult when the father leaves her. At least the father had a choice; he left because “could no longer endure…sharing want with us” (Olsen 2). Can a mother do that to her children? Apparently in the case of the protagonist, she can, but she did not. She chose to silently bear her cross, even if it multiplies with every child. Aside from not being able to meet their children’s basic needs, low-social-class parents cannot provide quality care for their children. The mother has a crushed tone in her voice because she has too many children. Too many children mean too many household work and financial demands: “I was a young mother, I was a distracted mother. There were the other children pushing up, demanding” (Olsen 7). She knows that she has her faults. As a young mother, she lacks parenting knowledge and skills. As a poor mother, she must work at home and outside it to make ends meet. The ultimate price is not being equally there for her children. The mother remembers having another child, and how it affects Emily. The result is sibling rivalry because two young children have to demand the attention and love from one mother: “…that poisonous feeling between them, that terrible balancing of hurts and needs I had to do between the two, and did so badly, those earlier years” (Olsen 5). The poison comes from the “want,” from not being able to give quality care, not because she does not want to, but because she does not have the energy anymore to do it. Her life is one big ironing duty, which emotionally and physically exhausts her. When she says she has “edged away from it,” these sibling conflicts, it signifies a defeated tone. The mother wants to love her children more, but she cannot. She must work, or else the worse will come to worst. The state will tear them apart. Despite being poor, her family matters most the for her, more than her own life. Another source of irony is the absence of the mother’s needs and wants, which indicate that she overlooks it to provide for her family. The mother loses her sense of self, as she drowns herself in ironing. These poor mothers cannot feel happy because they have to share whatever meager they have with others. She says: “And when is there time to remember, to sift, to weigh, to estimate, to total?” (Olsen 1). For her family, time is not enough. Ironically, the more she works, the more she felt their poverty. Olsen shows that she is in a hopeless place. She is a poor uneducated and inexperienced mother. She cannot think of the “I.” The self stopped existing the moment she got pregnant and gave birth. Poverty takes away the ability of parents to be individuals. Instead, they are trapped in their isolation, their parental and worker duties and responsibilities: “That time of motherhood is almost behind me when the ear is not one’s own but must always be racked and listening for the child cry, the child call” (Olsen 2). They are strained, doing everything for their children and nothing for themselves. These mothers cannot feel fulfilled because they cannot reach their dreams. Because of financial and non-financial neglect, poor children become sick, emotionally and physically, sick enough to be destroyed inside, no longer able to feel fulfillment and happiness. As a mother, she wants the best for her children, but she is realistic. She is poor and she can only hope for the best. Emily should have had a more successful childhood because she was born pretty. Being beautiful becomes her bane because it cannot be maintained in a poor household. Instead, the mother fears for her child, who is insecure and had talents that will be wasted because of their poverty: “We have left it all to her, and the gift has as often eddied inside, clogged and clotted, as been used and growing” (Olsen 6). Emily’s talent might be lost forever because of their poverty. Olsen shows the connection between fulfillment and happiness. Like her mother, Emily is growing up without ambitions already. The mother reminds Emily of her exams, to which she responds that they will soon: “…be atom?dead they won’t matter a bit” (Olsen 6). She is sarcastic; she feels the helplessness of being poor. The mother, being a mother, strives to remain hopeful. She might not be able to iron her life, but maybe someone can help her: “Only help her to believe—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” (Olsen 7). The mother cries for help from the government and society, an anguished cry for her broken dreams, which she hopes will not be her children’s broken dreams too. The mother stands ironing, ironically straightening the clothes of others, but not her life. She gives up her youth and life to her family, but even that is not enough. Olsen shows that to be a poor single mother is an everyday hell. The want is not only physical and financial. It goes deeper. A wanting pocket is a wanting soul. Poverty cannot iron the emptiness and hopelessness. It only reinforces the meaninglessness of life, when dreams remain dreams, mostly broken in its lack of use and love. The mother always stands ironing, but ironically, her life remains creased. Work Cited Olsen, Tillie. “I Stand Here Ironing.” Tell Me a Riddle,1961. Web. 17 Feb. 2013. Read More