In the story, “I Stand Here Ironing”, it uses a series of irony, theme, symbolism, and imagery. Some themes in this story include women and femininity, poverty, and power. In this essay I will be discussing these three themes in detail of what they influence. “I Stand Here Ironing” looks at women and femininity through the mother daughter relationship. The mother struggles throughout the story working long hours during the Great Depression, and is still unable to care for her daughter. This story takes us into the head of the mother as she juggles roles of mother and money maker. Even though the story of the mother and daughter doesn’t fit a normal lifestyle you can still see how they have a strong bond. They grow closer and closer as they
The Crucible, a prominent play authored by Arthur Miller, introduces a new type of horror. The theatrical work stages in Salem, Massachusetts where numerous illicit murders (murder in this case is referring to those who were falsely accused of witchcraft and payed a fatal consequence) took place. John Proctor, a farmer doing the witchcraft trials, was falsely apprehended for witchcraft, along with his wife Elizabeth Proctor. Instead of admitting to the false accusations and be granted life, John Proctor chose to die as a noble man. Now, as courageous and respectable as that might have been, John Proctor should have corroborated the charges because he had already commit sins that defy his nobility and morals.
The mother begins to rebel against tradition by taking an active role in educating and freeing herself. Through her radio, telephone and trips out with her sons she develops her own opinions about the world, the war, and the domination and seclusion of woman. She loses her innocence as a result to her new knowledge and experience.
Senior year is time for high school students to celebrate their accomplishments and move on to their new life - an independent life from parents. However, you should respect and appreciate these last moments of love, care and support from your parents because many unfortunate children such as Emily in “I Stand Here Ironing” story written by Tillie Olsen have not received all the care from their parents since their youth age. Olsen expresses successfully in this monologue story the distance between a mother and her daughter along with the mother’s guilty feeling of not being able to fix their relationship.
While James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues” depicts the connection between two brothers, Tillie Olsen’s short story “I Stand Here Ironing” represents the bond between a mother and her daughter. Both Baldwin and Olsen focus on family relationships and how emotional support vs neglect have an effect on family members. Also, each author conveys a message of finding self-identity even amidst adversity, while including the symbolism of everyday objects. Furthermore, Baldwin compares light and darkness throughout his story, and Olsen has the mother scrutinize her actions in an interior monologue.
1. The female factory worker compared her conditions with those of slaves because she felt like they were being treated like slaves by not being allowed to speak for themselves. She felt that they were awed into silence by wealth and power and was under tyranny and cruel oppression
The article, the book, and I, talk about how daughters feel their mothers don’t know them and that they don’t know their mothers. They talk about how a daughter listens to her mother, but there is a certain point in a young woman 's mind where they decide they want to see and explore new ideas. In conclusion, they all talk about the point in a daughter 's life where she and her mother don’t get along very well and the daughter tries to take charge of her life.
After the death of her husband, Mother struggles to keep her family together by providing the support and guidance they need, and encouraging them to use good judgment and think of the family as a whole before making their decisions. As the family faces various obstacles, each seemingly more severe than the last, Mother begins
I Stand Here Ironing lies in its fusion of motherhood as both metaphor and experience: it shows us motherhood bared, stripped of romantic distortion, and reins fused with the power of genuine metaphorical insight into the problems of selfhood in the modern world. ironing is a metaphor for "the ups and downs, back and forth of pressing pressures to make ends meet and a determination to pass through life's horrors and difficulties by keeping the mind intact and focusing on the beauty and blessings that [lie amidst] the dark times"? So the ironing is like a drug, to keep the mother calm and sedated. The story seems at first to be a simple meditation of a mother reconstructing her daughter's past in an attempt to
The women of the story are not treated with the respect, which reflects their social standings. The first image of the women that the reader gets is a typical housewife. They are imaged as “wearing faded house dresses and
In the story, “I Stand Here Ironing” the mother and the child is the main focus of this story. The bond the mother and the infant have is threatened as soon as the mother decides to give the child up to a sitter. Later the mother and the child bond is weaken and which makes it difficult for the mother to express her love for her daughter, living in poverty and the demands of caring for the other children makes the mother believes that she can be of no help to the girl’s further development. In the story as the mother irons it sets the mood and tone for the story.
This speaks on a very deep level, in regards to the genuine warmth the author implied toward the mother in his piece. There is a subliminal truth of sentimental “value”, because the reality of this world is that all material wealth can be lost in a moment, but real wealth is not some slice of pie one luckily stumbles upon in the world, real wealth is first found in the human being, and the human becomes the reflective producer of these
Money plays a huge part in this story. Hester, the mother, is obsessed with having more and more money. She lives the life of a woman with money, never allowing anyone to see past the family's small income, "The mother had a small income, and the father had a
Being a single woman with a family to support in the 1930’s was not an easy job. Especially when society had so many chips stacked against them. Tillie Olsen’s “I stand Here Ironing” is a short story that addresses feminine social disorders and inequalities as well as economic disadvantages that people of lower circumstances have to overcome to survive. In the short story it is basically an autobiography of Tillie Olsen’s life told by the narrator (Emily’s mother). Throughout the story the narrator is reflecting the way she brought up her daughter during a depression and feminist era. She feels very regretful reflecting 19 years late because of the decisions she was forced to make because of the absence of Emily’s father. This story can be seen in a feminist perspective as well as a Marxist perspective; even though they are very different from one another both perspectives help interpret Tillie Olsen’s short story. The Marxist perspective helps illuminate Tillie Olsen’s “I stand Here Ironing” when the narrator explains how the capital system negatively affected Emily and her Family. In a feminist perspective the narrator describes her different encounters with men that abandoned her; causing her to have to take on a male dominated role. Because of the societal characteristic she had to take on it caused her to turn away from her daughter in order to survive.
Furthermore, Amy Tan writes a wonderful short story about the complicated relationship between mothers and daughters, yet one can be enriching. The theme of “Two
The resentment within the young girl’s family is essential to the novel because one can understand the young girl better as she makes her decision.