Tillie Olsen’s short story “I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen appears to be a byproduct of an oppressed single working-class mother. This story has many literary elements connected to feminism. To truly understand how feminism is involved in this story we must look at this story through the feminist perspective. We must also look at how the background of the author and see how much of this story is closely related to the author’s personal life. By doing so we can see how the mother is a victim of feminism.
Just like the mother who was left with four children to raise by her husbands, Tillie Olsen was a mother who was left with four kids to raise by herself (217). With her husband gone life very stressful having to balance work and raising a child (217). This situation is almost and if
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Olsen is a member of the working class which could be a result of her lack of education to help support her family through the Great Depression (217). Unfortunately, this limits her to low-income work and stereotypical house wife duties. While she was uneducated and busy being a mother, Olsen still was very political and strived to change the world through her writings (217).
The Mother in “I Stand Here Ironing” is quite similar to Olsen in this sense as well. She too is a working class, uneducated, single mother who struggles to balance work and raising children on her own. She looks back on the decisions she made in her life and wonders what she could’ve done differently to have avoided them. Both the Mother in the story and Olsen were left by their husbands when their child was very young. A working class life is hard enough but as a single mother it is next to impossible. The main character looks back onto an emotional moment that really shows how difficult times