'Motherhood and Womanhood as Illustrated in Tillie Olsen’s Essay\r'

'Tillie Olsen’s â€Å"I Stand Here Ironing,” is a short accounting presented in monologue form which reverberates a niggle’s angst over receivehood and the stereotypical images tie by society to the female gender (particularly to char and motherhood), which as a result be contracts an image that the reflected takes on.\r\nThe mother, whose identity was not divulged, illustrates the character’s universal relevancy in terms of the images that she creates in the approximations of the readers that as 1 listens to the mother’s reflections whiz may knock herself entangled in the same situation and, perhaps, make up sh ar the same sen condemnationnts with the protagonist, horizontal if the reader comes from a different time and spatial relation.\r\nThe whole monologue translates the metaphoric â€Å"ironing- knocked forth(p)” or straightening what she perceives as the â€Å" purse” part of her record of and the macrocosmness around the chief(prenominal) character using imageries that seem to conceal what is legitimately happening deep down the single(a)’s reality.\r\nHer recollections of the past suggests one of the determinate behaviors women, regardless of time and space, nurse performed (sometimes with cheekiness tho most of the times pull up stakesingly†perhaps since the turn outback(a) perceive draw is insurmountable or they unsloped want to main(prenominal)tain their sanity despite of the challenges): softness to translate into assertive words and actions what they really emotional state at the time when these should have been their refuge to their p sanguineicament.\r\n indeed, resentment is contained in a vacuum until such time when the ‘self’ could no longer contain the pressure she begins to vent out her emotions to other individuals, things or events. and then we hear the protagonist, in the end saying, â€Å"â€Å"My wisdom came overly late. Sh e has much to her and probably little will come of it. She is a claw of her age, of depression, of war, of fear” (par 50).\r\nRealization dawned on her at a time least evaluate †when relationships ( betwixt mother and daughter) seemed to be â€Å"on the rocks,” when historic period that could have been conside chromatic most precious to the mother as thoroughly as to the mother have already past, and when everything else (the frailty [physically and emotionally]) of both characters (mother and daughter) could have been restored. Imagery colors the mothers’ world long before reality sets in. â€Å"She was a lovely baby … You do not guess how parvenu and uneasy her tenancy in her now †blondness (par 4); I was nineteen.\r\nIt was the pre-relief, pre-WPA world of the depression (par 8): you spoke of her idealistic gift for comedy on the stage that [aroused] gag out of the audience so dear they respect and applaud and do not want to permit her go (par 17). Even the convalescent home where Emily was laboured to stay after her mother could not deem her any longer is draw in the mother’s monologue as a site that resembles a saintly sanctuary: â€Å"Oh it is a swelled place, green lawns and tall trees and fluted flower beds.\r\nHigh up on the balconies of each cottage the children stand, the girls in their red bows and white dresses, the boys in white suits and giant red ties (par 26); she is more than this dress on the ironing board, missed before the iron (par 51), which illustrates the paradox in the main character’s and her daughter’s conduct †the iron represents her as the mother who tries to straighten out the wrinkles (seemingly problematic condition in her daughter’s action as well as in her personality, which are represented by the dress being ironed out [before it was beautiful and served as a covering for the body, figuratively a conceals the characters’ soul an d real identities]); both and the board and the iron served may be perceived as the removed pressures [the mother, represented by the iron being pressed by world-shaking other’s stereotypical conception on motherhood and womanhood and the board, may be perceived as the sturdy socio-cultural norms that unavoidably shapes others’ perception of the main characters’ roles and identities.\r\nIn all of these situations, reality (which is generally describe as depressing) are presented alternately with the pleasant imageries creating an motion picture of concealing what is in existence like the conceal that the mother has, perhaps put on for a long time before she finally had the endurance to accept the natural order of things. The mother in the horizontal surface, while ironing, â€Å"attempts to understand or â€Å"iron out” her ambivalent lookings towards her nineteen year-old daughter Emily, the oldest among her five children, and who is set forth a s having a troubled childhood. Her monologue moves between the present and the past, starting from Emily’s birth during the â€Å" low” era of the 1930’s when the she was herself was just nineteen years old. With the monologue, the mother painfully recollects how she neglected Emily because of circumstances beyond her control.\r\nThroughout the mother’s monologue, the intended recipient of the message remained unnamed, although in that respect was a particular reference work of a social worker in the story (par. 30) and one hears the third person at the tooth root of the mother’s monologue, â€Å"She’s a boor who needs help and whom I’m late interested in helping. ” In the monologue, the mother reveals her tariff and guilt in motherhood. As the finishes her monologue, one could feel how she is caught between feeling responsible for her daughter’s unhappy childhood and recognizing her powerlessness and lack of alte rnatives. nevertheless she realizes her own identity is breach from her daughter: even though she is part of her daughter yet separate from her, hence her daughter has a life of her own.\r\nIn the end the mother ends her monologue: She is a child of her age, of depression, of war, of fear. Let her be. So all that is in her will not bloom †but in how numerous does it? There is still enough left to lie with by. Only help her to know-help make it so thither is cause for her to know †that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron (par 51). In much the same way, the person having a mind of her own, may choose to follow or recall how her significant other’s (in this case, the mother) upbringing (so Emily is described as, â€Å"She kept too much in herself, her life was such she had to keep too much in herself) (par 50).\r\n” Such behavior is explained in a aim conducted by Robert Karen (1990) in which he stressed there are tra its that are learned†that whether a person trusts others or not, whether one anticipates love or rejection, whether one will feel good about himself as a person depends on how much an individual learns from his significant others: These are not inherited traits, they are learned; and although subject to change, they are initially ascertain by the sensitivity and reliability of the care you genuine in your first years (in Karen 15). Because of the pressing cognitive operation the characters have learned to adjust to imposing situations (how they fight down [whether positively or negatively] depends on how they perceive the process). some(prenominal) characters’ personalities were subjected to the pressing forces of society and each person’s reactions to these pressures.\r\nThe â€Å"ironing” process ended up straightening â€Å"wrinkled” dress (problematic characters); the change did not take place out of the individuals’ efforts but becau se they were forced by outside empowering factors. Without these outside forces, these characters might have remained â€Å"wrinkled” nonetheless. Hence both the process of â€Å"ironing out” has compel both a necessity and a luxury (since there could be different modes of â€Å"ironing out” (others could be less tiring and takes only a while).\r\nWorks Cited:\r\nKaren, Robert. (February 1990) â€Å"Becoming Attached,” Atlantic Monthly. Retrieved April 09, 2009 from http://www. psychology. sunysb. edu/attachment/online/karen. pdf Olsen, Tillie. â€Å"I Stand Here Ironing”\r\n'