I stand here ironing, and what you asked me moves tormented back and forth with the iron. 

“I wish you would manage the time to come in and talk with me about your daughter. I’m sure you can help me understand her. She’s a youngster who needs help and whom I’m deeply interested in helping.” 

“Who needs help?” Even if I came what good would it do? You think because I am her mother I have a key, or that in some way you could use me as a key? She has lived for nineteen years. There is all that life that has happened outside of me, beyond me.  And when is there time to remember, to sift, to weigh, to estimate, to total? I will start and there will be an interruption and I will have to gather it all together again. Or I will become engulfed with all I did or did not do, with what should have been and what cannot be helped. 

She was a beautiful baby. The first and only one of our five that was beautiful at birth. You do not guess how new and uneasy her tenancy in her now‐loveliness. You did not know her all those years she was thought homely, or see her poring over her baby pictures, making me tell her over and over how beautiful she had been—and would be, I would tell her—and was now, to the seeing eye. But the seeing eyes were few or nonexistent. Including mine. 

I nursed her. They feel that’s important nowadays. I nursed all the children, but with her, with all the fierce rigidity of first motherhood, I did like the books said. 

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ 

From Tell Me A Riddle by Tillie Olsen, Delta/Seymour Lawrence, New York, 1956, pp. 1—12. Reproduced with permission of Rutgers University Press via Copyright Clearance Center. 

Though her cries battered me to trembling and my breasts ached with swollenness, I waited till the clock decreed. 

Why do I put that first? I do not even know if it matters, or if it explains anything.  She was a beautiful baby. She blew shining bubbles of sound. She loved motion, loved light, loved color and music and textures. She would lie on the floor in her blue overalls patting the surface so hard in ecstasy her hands and feet would blur. She was a miracle to me, but when she was eight months old I had to leave her daytimes with the woman downstairs to whom she was no miracle at all, for I worked or looked for work and for

Emily’s father, who “could no longer endure” (he wrote in his good‐by note) 

“sharing want with us.” 

I was nineteen. It was the pre‐relief, pre‐WPA world of the depression. I would start running as soon as I got off the streetcar, running up the stairs, the place smelling sour, and awake or asleep to startle awake, when she saw me she would break into a clogged weeping that could not be comforted, a weeping I can yet hear. 

After a while I found a job hashing at night so I could be with her days, and it was better. But it came to where I had to bring her to his family and leave her. 

It took a long time to raise the money for her fare back. Then she got chicken pox and I had to wait longer. When she finally came, I hardly knew her, walking quick and nervous like her father, looking like her father, thin, and dressed in a shoddy red that yellowed her skin and glared at the pock marks. All the baby loveliness gone. 

She was two. Old enough for nursery school they said, and I did not know then what I know now—the fatigue of the long day, and the lacerations of group life in nurseries that are only parking places for children. 

Except that it would have made no difference if I had known. It was the only place there was. It was the only way we could be together, the only way I could hold a job. 

And even without knowing, I knew. I knew the teacher that was evil because all these years it has curdled into my memory, the little boy hunched in the corner, her rasp, “why aren’t you outside, because Alvin hits you? that’s no reason, go out coward.” I knew Emily hated it even if she did not clutch and implore “don’t go  Mommy” like the other children, mornings. 

She always had a reason why we should stay home. Momma, you look sick, Momma. 1 feel sick. Momma, the teachers aren’t there today, they’re sick. Momma there was a fire there last night. Momma it’s a holiday today, no school, they told me. 

But never a direct protest, never rebellion. I think of our others in their three‐, fouryearoldness—the explosions, the tempers, the denunciations, the demands— and I feel suddenly ill. I stop the ironing. What in me demanded that goodness in her? And what was the cost, the cost to her of such goodness? 

The old man living in the back once said in his gentle way: “You should smile at Emily more when you look at her.” What was in my face when I looked at her? I loved her. There were all the acts of love. 

It was only with the others I remembered what he said, so that it was the face of joy, and not of care or tightness or worry I turned to them—but never to Emily. She does not smile easily, let alone almost always as her brothers and sisters do. Her face is closed and somber, but when she wants, how fluid. You must have seen it in her pantomimes, you spoke of her rare gift for comedy on the stage that rouses laughter out of the audience so dear they applaud and applaud and do not want to let her go. 

Where does it come from, that comedy? There was none of it in her when she came back to me that second time, after I had had to send her away again. She had a new daddy now to learn to love, and I think perhaps it was a better time. Except when we left her alone nights, telling ourselves she was old enough. 

“Can’t you go some other time Mommy, like tomorrow?” she would ask. “Will it be just a little while you’ll be gone?” 

The time we came back, the front door open, the clock on the floor in the hall. She rigid awake. “It wasn’t just a little while. I didn’t cry. I called you a little, just three times, and then I went downstairs to open the door so you could come faster. The clock talked loud,

I threw it away, it scared me what it talked.” 

She said the clock talked loud that night I went to the hospital to have Susan. She was delirious with the fever that comes before red measles, but she was fully conscious all the week I was gone and the week after we were home when she could not come near the baby or me. 

She did not get well. She stayed skeleton thin, not wanting to eat, and night after night she had nightmares. She would call for me, and I would sleepily call back, “you’re all right, darling, go to sleep, it’s just a dream,” and if she still called, in a sterner voice, “now go to sleep Emily, there’s nothing to hurt you.” Twice, only twice, when 1 had to get up for Susan anyhow, I went in to sit with her. 

Now when it is too late (as if she would let me hold and comfort her like I do the others) I get up and go to her at her moan or restless stirring. “Are you awake? Can I get you something?” And the answer is always the same: “No, I’m all right, go back to sleep Mother.” 

They persuaded me at the clinic to send her away to a convalescent home in the country where “she can have the kind of food and care you can’t manage for her, and you’ll be free to concentrate on the new baby.” They still send children to that place. I see pictures on the society page of sleek young women planning affairs to raise money for it, or dancing at the affairs, or decorating Easter eggs or filling Christmas stockings for the children. 

They never have a picture of the children so I do not know if they still wear those gigantic red bows and the ravaged looks on the every other Sunday when parents can come to visit “unless otherwise notified”—as we were notified the first six weeks. 

Oh it is a handsome place, green lawns and tall trees and fluted flower beds. High up on the balconies of each cottage the children stand, the girls in their red bows and white dresses, the boys in white suits and giant red ties. The parents stand below shrieking up to be heard and the children shriek down to be heard, and between them the invisible wall “Not To Be Contaminated by Parental Germs or Physical Affection.” 

There was a tiny girl who always stood hand in hand with Emily. Her parents never came. One visit she was gone. “They moved her to Rose Cottage,” Emily shouted in explanation. “They don’t like you to love anybody here.” 

She wrote once a week, the labored writing of a seven‐year‐old. “I am fine. How is the baby. If I write my leter nicly I will have a star. Love.” There never was a star. We wrote every other day, letters she could never hold or keep but only hear read— once. “We simply do not have room for children to keep any personal possessions,” they patiently explained when we pieced one Sunday’s shrieking together to plead how  much it would mean to Emily to keep her letters and cards. 

Each visit she looked frailer. “She isn’t eating,” they told us. (They had runny eggs for breakfast or mush with lumps, Emily said later, I’d hold it in my mouth and not swallow. Nothing ever tasted good, just when they had chicken.) 

It took us eight months to get her released home, and only the fact that she gained back so little of her seven lost pounds convinced the social worker. 

I used to try to hold and love her after she came back, but her body would stay stiff, and after a while she’d push away. She ate little. Food sickened her, and I think much of life too. Oh she had physical lightness and brightness, twinkling by on skates, bouncing like a ball up and down up and down over the jump rope, skimming over the hill; but these were momentary. 

She fretted about her appearance, thin and dark and foreign‐looking at a time when every little girl was supposed to look or thought she should look a chubby blond replica of Shirley Temple. The doorbell sometimes rang for her, but no one seemed to come and play in the house or be a best friend. Maybe because we moved so much. 

There was a boy she loved painfully through two school semesters. Months later she told me how she had taken pennies from my purse to buy him candy. “Licorice was his favorite and I brought him some every day, but he still liked Jennifer better’n me. 

Why Mommy why?” A question I could never answer. 

School was a worry to her. She was not glib or quick in a world where glibness and quickness were easily confused with ability to learn. To her overworked and exasperated teachers she was an over‐conscientious “slow learner” who kept trying to catch up and was absent entirely too often. 

I let her be absent, though sometimes the illness was imaginary. How different from my now‐strictness about attendance with the others. I wasn’t working. We had a new baby, I was home anyhow. Sometimes, after Susan grew old enough, I would keep her home from school, too, to have them all together. 

Mostly Emily had asthma, and her breathing, harsh and labored, would fill the house with a curiously tranquil sound. I would bring the two old dresser mirrors and her boxes of collections to her bed. She would select beads and single earrings, bottle tops and shells, dried flowers and pebbles, old postcards and scraps, all sorts of oddments; then she and Susan would play Kingdom, setting up landscapes and furniture, peopling them with action. 

Those were the only times of peaceful companionship between her and Susan. I have edged away from it, that poisonous feeling between them, that terrible balancing of hurts and needs I had to do between the two, and did so badly, those earlier years. 

Oh there are conflicts between the others too, each one human, needing, demanding, hurting, taking—but only between Emily and Susan, no, Emily toward Susan that corroding resentment. It seems so obvious on the surface, yet it is not obvious. Susan, the second child, Susan, golden and curly haired and chubby, quick and articulate and assured, everything in appearance and manner Emily was not; Susan, not able to resist Emily’s precious things, losing or sometimes clumsily breaking them; Susan telling jokes and riddles to company for applause while Emily sat silent (to say to me later: that was my riddle, Mother, I told it to Susan); Susan, who for all the five years’ difference in age was just a year behind Emily in developing physically. 

I am glad for that slow physical development that widened the difference between her and her contemporaries, though she suffered over it. She was too vulnerable for that terrible world of youthful competition, of preening and parading, of constant measureing of yourself against every other, of envy, “If I had that copper hair,” or “If I had that skin. . .”  She tormented herself enough about not looking like the others, there was enough of the unsureness, the having to be conscious of words before you speak, the constant caring—what are they thinking of me? what kind of an impression am I making—there was enough without having it all magnified unendurably by the merciless physical drives. 

Ronnie is calling. He is wet and I change him. It is rare there is such a cry now. That time of motherhood is almost behind me when the ear is not one’s own but must always be racked and listening for the child cry, the child call. We sit for a while and l hold him, looking out over the city spread in charcoal with its soft aisles of light. “Shuggily” he breathes. A funny word, a family word, inherited from Emily, invented by her to say comfort. 

In this and other ways she leaves her seal, I say aloud. And startle at my saying it. What do I mean? What did I start to gather together, to try and make coherent? I was at the terrible, growing years. War years. I do not remember them well. I was working, there were four smaller ones now, there was not time for her. She had to help be a mother, and housekeeper, and shopper. She had to set her seal. Mornings of crisis and near hysteria trying to get lunches packed, hair combed, coats and shoes found, everyone to school or Child Care on time, the baby ready for transportation. And always the paper scribbled on by a smaller one, the book looked at by Susan then mislaid, the homework not done. Running out to that huge school where she was one, she was lost, she was a drop; suffering over the unpreparedness, stammering and unsure in her classes. 

There was so little time left at night after the kids were bedded dowm She would struggle over books, always eating (it was in those years she developed her enormous appetite that is legendary in our family) and I would be ironing, or preparing food for the next day, or writing V‐mail to Bill, or tending the baby. Sometimes, to make me  laugh, or out of her despair, she would imitate happenings or types at school. 

I think I said once: “Why don’t you do something like this in the school amateur show?” One morning she phoned me at work, hardly understandable through the weeping: “Mother, I did it. I won, I won; they gave me first prize; they clapped and clapped and wouldn’t let me go.” 

Now suddenly she was Somebody, and as imprisoned in her difference as in anonymity.  She began to be asked to perform at other high schools, even in colleges, then at city and state‐wide affairs. The first one we went to, I only recognized her that first moment when thin, shy, she almost drowned herself into the curtains. Then:  Was this Emily? the control, the command, the convulsing and deadly clowning, the spell, then the roaring, stamping audience, unwilling to let this rare and precious laughter out of their lives. 

Afterwards: You ought to do something about her with a gift like that—but without money or knowing how, what does one do? We have left it all to her, and the gift has as often eddied inside, clogged and clotted, as been used and growing. 

She is coming. She runs up the stairs two at a time with her light graceful step, and I know she is happy tonight. Whatever it was that occasioned your call did not happen today.  “Aren’t you ever going to finish the ironing, Mother? Whistler painted his mother in a rocker. I’d have to paint mine standing over an ironing board.” This is one of her communicative nights and she tells me everything and nothing as she fixes herself a plate of food out of the icebox. 

She is so lovely. Why did you want me to come in at all? Why were you concerned? 

She will find her way. 

She starts up the stairs to bed. “Don’t get me up with the rest in the morning.” “But I thought you were having midterms.” “Oh, those,” she comes back in and says quite lightly, “in a couple of years when we’ll all be atom‐dead they won’t matter a bit.”  She has said it before. She believes it. But because I have been dredging the past, and all that compounds a human being is so heavy and meaningful in me, I cannot endure it tonight. 

I will never total it all now. I will never come in to say: She was a child seldom smiled at. Her father left me before she was a year old. I worked her first six years when there was work, or I sent her home and to his relatives. There were years she had care she hated. She was dark and thin and foreign‐looking in a world where the prestige went to blondness and curly hair and dimples, slow where glibness was prized. She was a child of anxious, not proud, love. We were poor and could not afford for her the soil of easy growth. I was a young mother, I was a distracted mother. There were the other children pushing up, demanding. Her younger sister was all that she was not. She did not like me to touch her. She kept too much in herself, her life was such she had to keep too much in herself. My wisdom came too late. She has much in her and probably  nothing will come of it. She is a child of her age, of depression, of war, of fear. 

Let her be. So all that is in her will not bloom—but in how many does it? There is still enough left to live by. Only help her to believe—help make it so there is cause for her to believe that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron. 

Understanding and appreciating the story

1. The story is addressed to a “you.” Who might the you be?
2. In what ways was Emily different from her siblings at birth?
3. Emily’s mother had to work when Emily was a baby. How did this affect Emily?
4. How old was Emily when her father left? Why did he leave?
5. Compare and contrast Emily and her sister Susan.
6. Discuss the many challenges Emily faces as a child. How does she cope?
7. Describe the living conditions at the convalescent home.
8. What is the tone of this story?
9. Comment on the following phrases.Why do you think the writer has used them this way?
   1. She rigid awake
   1. Sharing want with us
10. Identify the use of symbolism in the story and discuss its role.

Discuss questions

1. Every society has its own way of doing things. Assess the culture of the American people and see how it compares or contrasts with our own.
   1. Communication is key if parents and children hope to nurture a fulfilling relationship. Drawing examples from the story, discuss this statement.
   1. Identify the challenges of single parenthood in a country like America.

1.  The “you” in the story seems to refer to a social worker or counselor who wants to talk to Emily’s mother about her daughter and offer help and understanding.
2. Emily was different from her siblings at birth as she was the first and only one of their five children who was considered beautiful at birth. She was a lovely baby, which contrasted with how she felt about her appearance during her growing years when she felt homely and undesirable.
3. Emily’s mother had to work when Emily was a baby, which affected Emily as she had to be left with a woman downstairs for most of the day. This separation caused emotional distress for Emily and created a sense of detachment and distance between them.
4. Emily was one year old when her father left them. He left because he “could no longer endure” sharing their financial struggles. The exact reasons for his departure are not explicitly stated, but it seems to be related to the financial strain the family was facing during the depression.
5. Emily and her sister Susan are portrayed as contrasting characters. Emily is described as dark, thin, and foreign-looking, while Susan is depicted as golden, chubby, quick, and articulate. Emily is introverted and struggles with her self-image, while Susan appears more confident and outgoing.
6. Emily faces numerous challenges as a child, including being separated from her mother at a young age due to work, attending a nursery school where she felt uncomfortable, dealing with asthma and health issues, struggling with her appearance, and feeling overshadowed by her sister’s abilities and looks. To cope, she internalizes her feelings, withdraws from others, and develops a sense of insecurity.
7. The convalescent home is portrayed as a handsome place with green lawns and tall trees, but there is a sense of emotional distance between the parents and children. The children are depicted as isolated, with no personal possessions allowed, and only limited interaction with their parents.
8. The tone of the story is reflective, introspective, and filled with a mix of sadness, regret, and acceptance. The mother is looking back on her past, reflecting on her daughter’s struggles, and coming to terms with the limitations of her own role as a mother.
9. a) “She rigid awake” – This phrase indicates that Emily was awake and alert, but emotionally distant or closed off. It suggests that there was a barrier between her and her surroundings, making it difficult for her to fully engage or connect with others.

b) “Sharing want with us” – This phrase refers to Emily’s father leaving because he could no longer endure sharing their financial hardships. It implies that the family was struggling financially during the depression, and this contributed to his decision to leave.

Symbolism in the Story

One possible symbol in the story is the ironing board itself. The act of standing and ironing can represent the burdens and responsibilities of motherhood. The ironing process, moving back and forth with the iron, mirrors the mother’s emotional struggle and inner turmoil as she reflects on her daughter’s life and her own role as a mother.

Discussion Questions

1. Comparing and contrasting the culture of the American people with that of the reader’s own culture can help explore differences in family values, societal expectations, and support systems for single parents. It can also shed light on the challenges faced by families in different cultural contexts.
2. The story emphasizes the importance of communication in nurturing a fulfilling parent-child relationship. By discussing examples from the story, such as Emily’s reluctance to open up and her mother’s struggles to understand her, readers can explore the significance of open communication, empathy, and active listening in fostering a deeper connection between parents and children.
3. Single parenthood can present unique challenges in any country, including financial strain, limited time for parenting, emotional burdens, and the need for support systems. Readers can assess how these challenges are portrayed in the story and discuss the broader implications and realities of single parenthood in the American context.

Study Guide Of

I Stand Here Ironing

By

Tillie Olsen

1. Setting

The story is set in USA after the depression and WWII but before the economy had fully recovered. The narrator is ironing the family‟s clothes on an ironing board in her house.

• The plot

The narrator, a mother of five in her late 30‟s, stands ironing her family‟s clothes. She reflects on a question asked her by somebody handling her daughter, probably a teacher at school. The unnamed person wants her to visit and give information that could be used to help her withdrawn daughter, Emily.

She doesn‟t think she should go because she believes she doesn‟t have an answer. She believes her 19 year old daughter has lived through experiences that have altered her life in ways a mother cannot understand.

Through her reflections, we however get the picture. Emily, very beautiful at birth, is her first born. Her husband abandons them when she is only eight months. The narrator, a working class mother, could not afford to employ a nanny. At first she left the baby with an inconsiderate neighbour. Later she took her to her grandparents.

A year goes by before Emily reunites with her mother. Two reasons are given for this long period of separation. First, the narrator could not raise the fare. Second, Emily suffered an attack of chicken pox.

When she returns, their lot has not improved. She is shipped to school where she suffers in the hands of nasty children because of the scars left by chicken pox. She also suffers in the hands of inconsiderate teachers who sent her back to the bullies. What is more, the economic hardship makes her mother send her back to her grandparents. When she returns, she finds that she has a new father.

Things get worse for Emily when her siblings start coming: four in total. Her mother barely has time to smile at her, let alone comfort her in the nights when she has nightmares. She therefore feels rejected and unwanted.

The only saving grace is that her condition, we are not told what it is, impairs her growth. She therefore looks much younger than her age. Inconsiderate children tease her because she does not fit the picture of the stereotype beauty. Her younger sister does not help much. She too bullies Emily.

In the end, the narrator is less harassed by the task of parenting. The children have grown older and don‟t require much attention. She begins to pay more attention to Emily. At first these moments are rejected. Gradually, communication does begin to take place but only on Emily‟s terms. The narrator is therefore hopeful that ho intervention is requires and that her daughter will end up well.

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• Conflict

1. All the conflicts in this story centre on Emily and the challenges she goes through from infancy to young adulthood. She is born to young parents who have no means of raising her. Her mother is only 19 and America is going through its worst economic crisis: the great depression. Clearly not ready for the sacrifices of parenthood, her father abandons them when she is only eight months old. She lacks a father‟s love throughout her life. Her new daddy does not fare any better. In the night when her mother is tired and cannot comfort her when she has nightmares, he does not step in. ii. Her mother‟s love is not forthcoming either. At eight months she has to be with a neighbour during the day as her mother earns her keep. When the financial crisis deepens, she has to go and live with her grandparents for one year. During this period there is absolutely no contact between mother and daughter. This movement to her grandparents happens twice. When she reunites with her mother at the age of 2, she has to go to school. This is the only way her mother could go to work. School exposes her to more loneliness. She is tormented by both pupils and teachers (pp129-30).

Emily‟s conflict with her mother worsens when the clinic persuades her to send Emily away to the convalescent home in the country. For the first six weeks the narrator was not allowed to see her daughter. When she was finally allowed, she could only speak to her daughter from a distance. The situation was made worse because Emily was not allowed to hold or keep the many letters her parents wrote her. They were only read to her once.

Emily‟s mother also remembers a time when an old man living in the back told her that she should smile at Emily a little more when she looked at her. This was a t a time when Emily was an only child. The narrator remembers this when the other children had come and they were receiving the smiles but it was too late for Emily (pp130)

1. The other conflict develops between Emily and her siblings.

When Susan was born, her mother was away in hospital for one week. Upon her return, Emily was not allowed near her mother or the baby for another week. She had to endure two weeks of loneliness. As a result, she became delirious with fever (pp131). What is more is that she didn‟t get better, and suffered nightmares. When she called out to her mother, she‟d ask her to go back to sleep because it was just a dream. She was too exhausted looking after Susan there was no energy left to look after Emily.

There are more problems with Susan. The narrator refers to the relationship between them as poisonous. Their mother acknowledges that she solved the conflicts between the two very badly. She blamed Emily for them. She says that Emily had a corroding resentment towards Susan.

Then there is the social contest between the siblings. Susan had the good looks that Emily lacked. Further, she was more confident and articulate than Emily. She stole Emily‟s jokes and riddles and the audience lived her. The most cruel thing was losing or breaking Emily‟s precious things without apology and getting away with it (pp133-4)

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1. The instance between Emily and a boy she loved Emily loved a boy painfully through two semesters. Months later she reported to her mother how she‟d stolen money from her purse to buy the boy his favourite candy. He however showed her no affection but liked another girl, Jennifer, better. She pleaded with her mother to tell her why this happened but she had no answer (pp133).

• School

School too presents a challenge; she was neither glib nor quick. To her teachers, she was a slow learner who kept trying to catch up. What is more, she was chronically absent. This was in part because of her illness and because her mother just wanted to have her children together, so she made her stay at home with her siblings who not of school going age yet (pp133).

Susan too did contribute to her problems with school. She sometimes mislaid Emily‟s homework. Subsequently, Emily would go to school her

homework not done. Her mother says she‟d suffer over the unpreparedness, stammering and unsure in her classes (pp135).

As a result Emily develops this attitude that there is more to life than school. On the eve of her mid- term exams, she tells her mother not to wake her early with the rest in the morning. She reasons cynically that there might be another atomic bomb in a couple of years that would kill all of them and that it would not matter that somebody had excelled at school (pp136).

• Emily and poverty

All though all of Emily‟s problems stem from poverty, there is one event that stands out: her ability to imitate. Her mother had suggested that she one day try it out in the school amateur show. She did and she won. She got invites to perform to thrilled audiences. However, because there was no money to develop her talent, it eddied, clogged and clotted in her

(pp135).

4. Character and characterisation

The main character in this story is well developed. She is brought out as a very ordinary woman who has both weaknesses and strengths. a) Strengths

1. Determined

She looks after her family despite the economic strain. She says that she‟d go out to work or go out to look for work (pp128).

1. Responsible

Looked after Emily as best as she could. When she couldn‟t be there, she left her with a neighbour or took her to her grandparents. iii. Reflective

At the beginning of the story, someone has asked her to visit and give insights that might help improve Emily‟s lot. The rest of the story is her reflection on what her achievements and failures have been in bringing up Emily. iv. Honest

She admits her mistakes in the upbringing of Emily. She was distracted both by poverty and the sheer amount of work involved in raising five children almost single handedly. She says that the first six years of

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Emily‟s life, she was either away working or Emily was away with her grandparents (pp136). When Susan was born she was too exhausted in the nights to comfort Emily when she had nightmares (pp 131).

• Weaknesses

1. Fearful

• She is afraid that she may not raise her child right. Emily is brought up by the book. She is fed when the book says she should and not a minute too soon (pp127).

• She fears to raise the child alone and often sends her back to her paternal grandparents‟ home although her husband had deserted her (pp128).

• She is afraid of going to talk to the person who wants insights into Emily‟s life.  In fact, she will not go.  She says, “Let her daughter be; the only thing that Emily needs to know is that she is not helpless”

(pp136).

• She sends her child to the convalescence home for fear she would be taken away from her. The child only returns when the social worker says so even though it was clear to her long ago that the home was not improving Emily.

1. Biased

She was more lenient with Susan than she was with Emily.

• She says that when it came to balancing the hurts and the needs between Emily and

Susan, she did badly in the earlier years. This was because she felt that Emily had a corroding resentment towards Susan.

• She did not smile as readily with Emily as she did with the other children. She remembers the old neighbour‟s admonition that she smiles more readily with Emily. This face of joy she admits she started wearing too late for Emily. She therefore does not smile as easily as the others (pp130).

• She readily made Emily miss school but is very strict with her siblings‟ school attendance (pp133).

1. Resigned

She is resigned to the fact that Emily is different from the other children. When she went to school to watch Emily‟s performance, she only recognized the Emily that nearly drowned into the curtains. She however cannot come to terms with the Emily that is spell binding and exuding control, command and confidence. Little wonder that she does nothing to nurture Emily‟s talent (pp135). That is to say that according to her Emily is a misfit and that is how things should stay.

• Themes

1. Poverty

• The narrator is a working class mother. She says that she worked or was out looking for work (pp128).

• The long hours she spent ironing are indicative that she could not afford to employ somebody to do it. Her daughter asks her: “Aren‟t you ever going to finish the ironing, mother?” (pp135).

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• Of Emily‟s condition, she says: “We were poor and could not afford for her the soil of easy growth (pp136).

• The goodbye note that Emily‟s father writes is another indication that they are poor. He writes:

“He could no longer endure sharing want with them” (pp128). Want as a noun means a state of extreme poverty.

1. Suffering

Emily‟s life is one of suffering right form birth.

• Being a first born, her mother brought her up by the book. This meant that she had to endure hours of hunger because her mother only fed her when the book said that she should.

• At eight months her father walks out on them. She has to be left with a neighbour, who didn‟t like her very much, when her mother went out to work or look for work. Later she is sent to her father‟s relatives because her mother could not afford to raise her.

• At her grandparents‟ she comes down with small pox which scars her face for life.

• Then there was her stay at the convalescent home. For the first six weeks she is not allowed to see he mother. When she if finally allowed to visit, they can only see on another from a distance lest the children are contaminated. Further, the only friend that Emily makes, a little girl, is taken away from her. Emily laments that: “They don‟t want like you to love anybody here” (pp132).

• There is someone else Emily loved. This is the boy at school. She even stole money from her mother‟s purse to buy him his favourite candy. He however liked Jennifer better. NB: There are many more instances of Emily‟s suffering. Identify and illustrate all of them.

Do you think the narrator too undergoes suffering?  Explain your answer.

1. Family relationships
   1. Try to find answers to the following issues raised about Emily‟s family.

• Trace the development of the relationship between Emily and her mother.

• Give illustrations to show that the relationship between Emily and Susan is a sour one.

• Supply evidence to show that Emily‟s four siblings got preferential treatment.

• POV

This story is told by the first person. The events are made more credible through the use of stream of consciousness. The narrator‟s reflections and the memories jump from one thought to another as she gives us insights on why Emily turned out the way she did.

7.

1. Appropriateness of title The title is symbolic

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• It is a symbol of the poverty of the narrator and the general harsh economic period in which Emily was born and raised. Besides putting in long hours for the people who employ her, the narrator had to put up even longer hours to take care of her own household chores.

• It is also a symbol of the tortured thoughts and memories that go through the narrator‟s mind as she tries to understand why Emily turned out the way she did.

• Finally it is a symbol of hope. At the end of the story the narrator says that Emily should know that she is

not as helpless as the dress on the ironing board before the iron.

• Significant event The significant event in this story is Emily‟s father deserting his wife and daughter (when Emily is only eight months old).

• Aim of the author

The writer depicts the suffering endured by the working class families in America during the great depression.

Question

Write an essay to show the suffering that Emily has endured in her 19 years.