Mothers and Daughters

“The world is full of women blindsided by the unceasing demands of motherhood, still flabbergasted by how a job can be terrific and tortuous.” This quote by Anna Quindlen is very representative of the mother, who is also the narrator, in Tillie Olsen’s short story “I Stand Here Ironing.” The story is short but the writing in it is very dense, and Olsen gives the ready many facts and details useful for analyzing the journey through motherhood that the narrator takes. “I Stand Here Ironing” investigates the intricacies of the mother-daughter relationship, while also exploring the nature of motherhood and highlighting the plight of a working class woman who has five children.

The relationship between the narrator and her daughter Emily is the driving force behind the story. The mother struggles not only in raising her child, but also with her own thoughts and her poverty. As a young, nineteen year old single working mother of a newborn baby in “the pre-relief, pre-WPA world of the depression” (9), the narrator has a very difficult time supporting herself and her baby financially. She tried everything she could to spend as much time with Emily while also making enough money to survive. The narrator describes Emily as a “miracle to [her]” and is absolutely crushed when she has to leave her eight month old baby during the daytimes with a lady “to whom [Emily] was no miracle at all” (8). The narrator certainly possessed an abundance of love for her daughter and nursed her “with all the fierce rigidity of first motherhood” (6). Unfortunately for her, thanks to her poverty and the desertion of her husband when the baby was one, the mother had to send her baby to her inconsiderate husband for a year. This would not be the only time in the story that the mother’s poverty and single working status would affect her relationship with her first born daughter; in fact, this problem persists throughout the entire story. Near the end of the story, after Emily’s comical talent is discovered, the mother laments about her inability to support Emily’s dreams, saying “You ought to do something about her with a gift like that—but without money or knowing how, what does one do?” (49). Throughout the story—a story with striking similarities to the author Olsen’s own life—poverty proves to be a near-insurmountable obstacle in the mother-daughter relationship.

The development and growth of shaky and awkward relationship between Emily and her mother very closely mirrors the growth of Emily as a child and a person. The effect on Emily’s life—and on her relationship with her mom—of being abandoned twice as a child cannot be overlooked. At the tender young age of one, during the formative years of the mother-daughter relationship, Emily was sent to live with her deserter father for roughly a year’s time. When Emily returns at the age of two, her mother feels like she “hardly knew” her own daughter who now was “walking quick and nervous like her father, looking like her father thin… all the baby loveliness gone” (11). In a way, one could argue that the narrator’s daughter was no longer the young sweet baby that she loved, but rather was something different, something alien to her that she could never again fully connect with in a maternal way. As the daughter begins to age, she desires her mother’s attention, but doesn’t receive it to the extent she would like to. This is due in large part to the mother’s work that she has to take on, and she is simply unable to provide the full amount of attention that her daughter deserves. This is just one of many things that the mother regrets in her upbringing of her daughter. Throughout the story, there are countless examples of regret that the mom feels regarding her raising of her daughter, and it goes past the point of pitiful to the point of annoyance for the reader to hear a narrator whine and pity herself so much. Also mixed in with the heavy feeling of regret are excuses for the mother’s behavior, justifications for her actions, and self-assurances. After being told that she needed to smile at her daughter more, the narrator, after initially questioning herself and regretting her facial expressions towards her young daughter, attempts to appease herself by saying “I loved her. There were all the acts of love” (17).

This statement of love must be true: it obviously was a clear sign of love when the narrator abandoned her seven-year old daughter for a second time by sending her to a convalescent home, placing priority of another young daughter over Emily, and effectively shattering any hopes of creating or reclaiming a loving relationship with her oldest daughter. One crucial point of the story that may get overlooked is the author’s use of the word “love” to describe a childish crush Emily had on a boy. This stealthy paragraph is significant for two main reasons. First, the use of the word love may represent the foreignness of the meaning of love to her, if it is being used to describe her feelings for a prepubescent boy. And second, after Emily gives a long explanation of her rejection by the boy (something that Emily perceives her mother did to her) and ends by asking “Why, Mommy?” (36), she receives no answer from the mother, representing a disconnection on an emotional as well as a communicational level. The story of the development, or stunting, of the critical mother-daughter relationship is what makes this story by Tillie Olsen so fascinating and meaningful. (951)

A Token Scholarship

This week, I wanted to continue discussing a question posed in class on Tuesday regarding Ralph Ellison’s “Battle Royal,” as well as simply discussing other related aspects of the story. The question that we talked about in class is whether or not our protagonist would have received his scholarship to the “state college for Negroes” (101) if he hadn’t gone through with all of the antics and charades that the white men put him through at the “gathering of the town’s leading white citizens” (3)? The answer to this question, I believe, is a simple no, but there is much to be discussed regarding this question and this story.

I think that the protagonist received his scholarship as a sort of reward for his good behavior in his life leading up to the point of the gathering and as a reward for his cooperation with the white man’s wishes at the gathering. The narrator described how he was an “example of desirable conduct” (3), and how after a speech at his graduation “everyone praised [him]” (3). These examples of good behavior are part of the reason why he received his scholarship, but ultimately it came down to his entertainment that he provided for the “big shots” (5). The narrator’s reason for going to the gathering was that he believed he was to deliver his speech in front of a large crowd of influential people. Just by itself, the speech can be viewed as a laudable action by the narrator which would support his receiving of a scholarship. However, it is very clear that the speech was never the reason the narrator was invited to the gathering. The fighting, scrambling for money, and “hilarious” entertainment were the true reasons for his presence at the gathering. So why did the narrator go through with it? Certainly he did not know that he would receive a scholarship to a state school for his actions; he only believed that he would be able to deliver his speech at the end of the proceedings. It was not even guaranteed that he would give his speech, but he was allowed to, partly out of pity and another slight reward for his previous actions, but mostly for the potential entertainment value of a black man trying to give a speech to a bunch of big-shot white men who really did not care about what he would be discussing. Through all this, though, the narrator went through with the “battle royal” (4) to follow through with his grandfather’s advice that he should “overcome ‘em with yeses” and “agree ‘em to death and destruction,” with the “them” being the white man (2). The narrator realizes the limited opportunities he has to advance himself in a white-controlled world, and he is willing to do all that he can to achieve greatness.

A corollary to the initial question is why did they big-shots even give the narrator a scholarship in the first place? The scholarship was mostly given as a token reward to a black man who didn’t ask questions, did what we was supposed to, and provided them with a night of good entertainment. The narrator’s propensity to acquiesce to the white man can be seen when he retracts his comment about “social equality” (82). The M.C. then says to the narrator that “you’ve got to know your place at all times” (92), his place of course being subservient to the white man. And a final reason for the scholarship is stated in the narrators dream, to “keep this nigger-boy running” (106) As a major point of the entire story, the white man simply is looking for ways to keep the black man running around and not doing anything that would threaten the established way of life. (627)

Foreshadowing in "A Good Man"

In Flannery O’Connor’s story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” O’Connor successfully uses the literary technique of foreshadowing to enhance and to support her story. Although O’Connor frequently uses foreshadowing, she is able to mask its overwhelming presence in the story through her crafty use of irony and humor. Right at the beginning of the story, O’Connor foreshadows the family’s encounter with The Misfit. While trying to convince her son Bailey for the family to travel to east Tennessee instead of Florida, the grandmother angrily says, “I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn’t answer to my conscience if I did” (1). Already, in the first paragraph of the story, O’Connor is able to plant the possibility, or likelihood, of an encounter with the Misfit in the reader’s mind. This quote also is a perfect example of O’Connor’s subtle use of irony. Looking back at these two lines when the events of the story are known already, it is fairly obvious to see the irony in the grandmother’s words. Although she claims that she wouldn’t take her children near a criminal, it is her fault that her family crossed paths with the Misfit because of her desire to see a nonexistent house.

O’Connor continues with her early prefiguring of the encounter with the Misfit in dialogue between the grandmother and her grandson, John Wesley. When the grandmother asks John what he would do if he was caught by the Misfit, he bravely replies, “I’d smack his face” (6). This is yet another calculated effort by the author to reference the meeting with the Misfit, but again O’Connor uses humor and irony to partially diverge the reader from this sign of the future. The humorous part of this statement is that a young boy, John, claims that he would smack the face of a full-grown escaped angry convict. It is also funny and ironic that once the Misfit is identified, John Wesley is very quiet and subdued, and instead of smacking the Misfit he joins his family who was “huddled together in front of [the Misfit]” (90).

John Wesley is also the source of another instance of foreshadowing later in the story. Once the family has crashed their car and met the unidentified strangers, John pryingly asks one of the strangers “What you got that gun for? Whatcha gonna do with the gun?” (78) As a matter of fact, that man is going to kill you with that gun, John. O’Connor foreshadows the use of the gun through John’s questioning, but again, is able almost sneak it in without making it too apparent. Through O’Connor’s earlier characterization of John Wesley as an annoying, loud, and curious young boy, she is able to make the reader believe that this was just a typical childish question by an immature and nosy boy. And again, knowing the outcome of the story, it is ironic that John is asking the man who is going to kill him what he is doing with a gun.

These aforementioned examples of foreshadowing are surely not the only ones in the story, and with an abundance of time it would be easy to spot and discuss many more examples. Still, through her wonderful and effective use of foreshadowing, Flannery O’Connor is able to make her story fun and interesting to read and analyze. (565)

A mistaken concept of heritage

For my blog this week, I wanted to further comment on Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use,” and specifically the idea of heritage that Dee discusses. At the end of the story, Dee is frustrated with her mother because she doesn’t understand her heritage (81), or rather what Dee’s concept of heritage is. Dee believes that her heritage is that of the entire African-American people, which is partly true, but she completely forgets about her immediate family and their lineage. Her ignorance of her own family is shown in her careless statement about her name change that she “couldn’t bare it any longer, being named after the people who oppress me” (27). This statement is stupid and incorrect. One reason why this is wrong, as her mother immediately points out, is that she was named in honor of two of her family members, her aunt and then her grandmother. Dee, or “Wangero,” is completely oblivious to her family’s history, and I find it sad how she cannot even recall the names of her aunt and grandmother, for it she did remember their names she would not have make such an uninformed statement as she did in paragraph 27.

Continuing on the topic of her name change, her new name itself is another perfect example of Dee’s mistaken concept of heritage. Her new name, Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo, while not explicitly stated in the story, is an African name, and shows her attempt to get back to her “roots,” which she believes is just Africa. We as readers can easily assume that this is an African name not only by the spelling and pronunciation of it, but also by her greeting to her mom and sister earlier in the story, when she exclaimed “Was-su-zo Tean-o!” (21). Using a Swahili greeting and then following that by stating her new African name is a clear sign that she is more concerned about her African roots than her family roots. This false idea of her heritage has to annoy her mother, and also frustrates me as a reader of the story.

The conversation and debate about the fate of Grandma Dee’s hand-stitched quilts also reveals a flaw in Dee’s way of thinking about her heritage. Dee desires the “priceless” quilts only to hang them and use them purely for display purposes, to attempt to show her roots and “honor” her family. This in itself is wrong, as it has already been shown that Dee truly does not respect her family or care about honoring their memory. Maggie’s intended use of the quilts would actually honor her family, as she would use the quilts regularly and for the function that was intended when Grandma Dee stitched the first thread. Overall, throughout the entire story, it is overwhelmingly obvious that Dee does not truly understand her heritage. (468)