I Stand Here Ironing by Tillie Olsen - Book Report/Review Example

Winnett Knox Dr. Beverly A. Fischer ENGL 2328.171 17 April 2007 Tillie Olsen’s I Stand Here Ironing For a person whose body of written work is far from prolific, Tillie Olsen’s writings have had a greater impact than one would at first imagine by merely looking at its available volume. Her writings are ‘packed’ in the sense that they do not just tell us a tale, and be done with it; they do much more — they tell us many tales, that may be viewed from differing perspectives: a) from the perspective of the mother–daughter relationship; b) as stories about the poverty and struggles of immigrant communities and the working class, c) as chronicles (supplementing historical and sociological writings) that detail the problems of the average family trying to survive the tough times of The Great Depression; d) tales of women struggling for independence and self-expression in an America just before the Women’s Liberation Movement; or e) as tales of the woman’s necessity to submerge what she likes to do to the demands of domestic responsibility… Here, we shall look at Olsen’s ‘I Stand Here Ironing’ (ISHI) from angle (a) mentioned above, as a story that explores the mother daughter relationship, and also touch upon the impact of the early experiences that a child has (in this case the daughter) on her ability to have a ‘well-adjusted’ childhood, and on the kind of adult she grows up to be. In ISHI, the Mother is the protagonist, standing there and doing something as mundane as ironing clothes. And while ironing, she looks up occasionally to speak with someone — perhaps a teacher, perhaps a counselor, who feels that she should be paying more attention to her daughter. There is no counselor really there — what we see of her is merely what is reflected in the mirror-monologue of the Mother. Olsen’s style may be far removed from the Shakespearean dramatic tradition. But it packs the punch of a Shakespearean soliloquy, albeit in a low-key manner. There is nothing ostensibly dramatic about the woman talking in snatches, going back and forth from present to past, dwelling on the various incidents of her life. In setting and story the scene is far removed from that of a Hamlet. But the self-searching is the same: “To be or not to be” says Hamlet in torment; “I will become engulfed with all I did or did not do, with what should have been and what I cannot help,”(Olsen 1-2) echoes Emily’s Mother. She feels guilt for what she did not do for her baby, but wonders whether she could really have done it differently. The Mother admits to herself that even when her daughter was a baby, she gave more importance to the clock, and ignoring her cries, fed her only when it — the clock — decreed. The reasons for this, we may presume, are both a lack of time, as well as other pressures. As Bauer (1989) observes, the first “casualty of poverty” is time. Through Emily’s Mother’s recollections of the past and of Emily’s childhood, runs the recurrent theme of a lack of time. As a matter of fact the story commences with a reference to this lack of time “I wish you would manage the time to come in and talk with me about your daughter”(Olsen 1) says the invisible — to us — teacher-counselor to Emily’s mother in the second sentence of the story. And from there, it moves on… The Mother’s life is controlled by the clock. Even if she wishes to spend more time with Emily, she cannot as she has to work. Lack of time and poverty: these provide the woof and the warp in the background weave of Emily’s childhood setting. Her father abandons her mother and her, because he had wearied of “sharing want” (Olsen 2) with them. Later when the Mother goes out to work, she is forced to leave Emily with her husband’s family. Then she keeps her in a hostel, which was just a place for children to stay, and which provided nothing of the care or nurture, which a child needed. This is in contrast with the time she is able to spend with her other children. The Mother has married again, as she feels the need to fulfill her desire for a regular family life. This puts further pressure on Emily, as the mother now spends even less time with her. Emily throws away the clock, as she waits fearfully into the nights, not able to sleep, waiting for her Mother to come back home. “The clock talked loud”(Olsen 5) is her heart wrenching explanation. The night that Emily’s Mother is away in the hospital to have her second baby, must have been a terror filled one for her. She is rigid with fear, and later on, falls ill as well. The Mother, in hindsight, realizes that she had not spent enough time with her daughter to soothe and comfort her, but had been dismissive of her fears. Poverty and a lack of time — poverty leading to a lack of time, and lack of time leading to another sort of poverty — a poverty of emotional comfort — ultimately takes its toll on the ties that bind mother and daughter. (Bauer 1989, para 4 &5) Today, after all the setbacks and troubles faced by both Emily and the Mother in their relationship, Emily stands distanced from maternal influence. The Mother feels now that if she tries to reach out, her daughter may not respond. Olsen concludes the story with an unusual symbol — that of the iron pressing down on the dress — and a hopeful note. She wishes her daughter to rise above her circumstances, and not get pressed under them like the dress under the iron. Emily’s mother on the one hand holds herself responsible for Emily’s past and present problems, but she also recognizes that she is powerless to do anything much in the circumstances in which she was placed; and she has done all that was practically possible, within her constraints of time and money. Even though the Mother is afraid that her daughter would land up in the same circumstances that she had faced in her own youth, objectively looking at the narrative, we cannot fail to notice that Emily is in a better position than her Mother used to be. Emily is nineteen, the same age her Mother was at her birth. She is today perhaps standing at the threshold of a career in the acting field. Emily has a talent for pantomime, and has developed her acting skills, that draw appreciation, laughter and applause. We see here the Mother’s desire for her daughter to excel in her life, and make a success of it. The Mother expresses no desire that Emily should follow in her footsteps, or do the traditionally feminine things of getting married and having a family. Though the protagonist seems to be unaware of her own strength, we see it in her determination and desire to see her daughter as a success and having more control of her own life than the Mother herself had in her youth. (Bauer1989, last para) ISHI portrays a conflict-laden relationship between mother and daughter. But beyond this conflict Olsen also shows us a glimpse of the bond that binds them, the bond that nature has wrought, the biology, if we may call it that, that connects them so unmistakably, that we, the audience can so clearly see the similarity in Emily and her mother’s nature. Both are exceptionally courageous persons, survivors, who struggle to make the best of what life has offered them. As Pearlman and Werlock (1991) point out, “…the mothers last act is to control the iron. Even if the iron has sometimes enslaved her — and even if she, the ironing mother, has sometimes unwittingly oppressed Emily with the way she has molded her life — both women emerge as survivors as well as victims.” Emily has become a person who can make others laugh, a young lady with a gift for pantomime. Her mother seems amazed at this development, and cannot figure out how, and from where she has developed this talent. Emily is capable of distancing herself, to observe what is happening around her, the people around, perhaps observe her own self, and has developed the ability to laugh at, or may we say, laugh away their problems. She jokingly tells her Mother that unlike Whistler, if she had to paint her own mother, she’d have to show her standing over an ironing board. We observe how similar and how different both the women are. Similar, in their ability to carry on regardless, and different in their ways of carrying on. Emily uses humor to help her on, while her Mother, a more prosaic person, carries on by her sheer tenacity. Olsen’s story is hardly fictional. It is too autobiographical for that, which perhaps makes it even more poignant and effective. Olsen also does not go into the intricacies of the mother-daughter relationship (but then, a short story of 12 pages hardly affords that luxury!) But her ‘packed’ style (mentioned in the opening paragraph of this essay) hints at various complex dimensions to it. Olsen does not provide any easy ‘solution’ to the mother daughter tangle, or in fact to any of the other problems touched upon in her story (working women, a woman’s self-expression, poverty or working class travails). She is too much a realist, and a master storyteller to attempt a tacky and easy denouement. The question is left open though there is optimism in the way the Mother views her daughter’s future. “Let her be,”(Olsen 12) she says. Three simple words that denote her faith in her daughter’s capacity to fend for herself and rise above all her tribulations. Coming to the second issue — how early childhood experiences influence a child’s psychological well being, and the responsibility that the parent(s) have in the nurture of the child, and in shielding her from early traumatic experiences, Olsen’s story raises several questions. First, an infant needs stability for a smooth psychological passage through childhood, and a transition from child to adulthood. Stability implies a secure home and family. Kloss (1994) points out how in ISHI, Emily lacks this security. Insecurity in the form of separations troubles her in the early years of her life. Kloss analyses the story to chalk up a count of 12 separations (!) that Emily has endured by the time she is seven years old. The first separation is when her Mother refuses to feed her when she cries, but does so only by the clock, perhaps due to the lack of time, and also influenced by doctors’ diktats regarding this. (Dr. Spock must have been the fashion in childrearing in the times that the story is set) Emily’s mother is initially influenced by what is seen as the current fashion in childrearing — she mentions that she breastfed her child, because that was seen as good. Coming back to the separations — the father abandons mother and child; Emily is kept with the woman downstairs when her mother goes to work; then she is kept with her grandparents and has to stay there till she is two years old because of her chicken pox; she has to leave for nursery school; she stays alone when her mother is out with her new dad; she is separated from her mother because she goes to have her second baby and this separation is prolonged because she contracts measles and has to keep away from her mother and the new baby; she is then sent to a ‘home’ which is a separation, and in this home she is separated from all contacts with her mother by not being permitted to even retain the letters that are written to her. When she comes back she has a boy friend who rejects her, her new dad joins the army and has to leave for the front. Emily in fact has hardly any friends, because she has moved so much (Kloss 1994) She suffers from a condition psychologists refer to as separation anxiety disorder. She displays all the classic symptoms of this — the often unfounded fear that the mother will abandon her, that some accident or calamity will separate her from her mother, the refusal to go to school so that she can be at home, not wanting to sleep without the mother, complaining of physical illness to avoid going to school, “signs of excessive distress upon separation, …social withdrawal, apathy, and sadness.” (Kloss 1994) Another problem that Emily suffers is growing up in a home without a father figure. For an all round emotional development, a child needs both the father and the mother. Her own father has left; Emily gets a new father, and it is assumed that she would have developed s certain dependence on him. But she loses this father figure too quickly, as he goes to the war-front. And we may assume, that this young growing up girl has struggled without having the security of the father figure. There is the question of how much responsibility should be put on the Mother for what is happening to Emily now, and how much guilt she (the Mother) can shoulder. Looking at the circumstances — the difficulties and trauma facing the ‘child-mother’ (in the story Emily’s mother was only nineteen, when Emily was born) one could conclude that under the circumstances, it is doubtful if she could have done better. She has used her adult faculties to introspect and make choices, and deal as best as she can with the problems that crop up. And taking care of Emily’s needs is one such problem that she deals with. Emily may not have got the care and nurture that was her due, but she will have to find her own way. However, looking at the issue from Emily — the child —‘s point of view, such an expectation is unfair. An infant or a child cannot have the cognitive abilities to make choices. By assuming so, we project adult capabilities on the infant. So, from this angle, the Mother (and, of course, the father, who plays no part at all in this narrative) has completely failed in providing stability and security to Emily in her childhood years. (Kloss 1994) This is not to ‘blame’ the mother for the trauma the child goes through. Her circumstances indeed were difficult. But childhood cannot wait, as the impressions and experiences of childhood are irrevocably stamped on a child’s psyche. Olsen’s story begs the question, if not the child or the mother (parent) then who is responsible for such trauma? Would it not be society at large, and the way it is organized? This question would lend a political color to Olsen’s writing. I Stand Here Ironing — apart from being a darned good tale — thus raises many questions, personal and psychological, political and ethical. Works Cited Bauer, Helen ‘Mother Puzzles: Daughter and Mother in Contemporary American Literature’ (ed Mickey Pearlman) Greenwood Press 1989, pp 35-9 ‘A Child of Anxious, Not Proud, Love: Mother and Daughter in Tillie Olsen’s ‘I Kloss, Robert Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, Vol-15, Nos 1-2, pages 78-86 Olsen, Tillie I Stand Here Ironing Pearlman, Mickey & Werlock, Abbey Tillie Olsen, In Twaynes United States Authors Series Online New York: G. K. Hall & Co., 1999. Previously published in print in 1991 by Twayne Publishers. Read More