The story is told from the perspective of a mother who is ironing her daughter's dress while reflecting on her daughter Emily's childhood. A stranger has suggested that Emily needs help and has asked the mother to meet to discuss her daughter's needs. As the mother irons, she imagines the conversation and questions if discussing Emily with an outsider would be beneficial. She feels doubt about her role as a mother and ability to properly care for Emily due to her own disadvantaged upbringing as a single mother with limited resources.

1. I Stand Here Ironing
Author: Tillie Olsen
• Born in 1913 in Omaha, Nebraska
• American short story writer & novelist
• Began writing in early 1930s
• Based many of her fiction on her own life
experiences
• Wrote slowly & carefully (Eg. Her major novel
Yonnondio took 50 years)
• Activist of feminism
“I Stand Here Ironing”
• I Stand Here Ironing is from Olsen’s 1956 collection Tell Me a Riddle.
• Autobiographical
• Indication to the emerging women’s movement in the early 1960s.
• Story takes place in about 1951, when Emily is 19 and the mother is
38.
• Unromantic portrayal of motherhood- A mother’s recount on how
limited her life is of resources and opportunities because of the
demands of being a single working mother.
• Social sensitivity: this story brings awareness to the inequitable
treatment of women – the lack of social services, the shortage of pay
for menial jobs, the pressure to conform to unrealistic standards.
Summary
The story takes place with the mother “stand(ing) here ironing” her daughter’s
dress as she reflects on her daughter’s childhood. A stranger (possibly a
teacher or counsellor) has suggested that Emily (the daughter) is in need of
help. The potential helper has asked the mother to “come in” to discuss her
daughter’s needs. The mother imagines the conversation that she may have
at the meeting. She wonders if discussing her daughter with a stranger would
be beneficial, and questions her contribution as a mother to Emily’s
psychological health. She feels doubtful of the decisions she makes as a
mother. The mother notices some characteristics of her youth being mirrored
in her daughter’s behaviour; therefore she fears that her eldest daughter may
make the same mistakes and end up living with the same fate – trapped
within domestic & economic restrictions.
Writing Style & Technique
• Story written in first person.
• Extended interior monologue. The events take place throughout the
duration of the narrative in the voice of an unnamed mother.
• Narrative encompasses the narrator’s thoughts & imagination
presented in a stream-of-consciousness manner.

2. Metaphor: “Ironing”
The up, down, back and forth pressing of creases in the dress as the mother
is ironing metaphorically denotes the mother’s pressures to make ends meet.
The creases symbolise the hardships the mother has to endure.
Characters
Narrator (Middle-aged working-class mother of five)
• Plays a role seldom heard of at the time – Single mother holding down
a job & caring for five children at the same time.
o Her husband abandoned the family during the worst of
Depression, less than a year after the birth of her first child.
o “Her (Emily) father left me before she was a year old,” – Mother. (This
reflects Olsen’s life as a young mother.)
• She feels she has failed in raising her eldest daughter, Emily, and feels
angry and regretful at the circumstances that contributed to her
‘failure’.
o Regret: that she didn’t have the time or money to help her
eldest daughter.
o Emily was surrendered to many temporary caretakers because
“they persuaded me (the mother) at the clinic”, for Emily had grown thin
and ill from the lack of care and resources.”
o Attempted to follow what she knew best of mothering: “… with al
the fierce rigidity of first motherhood like the books then said…”
o The mother recognises that Emily “was a child of anxious… love”;
and “a child seldom smiled at”.
o Acknowledges that “my (the mother’s) wisdom came too late” in raising
Emily.
• The mother is hopeful.
o She concludes that nurture doesn’t entirely contribute to a
child’s future.
o She believes that Emily can still rise above her deprived
childhood and “find her way… there is still enough left to live by”.
o The mother is prayerful that her daughter will understand “that
she is more than (a) dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron”,
and that she is capable of becoming greater.
Emily (the narrator’s daughter)
• Eldest of five children.
• She was “thin and dark and foreign-looking at the time when every little girl was
supposed to look or thought she should look a chubby blonde replica of Shirley
Temple”.
• Described by the narrator as “a child of her age, of depression, of war, of fear”.
• Shy and passive

3. • After the mother’s second marriage, Emily was out shined by her
younger, more confident, half-sister Susan.
• Surprisingly, Emily developed a talent for comedic acting- excelled in
imitating people – which wins her attention.
Themes
Family: The mother-daughter bond
• The mother’s anxiety as she realises her daughter has grown
independent of her.
• The mother’s guilt of allowing her daughter to endure struggle and
pain in her childhood. Opening line of the story: “I stand here ironing, and
what you asked me moves tormented back and forth with the iron.”
The Search for Identity
• The mother is troubled by the idea that she is being asked to help a
stranger understand her daughter. “You think because I am her mother I have
a key, or that in some way you…
• Was the mother entirely responsible for Emily’s disadvantaged
upbringing? Or was the society responsible as well?