I Stand Here Ironing Essay

“ I Stand Here Ironing” Analysis

LIT2001

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Professor Nicole McInnes

The short story, “ I Stand Here Ironing” , is about the unconditional love a mother for her child. It is a mother’s struggle with her guilt about her daughter’s life as she was growing up. The narrator, who is the mother, is middle aged and is having a conversation in her head about the events of the life she has had with her daughter. As the story unfolds, we are shown the struggles the mother had in the Great Depression, as a woman, who was left alone to take care of a infant and the transition into a family.

While standing at the ironing board, the narrator responds to some one that is requesting to talk to her about the daughter Emily. “ I wish you would manage the time to come in and talk with me about your daughter. I’m sure you can help me understand her. She’s a youngster who needs help and whom I’m deeply interested in helping” (Charters, 2015, p. 718). The mother is annoyed and upset that she may have to help someone understand what is going on with her daughter who is 19 years old now. She does not even understand her daughter. As she continues to iron, her memories come to the surface about Emily and the childhood. The ironing represent woman’s work and in society in 1966 this was still considered a woman’s responsibility . The iron also represents making things neat and tidy in her life which was not the case with Emily’s childhood.

With being abandoned by her husband, being a young unexperienced mother, and having to earn a living through the Work Progress Administration (WPA) of the Great Depression the narrator is helpless. She does accept that she could not care for Emily since she worked majority of the time to support them. The mother being unexperienced, worrying day to day over the situation of poverty played a huge part in the way she interacted with Emily and this plays into the struggle. “ The old man living in the back once said in his...