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I Stand Here Ironing By Tillie Olsen

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“I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen is a short story about a young girl who goes through the struggles of becoming a mother during the 1950s. Throughout the story, we are shown the struggles placed on mothers by society and the criticisms they face. The relationship between mother and daughter illustrates the maternal want for her child to grow into her own person, and the struggle of women to fit in.
We know early on in the story that the narrator is a young 19-year-old girl who has just become a single mother. Her being so young and suddenly being a mother acts as the transition from girl to woman which is often too fast. Being a mother comes with a responsibility to your child and to society. “They” dictate what a mother should do for …show more content…

The “They” she talks about is society, and society has made it so there is an archetype that mothers should follow, or else they are deemed unfit. The narrator is still only a teenager and she is bound to make mistakes, but since she is now a mother, society places even more blame on her for her mistakes.
The relationship between the narrator and her daughter when she is a baby starts off wonderfully, but when the narrator has to go work away from her child, the two become distant.
Although the daughter is now only two, she has changed indefinitely because society's grasp has taken hold of her. As her daughter Emily starts to grow older, she becomes much more aware of what society's vision of a proper girl should look like. No matter how many times her mother could tell her how perfect she is, it will never be more than how much society tells her she isn’t.
The standards put on women by society can be detrimental to a young girl. When you are skinny, you need to get chubbier, but if you are fat you need to lose weight. It is an endless battle that many young girls have to face, including Emily. After becoming very thin, she is so worried about becoming someone she isn’t because that is what the beauty standard

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