I Stand Here Essay

Joe Sugg

Essay –
I Stand Here Ironing

AP English 4

1-17-15
Essay Prompt

Using the short story
I Stand Here Ironing
, write an essay in which you analyze the narrative techniques and other resources of language Olsen uses to characterize the mother and the mother’s attitudes toward her daughter. In addition to the text, consider background information presented, including the PowerPoint and the interview with the writer.
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“She was a beautiful baby,” (1) the mother gushes in the beginning of the short story
I Stand
Here Ironing
. However the turns into “thin, dark and foreign-looking” (3) as the mother tells the tale of her daughter Emily. Tillie Olsen utilizes many
narrative techniques and other sources of language such as interior monologue, repetition and metaphors to convey the mother's feelings towards her daughter, Emily, in the short story
I Stand Here Ironing
. These techniques and resources of language that Olsen uses helps to characterize the mother and her attitude towards her daughter. The short story is told from a first-person point-of-view of the mother who receives a call from someone that is unknown to the reader. The reader is then taken on a journey through the mother’s interior monologue, a conversation going on inside her head. This stream-of-consciousness brings the reader back to the very beginning of when Emily was born up until the present. The writers use of interior monologue brings a whole other layer to this story and elicits the feelings that the mother has toward her daughter and it shows the reader the almost angry guilt the mother feels about her daughter. The mother tells, or rather thinks, about Emily growing up and all the things she had to do but that she didn't always want to. For instance, when the mother says, “...I had to bring her to family and leave her” (1), the key word is had to. Moreover,

the mother did not want to leave her daughter, she wanted to raise her herself. And when the mother says, “when she finally came back, I hardly knew her…” (1).
The mother does not like the fact that her daughter is a stranger to her, but she had to do what she thought was best for Emily at the time. The interior monologue really helps with the characterization of the mother’s attitude towards her daughter. With interior monologue, the reader has no choice not to know exactly what the mother is thinking and feelings throughout the entire story.
In addition to the interior monologue, Olsen uses repetition in the story to further characterize the mother and her feelings. This repetition is shown through the back and forth motion of the iron. This story is the interior monologue of the mother while she is standing at an ironing board, ironing her clothes. Just like the iron, the story goes back and forth with what she is thinking and contributes to the flow of the story. It is evident in the first sentence when she says,
“...what you asked me moves tormented back and forth with the iron” (1). This also adds to her stream-of-consciousness as the mother will be talking about something great with her daughter, then tell about something bad, then back to a good thing. For example, the mother describes
Emily as having “physical lightness and brightness”(3) and “twinking...bouncing...skimming over the hill…”(3), but in the very next sentence she describes Emily as “thin, dark and foreign-looking”(3).
The back and forth of Emily’s appearance shows the reader how much Emily changed and how the mother feels toward her daughter’s change. Another example is the decisions to send Emily away and then desperately wanting her back, only to send her away again. However, the back and forth telling of the story adds to the characterization of the mother because it shows that the mother didn't want to send Emily away and always regretted doing it, but had no choice.
Furthermore, metaphors are very prominent in this short story. The very first line of the story, “...what you asked me moves tormented back and forth with the iron” (1), is a metaphor and sets the almost metaphoric tone of the piece. The metaphor of the iron and the motion of the iron continues throughout the entire story and helps attribute to the characterization of the mother and her feelings. The metaphor of the iron also attributes to understanding the mother and her story.

As the iron is repeatedly going back and forth over the clothes, the mother is revisiting the past of her daughter hoping to smooth out the rough parts and gain an understanding, like an iron does to clothes. The most powerful metaphor in the story is the last line of the story, “...help make it so there is cause for her to know - that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron(5).” This is a very compelling metaphor to end the story with as it sums up the mother’s attitude towards her daughter. Throughout the story, the reader feels the guilt that the mother jas towards her daughter but sometimes seems that the mother did not care about her at all. This last metaphor shows the reader that the mother actually does care and wants the best for her daughter despite all she has been through.
Tillie Olsen uses various narrative techniques and other resources of language to characterize the mother and convey her feelings toward her daughter, Emily. Some of the most prominent techniques were interior monologue, repetition and metaphors. These techniques help to show the reader the true feelings the mother felt towards her daughter, such as guilt and anger about the things she had to do while Emily was growing up. These techniques also help with the characterization of the mother and her attitude towards her daughter and what happened during her childhood.