I Stand Here Ironing By Tillie Olsen

Relationship between a Mother and Daughter Short Story Essay
The relationship between a mother and her child is one of the most important human interactions. Mothers provide emotional and physical care for their young daughters, and daughters have to provide respect and as a way to validate as a relationship with their mother. Their relationships can be complex, challenging but also filled with compassion and love. A mother’s aggressive and protective love can sometimes be overbearing. “I Stand Here Ironing” is a sympathetic story. “It is a story that examines the relationship between a particular mother and her child” according to Linda Heinlein Kirschner. “I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen captures overwhelming love from a mother to a …show more content…
I knew. I knew the teacher that was evil because all these years it has curdled into my memory” (Olsen 14). In Tillie Olsen, “I Stand Here Ironing” the narrator neglects her daughter Emily her entire life. The narrator, Emily’s mother, sends her away to care for her financially. During the Great Depression, the narrator loses her husband to war and has to look for financial stability in order to provide for her daughter and herself. For example, Emily was sent to a daycare at the age of two; where she was verbally and physically abused while the narrator knowingly neglected the situation. “They persuaded me at the clinic to send her away to a convalescent house in the country where she can have the kind of food and care you can’t manage for her, and you’ll be free to concentrate on the new baby” (Olsen 26). The narrator further neglects her daughter Emily by letting someone convince her to send her oldest daughter into the care of other people, just so she could care for her youngest child. While at the convalescent house, Emily was improperly fed and losing weight. “Each visit she looked frailer. She isn’t eating” (Olsen …show more content…
Growing up in the Great Depression, Emily had a hard childhood; from being bounced from family member to daycare to a convalescent house back to her mother, not feeling beautiful enough but she overcame those hard times by turning to the world of comedy. “Mother, I did it. I won, I won; they gave me the first prize; they clapped and clapped and wouldn’t let me go” (Olsen 46). Beauty is only skin deep but to Emily being beautiful is only on the outside, she wanted to be loved and wanted by everyone around her. “She fretted about her appearance, thin, dark and foreign-looking at a time when every little girl was supposed to look or thought she should look like a chubby blonde replica of Shirley Temple. I brought him some every day, but he still liked Jennifer better’n me. Why, Mommy?” (Olsen

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