Olsen, Tillie

I Stand Here Ironing

In her much-anthologized short story I Stand Here Ironing from Tell Me a Riddle, the narrator, mother of 18-year-old Emily, receives a phone call from Emily's teacher. It seems that her teacher is concerned that Emily is not receiving proper support at home; the teacher sees potential in Emily, which the teacher does not want to see wasted. The narrator's response to the call, as she stands ironing clothes, is to reflect upon her mothering of Emily, from the sacrifices that she made for her child to her own perceived failures, such as leaving her in subpar day-cares in order to work to pay the bills. What readers glean from the narrator's visitation of her past is not Olsen's indictment of the narrator's mothering, but rather an indictment of a system that is not cognizant of the overwhelming responsibility of motherhood, especially amidst economic deprivation.

That Olsen's narrator is engaging in manual labor—ironing—as she speaks to the teacher belies her engagement with the very real world of work. She is inextricably tied to menial labor, and in Olsen's working-class world, a woman who works outside the home is often without a man or a support network to aid in the rearing of children. When she writes of Emily's withdrawn nature and apprehensions, Olsen indicts not the narrator but a host of social ills that make it virtually impossible for working-class women to mother and work simultaneously.

When at the end of the story the reader meets Emily, she reveals herself to be multilayered, both a reticent product of harsh times and a talented actress who relishes assuming roles that allow her to escape all of the awkwardness and apprehensions that plague her. Given that readers are privy to the narrator's thoughts and feelings, very little is filtered. The reader comes to know the truth of Emily's early years, when she is shuttled from the narrator's home to her grandparents' home and then to a sanitarium. Olsen's narrator engages in an honest reverie in which she fully acknowledges her part in the person Emily has grown to be. While Emily has not had an easy childhood, the brief glimpse of Emily is that of a young woman who has endured difficult times, but is perceptive and witty.

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