I Stand Here Ironing By Tillie Olsen

In “I Stand Here Ironing” the author Tillie Olsen, states motherhood as being stranded from what goes on around the mother,but fully focused on her children. Tillie Olsen wrote this story to showcase her experience being a single mother struggling to balance family demands. Normally, stories about motherhood show how the mother is nurturing and supportive, but “I Stand Here Ironing” is the total opposite. The story tells a side of motherhood that some mothers wouldn't be comfortable with sharing. The unspoken burdens of motherhood, the nature of guilt and regret, and absence are aspects the average mother wouldn't want to let others know she felt or even thought about. “I Stand Here Ironing” brings out the trials and troubles mothers go through, …show more content…
Mothers, for decades have backed themselves into a no-win corner (Kleiman). No matter how much a mother provides, cares, and nurtures a child enough is never enough. In the story “I Stand Here Ironing” , at the end the narrator states “that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron”. The helpless dress represents the memories of Emily's childhood and they way she raised her. Ironing back and forth represents her reminiscing on the past and then thinking and the future. Regretting the fact that she had to put her child in another persons care made her feel this way. The moment she didn't check on her child when Emily was calling for her in her sleep is a feeling of regret also. Maybe if she had have been there for Emily it would have formed some type of emotional connection. Seeing Emily branch out made her mother feel she wasn't there for her enough. Regretting the fact that she didn't nurse Emily like her other children, she did as the books said (Olsen p. 292). Stating that Emily was so beautiful at birth and not like the other children at birth she expected so much of her. The outcome of Emily was not the expectation her mother put forth of