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

I STAND HERE IRONING "I stand here ironing" is Tillie Olsen's masterpiece on strained mother-daughter relationship that was the result of a mother's inability to provide her daughter with enough love and tender care. The mother in this case wanted the best for her child and this is important in the story. She was not the kind of person who would abandon her child but circumstances were such that she couldn't offer her daughter the generous love she wanted and deserved. Through her reminiscing about the past with small intrusions from the present, the mother reconstructs her daughter's past to explain her present behavior. This process begins when she receives a note from the school counselor saying: "She's a youngster who needs help and whom I'm deeply interested in helping." Emily was a bright child as the mother recalls: "She was a beautiful baby. She blew shining bubbles of sound. She loved motion, loved light, loved color, and music and textures. She would lie on the floor in her blue overalls patting the surface so hard in ecstasy her hands and feet would blur. She was a miracle to me, but when she was eight months old I had to leave her daytimes with the woman downstairs to whom she was no miracle at all, for I worked or looked for work and for Emily's father who "could no longer endure" (he wrote in his good-bye note) "sharing want with us." (p. 9) From this it becomes clear that the mother recognizes that she was unable to give Emily the attention she needed. When she says that Emily was a miracle to her but not to the woman downstairs, she reflects her guilt for having left her daughter in the care of someone who didn't or could not love her as much as she deserved. Emily has now turned into a woman who keeps much to herself. She doesn't like sharing her life with her mother because she has somehow come to accept that this is the kind of relationship she has with her mother. The mother on the other hand would want deeper connection with her daughter but understands that since Emily had always been treated with anxious and not generous love, her growth was instilled with insecurity. She loves her daughter, wants to be a part of her life but knows it is no longer possible. Looking at Emily now as she enters the house, the mother observes: "She is coming. She runs up the stairs two at a time with her light graceful step, and I know she is happy tonight. Whatever it was that occasioned your call did not happen today" (p. 19) Through stream of consciousness, we gather several important things about their relationship and what caused a deep strain on it. For one, we learn that mother is guilty for not providing her first child with generous attention but she also understands why she was unable to do so. Emily's father had left when she was only one, her mother had to learn to adjust herself into a new household with a new husband and as other children came, Emily went deeper into the back. And the mother also blames her lack of knowledge for the child's strained growth. At one point she says: "I did not know then what I know now" (p. 11) and "What in me demanded that goodness in her" (p. 12) - meaning she is using her present knowledge to assess and understand her past behavior and that of her daughter's as well. Mother is the central character in the story and Emily is what she constructs for us. It is through her consciousness that we construct Emily or have an image of her. She is a nineteen year old who is not close to her mother at all. The mother was approached by school counselor as they felt that Emily was disturbed and needed help but while the mother would love to help, she is basically clueless. Clueless not because she doesn't know what is causing her present behavior but because she has no idea as to how it can be effectively influenced. "You think because I am her mother I have a key, or that in some way you could use me as a key She has lived for nineteen years. There is all that life that has happened outside of me, beyond me" (p. 9). Outside of me and beyond me are key terms here. The mother is trying to make it clear that Emily has lived her life away from her - she was emotionally distanced from her mother. The mother knows very little about her child's life and thus she is no position to offer an insight into her child's psyche. The mother is also trying to put a message across i.e. her daughter is not a child of deprivation but also a product of many other factors and circumstances as Weissbourd (1996) writes: " In a culture that often seems to trace every childhood failure back to some parental failure, this mother's rebuke underlines the simple fact that [Emily] and other children are not merely products of advantaged or disadvantaged home environments -- they are not putty in their parents' hands -- they are powerfully shaped by a vast array of circumstances in the larger world." (p. 26-27) The mother knows that as a parent she was supposed to know but when she ponders that question seriously, it heightens her sense of guilt and parental responsibility: "Or I will become engulfed with all I did or did not do, with what should have been and what cannot be helped" (p. 9). And fully recognizes the impact her absence has had on her child's life as she confesses that Emily wanted to be told: "over and over how beautiful she had been--and would be, I would tell her--and was now, to the seeing eye. But the seeing eyes were few or non-existent. Including mine" (p. 10). This is an important point she raises. Emily had been denied enough attention as a child and now that she has grown up, she needs to be assured she is beautiful because she basically lacks a healthy sense of self-esteem. Emily somehow equates absence of love in her past with her attractiveness or lack of it for that matter and hence needs reassurance. As a grown-up, Emily is obsessed about her physical appearance. She has also become self-conscious, something that her mother attributed to lack of love and attention in her childhood: "the unsureness, the having to be conscious of words before you speak, the constant caring--what are they thinking of me . . ." (p. 17). Now at the age of 19, Emily was an accomplished performer of pantomime but her mother feels that this external validation cannot be expected to replace the isolation she suffered as a child: "Now suddenly she was Somebody, and as imprisoned in her difference as she had been in anonymity" (p. 19). But mother is wrong; Emily has used her skills to attain a new more confident self as the mother realizes when she sees her performing: "Was this Emily" (p. 19). Throughout the story, we see a pattern of guilt and justification. The mother who knows that she could have done something differently blames herself and then seeks to justify her behavior in order to lessen the burden of guilt. Over and over again, we are told that "it was the only way" (p. 11); "They persuaded me" (p. 13). The mother also recognizes the role external factors such as war and depression played. "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 her age, of depression, of war, of fear" (p. 20). While the mother is extremely guilt-ridden, she fails to see that Emily is now a grown-up who has her share of problems but her accomplishments have helped her turn into a more confident self-assured human being. Her over-analysis of Emily's past renders her present observations meaningless. She knows that Emily is a talented girl and that her skills as a pantomime performer have helped her calm down some of those childhood insecurities. They had left a mark on her, but the impression did not have as debilitating an impact as her mother felt. Emily was not a failure in any sense of the word. She was 19 and the mother finally recognized that she was now on her own. "You ought to do something about her with a gift like that--but without money or knowing how, what does one do We have left it all to her, and the gift has as often eddied inside, clogged and clotted, as [sic] been used and growing" (p. 19). The author speaks of many issues. These issues are mostly concerning women and the kind of compromises they have to make. The mother who had to suffer a great deal can now see her daughter emerging as an accomplished woman. While she blames herself for her daughter's insecurities, she cannot help notice how talented she is. "She is so lovely. Why did you want me to come in at all Why were you so concerned She will find her way." (p. 20). On the one hand, the story speaks of women issues and on the other hand, it also informs us of changes that were occurring Aptheker (1989) writes: "This story tells us that change comes slowly, across the generations; that there is often damage in growth, some of it irreparable; that men, self-absorbed in their own turmoils, often abandon women and children; that help, however well-meaning, is often steeped in privileges of class (or race), and may in any event, as in this case, be too late. The mother in this story has an estimate of the potential for progress: it is an estimate rooted in experience, in her stubborn will to survive, in her knowledge of the connection between growth and change in the human spirit. Women's stories often contain these kinds of estimates." (p. 52) The fact that this story is about change than anything else is important to understand. The author wants to convey the message that no one can live a life of deprivation forever and everyone tries to do something to change their situation. In this case, we see that Emily turned into an accomplished woman even though she had to go through a lot as a child. This argument is further supported by the author herself who said in an interview: "There's always been resistance, and there comes a time when changes are made. The fact that human beings do not put up forever with misery, humiliation, degradation, actual physical deprivation but act is a fact which every human being should know about. We are a species that makes changes." (Anne-Marie Cusac , 1999: 32) References Richard Weissbourd. (1996) The Vulnerable Child: What Really Hurts America's Children and What We Can Do about It. Current Publisher: Perseus Publishing. Reading, MA. Bettina Aptheker. (1989) Tapestries of Life: Women's Work, Women's Consciousness, and the Meaning of Daily Experience. University of Massachusetts Press: Amherst, MA. Anne-Marie Cusac. Tillie Olsen. The Progressive. Volume: 63. Issue: 11. November 1999. p. 32. Read More