14-2 Tillie Olson

Tillie Olson has gained wide critical attention as a prose stylist and spokeswomen for the poor, the oppressed, and the despised people of America.  She was born in Nebraska to Russian immigrant parents. Olson’s story of I Stand Here Ironing is a story written from a mother’s point of view of her troubled daughter Emily. Her mother has just gotten a call from the girl’s school, which they expressed that she “needs help”; her mother looks back on how she has raised her. As her mother thinks about this she thinks how she  put so much into her daughter when she was younger.Her mother looking back feels what every mother thinks of their kid what all mother feel about their child that they are beautiful, because we love them. The bubbles remind her of how she spit bubbles and cooing.The babies feet and hands and overalls are things that she pictures and remebers of her as a baby.she talks about Emily as in ecstacy which is a big change from her attitude throughout the story.her mother looks back and sees that she can’t spend the time and care for her, because her husband has left them and she has to support them by working.The woman downstairs don’t spend the time with her as she would or any mother to a child would.She has looked for her husband and he didn’t want to see his family suffer eventhough he knew they would but he wouldn’t be there to actually see the poverty. He was a very selfish person that must have been out of sight out of mind kind of person. Her being a young mother trying to work and raise a child by herself wasn’t easy. Now she looks back and sees that while she was trying to make a living to care for her she slipped through without what her mother thought she needed. I see her mother feeling as though she has failed not only her daughter but her self when she was only trying to support them.