The short story, “I Stand Here Ironing” by T. Olsen, portrays the hardship and low status of women in society, poverty, as well as the realities of working poor females. Olsen depicts the common oppression of women and resistance through maternal bonding and nurturing. It is possible to say that Olsen succeeds in creating a space for women to articulate themselves and their feelings. The key idea of “I Stand Here Ironing” is based on the theme of the low social status of women in society but relates to various outcomes and conflict resolution.
In the story, the author describes the memories of a single woman with several children and her young years when her kids were small. She tries to analyze her behavior and mistakes and imagine what she would have done differently in order to create a happy life for her children. The woman finds out that her children were deprived of support, love, care, and trust. Olsen states that these problems are caused by oppression and the low status of women, a gender gap, and male dominance in society. The children suffer from the misunderstanding and lack of care while a single mother suffers from an inability to earn for living and low wages paid for women. The mother recollects, “After a while I found a job, hashing at night … so I could be with her days” (Olsen). This quote allows readers to say that Olsen presents a constructed and discursive identity by having her woman character take on the role of a mother and a poor worker.
Olsen seems to regard the woman’s role as an inescapable fate. In her struggle to extricate her family from the situations, she does not blame the other people who made such arrangements but the society and social traditions. For instance, the mother lost a connection with her daughter Emily working hard all her life and having no time for her children. She asks herself: “What in me demanded that goodness in her? And what was the cost, the cost to her of such goodness” (Olsen). This quote shows that the social culture places the family at its heart, as the experience of the women in this situation demonstrates, its attitude toward women begins in the more fluid modern world to tear away at this fundamental unit, making the difficulty of mother-daughter bonding a crucial problem for the culture as a whole. Olsen vividly portrays hardship and life grievances faced by a single working mother. In contrast to Olsen’s main character, the children do not suffer from income inequalities and low wages traditionally paid for women. On the one hand, the burden is due to the position of women in that society. Olsen’s mother understands the aimlessness and pointlessness of her life caused by the necessity to work around the clock.
To conclude, the short story “I Stand Here Ironing” demonstrates that the low social position of women in society deprives women of a chance to find happiness and maintain close relations with their families. Olsen’s mother has to work hard all her life to earn a living but she fails to communicate and establish close relations with her daughter. The story is very skillfully developed through the mother’s egg. It is her world with which readers are faced, her awareness of the process of personhood to which the story gives readers to access. Her fears with Emily’s past are defining the practices of her own motherhood and of the limits on her ability to care for and support the growth of her children.
Work Cited
Olsen, Tillie. “I Stand Here Ironing.” The Short Story Project, 13 Oct. 2021, Web.