My thoughts on "I Stand Here Ironing"

   After reading this story, it seemed to me that the mother was a victim of circumstance and inexperience. She didn't really have much of a choice in her actions I think. The author reveals early in the story that the setting during Emily's childhood was the 1930's. While not directly stated, she indicates it by saying "it was the pre-relief, pre WPA world of the depression"(Olsen, 3). With the mother being only 19 and the father leaving them, that only made things worse for both women. She tried as much as possible to love and care for Emily but ended up doing the wrong things, like sending her to that facility.

    It's subtly hinted that the mother remarried and she seemed to be able to raise her other children. But Emily has been negatively affected by her upbringing. Between her self-conscious demeanor and awkwardness outside of her stand-up comedy sessions and her obvious resentment of her younger sister Susan, it is clear that Emily while seeming fine in the present has not developed fully as a individual. In fact her gift for comedy seems to be a way to vent her frustration with life. But her sense of comedy is more twisted than most; "the gift has as often eddied inside, clogged and clotted, as been used and growing" (Olsen, 11). She casually jokes about education not mattering since they'll all be dead.

   This story could be an argument about nature versus nurture. The mother indicates that Emily was a product of her environment and that she loved her as much as she could. But she still turned out not quite right because in truth the mother wasn't there enough. In contrast, the other children seem to be much better off in terms of receiving their mother's love and she is far more experienced at parenting than she was with Emily. But the younger son still seems to be unhappy and Susan, while developed much better as a person physically, has a bit of arrogance about herself from what little we find out about her in the story, especially towards Emily.

   One could conclude that there is no definite cause of a childhood being unhappy and that a child could grow up in either direction no matter the place or amount of care.