I Stand Here Ironing by Tillie Olsen | Introduction & Overview

I Stand Here Ironing Introduction

Tillie Olsen's story "I Stand Here Ironing" recounts a poor working woman's ambivalence about her parenting skills and her eldest daughter's future. Published in Olsen's first collection of stories, Tell Me a Riddle, in 1961, this first-person story contains many autobiographical elements. Central to the plot is the metaphor of a mother ironing her daughter's dress as she mentally attempts to "iron" out her uneasy relationship with her daughter through a stream-of-consciousness monologue. The narrator, a middle-aged mother of five, as Olsen was when she wrote the story, is the type of woman whose story was seldom heard at that time: that of a working-class mother who must hold down a job and care for children at the same time. "Her father left me before she was a year old," the mother says, a circumstance that mirrored Olsen's predicament as a young mother. The story was heralded by the emerging...
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