The story has numerous feminist elements. One of the strongest of such elements is the mother's history as a working woman and the information the reader learns about the inadequacy of social services in the early-mid twentieth century, which made it impossible for a single mother to support her children.
Another element is the mother's awareness of gender oppression in identifying ironing with the burden of that injustice and identifying female-specific clothing, such as the dress, with women's objectification.
Although the mother has worked outside the home, another feminist point is respect for women's unpaid work within the home, encapsulated in the ironing.
The mother-daughter relationship has a feminist slant. What comes through is the mother's optimism for the daughter, who is bright, funny and energetic, though her energy needs positive channeling. At the end, the mother hopes she will learn that there is fulfillment in life, and that she...
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has not internalized society's oppression.
Tillie Olsen's powerful story "I Stand Here Ironing" denotes a strong feminist influence. It is evidenced in the way that the narrator does not try to make excuses to explain her meager living conditions and her failure to raise a daughter properly. Quite courageously, the woman offers no mercy to herself and firmly accepts that she, from a young age, added on to the epidemic of poverty and bad parenting that enveloped the nation during "the pre-relief, pre-WPA world of the depression".
Fully aware of her role in creating a dysfunctional family, the woman openly explains to "the person" who is asking her questions, how she has made ends meet, considering that she and her daughter were abandoned by the child's father. As a result, she becomes unable to provide for her daughter the love that she wished she could have shown her.
She was a miracle to me, but when she was eight months old I had to leave her daytimes with the woman downstairs to whom she was no miracle at all, for I worked or looked for work and for Emily's father, who "could no longer endure" (he wrote in his goodbye note) "sharing want with us."
Feminism colors the story by showing a clear example of first-wave feminism, which occurs historically at the same time that our main character would have suffered the most as a single mother with no prospects of work, no social beneficence, and little chance for an education. Instead, she falls within the cracks of a system that is barely beginning to take shape and, in the process, many women such as herself will find themselves basically stuck in a rut.
In addition to accepting her mistakes, she also warns her daughter from following her steps. She is realistic and quite secure of this statement, bringing no-nonsense about it.
My wisdom came too late. She has much to her and probably little will come of it. She is a child of her age, of depression, of war, of fear.
Hence, she accepts that her choices occurred during a time where things were not favorable, but that things are changing now. That, just like she refuses to find excuses for her current situation, her daughter should not use their dysfunctional past as an excuse to not move forward in life. There is more to life than the ironing board by which she stands.
There is still enough left to live by. Only help her to know-help make it so there is cause for her to know -- that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron.