Tillie Olsen - I Stand Here Ironing

Have you ever watched a "behind the scenes" of a television show? If you haven't than I suggest you do. It typically will explain the meaning of the show or what the producer was trying to get the audience to notice. Often times they will interview the producer or writer and ask why they did such a show. Not all, but a lot of times it tends to be from personal experiences or something that the writer/producer has gone through, heard about or witnessed. The best example of this would be the movie about the 9/11 attacks that came out last year. I wanted to take a look into the life of Tillie Olsen and discover what was "behind the scenes" of her short story, "I Stand Here Ironing."

Tillie Olsen was born on January 14, 1913 in Omaha, Nebraska. She was the second of six children of Samuel and Ida Beber Lerner. Her parents were Russian Jewish Immigrants who had fled from Czarist after the 1905 revolution. They were forced to settle for low-wage jobs and a lower class life in America. Tillie grew up an intelligent girl who never met her potential. She attended Omaha Central High School, a school well-know for their academic rigor.

This was during the Great Depression, which in a sense made her drop out of school to help her parents support the family. Tillie held numerous low-wage jobs throughout this time and throughout her life. At some point she was a waitress, tie presser, meat trimmer, domestic worker, candy maker, hash slinger, jar capper in a food-processing plant, and a packing house worker. Becoming sick of the dead end jobs she began to write at age 19. This is when she started her book, Yonnondio.

Her writing was put to a pause in 1932 when she gave birth to her first child, Karla. Her husband soon left her alone to care for Karla. She later married a man named Jack Olsen. They had three more kids; Julie, Katherine Jo, and Laurie. Tillie devoted the next twenty years of her life to supporting her family and raising her four daughters.

Tillie Olsen did go back to writing when her children grew up. Her first book that was published in 1961, Tell Me a Riddle, contains "I Stand Here Ironing." This book earned her the 1961 Henry Award for best American short story. She won other awards throughout her writing years including; numerous grants, fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute of Independent Study, National Endowment for the Arts, Guggenheim Fellowship, and the American Academy and National Institute of Arts and Letters. Even though Olsen doesn't have an enormous amount of published works, she is one of the most influential writers for women today. Marleen Barr in Dictionary of Literary Biography says, "Although Olsen's output is small, her work is important because it gives a voice to people who are routinely not heard" (qtd. in Thomson Gale 1).

I see balancing childbearing and the struggle to earn a living with creative expression as Olsen's reasoning behind her writings. I especially see this present in "I Stand Here Ironing." This short story is about a mom who is estranged from her daughter. The mom is busy all the time working her jobs and cleaning the house. There is no communication between the daughter, Emily and her mother. Emily's father left her and the mom to survive on their own. Emily gets sent to a convalescent home for awhile so she could get the proper care. The mother of the story seems to be doing all the typical female roles our society has and then some extra. She cooks, cleans and raises her daughter. The thing that's missing is a relationship with her first born, Emily. The weird thing is when the second daughter is born and the mom forms a relationship with her second daughter, Susan. This also starts a new sort of competition between the sisters. The story ends by the mom (the author) wishing her daughter knows that she is not hopeless.

There are many points throughout the story and Olsen's life that proves she was motivated by her personal experiences. Both the story and author's life have many common things or events between them. The most important correlation that I noticed was the last sentence of the story and how it relates to Tillie's life. She wrote the story in first person which makes me believe even more that the story was about her. On page 70 she says, "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." This statement is saying that she hopes her daughter; Emily grows up and feels special and worthy.

The setting of this story basically fits hand in hand with Olsen's true life setting. It was during the great depression. She and the mother were both 19 years old and raising their first child. Tillie and the mother in the story are both left by their husband and father of their child.

I can see this relating to Olsen's life in a way, because she was one of six children whose parents worked all the time. She probably didn't feel loved or wasn't given enough attention from them because they were so busy all the time. Having to grow up fast by dropping out of school and working to support the family caused Tillie to feel that she didn't have any unique ways about her. She felt this was the path for her and there was no where else to go.

I can also see Tillie's real life experience fitting in with the story because, on page 67, she talks about not knowing her daughter. She goes on throughout the story to explain that they don't really have a healthy strong relationship like most mothers and daughters. It was very obvious that Tillie and her mother didn't have a "normal" relationship because they spent so much time apart. Emily tried to connect with her mother on many occasions. She would ask to stay home from school. Emily would also tell her mom not to leave for work. By Tillie Olsen adding these situations in the story, I can only think that she had wished she had more time with her parents. She obviously felt it was something that she missed out on during her childhood, so she wrote about it.

Another thing that I found from the story relating to Tillie's real-life was the sibling competition. It wasn't necessarily that they literally fought against each other, but it was there. Emily looked at Susan and saw the "perfect child," because Susan got all the attention from their mother. "...but