I Stand Here Ironing
Tillie Olsen's I Stand Here Ironing, and Alice Walker's Everyday Use, both address the issue of a mother's guilt over how her children turn out. Both mothers blamed themselves for their daughter's problems. While I Stand Here Ironing is obviously about the mousy daughter, in Everyday Use this is camouflaged by the fact most of the action and dialog involves the mother and older sister Dee. Neither does the mother in Everyday Use say outright that she feels guilty, but we catch a glimpse of it when Dee is trying very hard to claim the handmade quilts. The mother says she did something she had never done before, "hugged Maggie to me," then took the quilts from Dee and gave them to Maggie. In I Stand Here Ironing the mother tells us she feels guilty for the way her daughter Emily is, for the things she (the mother) did and did not do. The mother's neighbor even tells her she should "smile at Emily more when you look at her." Again towards the end of the story Emily's mother admits "my wisdom came too late." The mothers unknowingly gave Emily and Maggie second best.
Both mothers compare their two daughters to each other. In Everyday Use the mother tells us that "Dee is lighter than Maggie, with nicer hair and a fuller figure." She Fahning -2-speaks of the fire that burned and scarred Maggie. She tells us how Maggie is not bright, how she shuffles when she walks. Comparing her with Dee whose feet vwere always neat-looking, as if God himself had shaped them." We also learn of Dee's "style" and the way she awes the other girls at school with it.
The mother in I Stand Here Ironing speaks of Susan, "quick and articulate and assured, everything in appearance and manner Emily was not." Emily "thin and dark and foreign-looking at a time when every little girl was supposed to look or thought she should look a chubby blonde replica of Shirley Temple." Like Dee, Emily had a physical limitation also. Hers was asthma.
Both Emily and Maggie show resentment...
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