In the following essay, Pfaelzer discusses the ways in which Olsen uses language and silence in Tell Me a Riddle to represent Eva's journey from alienation to engagement.

In the essay below, Kamel discusses the elements which are common within Olsen's writings.

In the following essay, Lyons argues that while Judaism shapes Olsen's work, her writing is most influenced by her experiences as a woman.

In the following essay, Kloss examines the daughter's emotional deprivation in "I Stand Here Ironing."

In the essay below, Rose explores Olsen's philosophy on writing and suggests that Olsen, a renowned feminist, is as powerful at depicting men as she as at depicting women.

In the following essay, Staub traces Olsen's focus on self-articulation and the freedom it brings.

In the following essay, Culver discusses Olsen's views on self-fulfillment and motherhood.

In the following essay, Gelfant addresses the protagonist's need to find meaning and self-renewal during the Depression in Olson's short story "Requa."

In the following essay, Wolfe compares "I Stand Here Ironing" with "Hey Sailor, What Ship?" as she explores Olsen's concept of universal hope.

In the following essay, Bauer remarks on the themes of hope and despair within the mother-daughter relationship in "I Stand Here Ironing."

In the following review, Oates contends that Silences suffers from omissions, uneven tone, and faulty logic.

In the following essay, O'Connor praises Olsen's short stories, for the power of their scenes of everyday life.

In the following review of Tell Me a Riddle, Fisher praises Olsen's efforts as a feminist writer.

Tillie Olsen's is a unique voice. Few writers have gained such wide respect based on such a small body of published work…. Among women writers in the United States, "respect" is too pale a word: "reverence" is more like it. This is presumably because women writers, even more than their male counterparts, recognize what a heroic feat it is to have held down a job, raised four children and still somehow managed to become and to remain a writer. The exactions of this m...

Olsen's compelling gift is her ability to render lyrically the rhythms of consciousness of victims [in Yonnondio: From the Thirties]. Imaginative, affectionate, they are also alert to the sensual promise of their surroundings. Harsh familial, social, political and economic conditions first cramp, then maim, and then seek to destroy them. The fevers of poverty, dread and futility inflame their sensibilities. They risk reduction to defensive fantasy, pain, madness or cruelty. They remain, if in shadow,...

[Yonnondio] is a conventional story, as stories go, but the plot is in fact the least important element of the novel. This is not because it is incomplete (the book has only recently been recovered in a less than perfect form), but because the narrative is consumed by the effects of Miss Olsen's prose. A pattern of images is cast over the writing from the opening chapters, and there is a characteristic attention to description rather than analysis—it is a matter of dialogue rather than charact...

There is a good reason for [Tillie Olsen's] low production. For more than forty years she has been a wife and mother, a family wage-earner at dull and time-sapping menial jobs. She has been, like multitudes of other talents, frustratingly "silent"—silent because, most of all, of the necessities of earning a living and keeping a family together. Silences, her third book, tells us all this—tells us why, and how arduous and obstructed her life, a woman's life, has been...

[Tillie Olsen] is, has been for decades, a feminist—unyielding and strong-minded, but never hysterical or shrill. Her essays reveal her to be brilliant, forceful and broadly educated…. At times she has allowed herself, in a confessional vein not unlike that of "I Stand Here Ironing," a moment of regret, if not self-pity: if only there had been more time, an easier life—hence more stories, novels, essays written…. Everything she has written has become almost immediat...

[Silences] is a book about the relationships between literature and circumstances as well as a commentary on the mysterious workings of the creative imagination…. Several of the essays in Silences were written in the early sixties, before the women's movement was really under way, and therefore seem a bit dated. What remains fresh and compelling is Tillie Olsen herself. Angry, sensitive, persistent, she has managed to create enduring literature under the most unpromising circumstances. Among w...

In examining the failure of various talented writers (mostly women) to produce the amount or quality of work warranted by their apparent ability, Ms. Olsen blames, in Silences, everything except that standard ailment known as writer's block, while quoting the lamentations of a number of writers (mostly men) who suffered no other impediment. The result is a discussion with more eloquence than logic. (p. 96) Phoebe-Lou Adams, in The Atlantic Monthly (copyright © 1978 by The Atlantic...