What are the conflict, setting, and turning point in "I Stand Here Ironing"?

Conflict can be subdivided into two major categories: internal and external. "I Stand Here Ironing" contains both, but the main conflict is internal.

The narrator is struggling with herself. She is trying to come to grips with what she sees as her failure as a mother. The iron that "moves tormented back and forth" is symbolic of her tormented thoughts and her constant and repeated struggle to smooth the wrinkles from her daughter's life, a struggle that never seems finished no matter how hard she tries.

The external conflicts are the poverty and illness that interfere with the narrator's ability to successfully parent her child and the pending meeting with the counselor or teacher who has requested a meeting to discuss Emily. This request intitiates the internal conflict and creates an inner dialogue of accusations and excuses in the narrator.

The setting is more in the narrator's mind and deals with this internal struggle than in the physical appartment/house where the narrator is ironing.

The turning point, I think, occurs when the narrator decides that she should just let Emily be, when she realizes that Emily is not an utter failure and that, although she may never reach her full potential, she will survive and possibly thrive. But even after this decision, the reader is left with the feeling that the internal struggle is not over, that like ironing, it returns and is never really finished. The mother hopes that Emily realizes ''that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron."

In other words, she hopes that Emily will learn that she doesn't have to conform and that she doesn't have to be what the world dictates she become. She hopes that Emily will not allow some outside force to shape her or crush her. As a mother, the narrator never finishes worrying about her child. And as the mother of an often troubled or struggling child, she never truly finishes blaming herself.

Below are some links that more specifically discuss the characters, style and themes of "I Stand Here Ironing."

What are the rising action and climax of "I Stand Here Ironing" by Tillie Olsen?

Rising action is defined as the events that develop from the conflict of a story--beginning with the action that incites the conflict--and lead to the climax. The climax is defined as that point in the story at which the resolution is fixed and determined. The climax may be the most emotional moment in the narrative but emotionality is not a requirement; the climax may be a cognitive or psychological event as easily as an emotional or action-packed event.

In the case of "I Stand Here Ironing," the rising actions are the narrated events that take in the mother's abandonment by Emily's father and include the mother's giving Emily to the father's parents to look after; bringing her back home; the tragic incident of catching measles; the discontent with her siblings and her school experience; signing up for and competing in the school talent show.

These events of rising action lead to the climax. There are opposing point of view as to what the climax is or even if there is a climax to "I Stand Here Ironing." One opinion suggests that the rising action leads to the climax at which Emily wins the talent show and phones her mother in ecstatic joy. Incidentally, part of this view of the climax illustrates that even though Emily's mother doesn't know how to show her deep love for Emily and even though Emily was separated from her mother's care, they are bonded to each other in a great, if unspoken, way, which prefigures the upcoming resolution.

Another opinion suggests that rising action, including winning the talent show, leads to a climax that comes when Emily asks her mother, "Aren't you ever going to finish the ironing, mother?" This is a psychological climax at which point the mother has the slow dawning of realization that results from her contemplation and leads to the resolution, which is embodied in "Why were you so concerned? She will find her way." The final opinion suggests there is no climax to "I Stand Here Ironing."