The point of view of “I Stand Here Ironing” is first person through the mother. By being written in this format the story allows the reader insight into the mother's mind. This allows the reader to see the daughter changes through her mother’s eyes, but the reader never knows what is going on in Emily’s mind. If the point of view of this story was changed it would lose the mother’s emotional connection.
Having the story “I Stand Here Ironing” be written through first person point of view only biases our view through what the mother sees and believes herself. The story starts with the mother talking about how beautiful her daughter was. She even says her daughter was “the first and only one of our five that was beautiful at birth”. This means
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Through the mother we can guess that Emily, when she was old enough to notice her surroundings, hated the care she was given outside of her mother. From going to her father’s relatives to daycare she changed both physically and in her demeanor. Not getting a glimpse into Emily’s head forces the reader to infer what Emily feels towards her mother and her situation based off of the descriptions noticed by her mother. No one around Emily saw the uniqueness her mother did, this leads to the assumption that she became very depressed.
If the story was changed to a different perspective the emotions of the mother would get lost or forgotten. In a way they add to the story because she was the only person who saw the beauty in her daughter. Changing the perspective to an outside narrator would take away the immersion of the story. Due to the reader knowing every thought and emotion of the mother it makes the story both more believable, but also it makes the story more relatable.
The first person perspective of “I Stand Here Ironing” adds to the impact of the story. It lets the reader view the world with the mother’s bias while never revealing Emily’s true thoughts. If the perspective were to change the reader would become less immersed in the story because they would lose the mother’s