The narrator tells how hard she constantly worked to support her family, but her daughter, she didn’t receive enough attention from her mother. The mother tried her best to be there for her daughter but had to be a mom to her other children as well. The narrator notices she isn’t very familiar with her child and when the teacher asked her to come in and talk about her daughter, causes the narrator to flashback on the past nineteen years. The fact that the mother can not answer simple questions with her child’s teacher, makes her realize that she didn’t spend an appropriate amount of time with her daughter, and regrets it. It took multiple comedy performances of the daughter’s act for her mother to go and see her perform.
“I Stand Here Ironing” is a short story written by Tillie Olsen that focuses on the struggles that come along with having the responsibilities of a working-class mother. Within the story, the narrator and her daughter’s teacher exemplify signs of a complex relationship as the teacher shows concern for Emily’s wellbeing while the narrator disagrees. Throughout the story, there are various examples of unreliable narrator shifts and defensiveness, which are discussed through the stream of consciousness of the narrator. From initially being extremely protective of Emily, to eventually accepting and understanding the teacher’s concern, the relationship between the narrator and the teacher becomes productive in helping the mother learn about the mistakes she made while raising her daughter while also teaching the reader a valuable lesson in parenting. In the beginning of the story, the relationship between the narrator and the teacher appears to be rigid, as Emily’s mother is immediately defensive of her child’s welfare.
Despite its dull, ordinary setting, “I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen is an extremely deep short story covering complex socio-economic issues spanning over two—very eventful—decades. The story shows how economic hardships could physically alter the stereotypical gender roles, while cultural traditions kept them mentally intact. When these two elements contradicted each other, they left women, like Tillie Olsen’s character, feeling emotionally responsible for the consequences. Although her husband left her and she was forced to assume the role of both the breadwinner and the homemaker at only nineteen years old, she blames herself for neglecting what was thought to be her primary duty as a woman: motherhood. As the reader can tell from
Furthermore, when the narrator exemplifies the complicated process of discovering a private box in her closet, a system which involves closing her eyes and holding her hands up above your head, she comes off as a minor, adding details that only they would consider relevant. The language in the story also displays the childish quality of the narrator. Phrases such as “Daddy-said-so” and “our cave-dark closet” accentuate her adolescent mind. The phrase ”God is whipping you,” used in place of a more common--and vulgar--curse, is also evidence of her naivete and
In the narrator’s life, he cannot fulfill his pursuit of Mangan’s sister without the help of his uncle, despite hiding from him during play with the other children (Joyce 20). Joyce refuses to allow the narrator the freedom to create his own destiny, but rather places the narrator’s uncle, ignorant of the narrator’s true purpose, into a position of absolute authority. The uncle’s indifference to the narrator’s mission serves to undermine the importance of the mission and justify the narrator’s push toward self-reliance. Although the narrator does not possess the ability to make the journey to the bazaar himself, he “walk[s] up and down the room, clenching [his] fists” and, upon engaging with his only method of pursuit, “did not smile” (Joyce 23). The narrator does not and cannot execute his romantic pursuit without the assistance of his uncle yet behaves in such a way as to suggest that his actions can influence his outcome.
The aim of the chapter will be to examine the two characters’ different conception of motherhood and to identify analogies and differences in their performance of the maternal role. 3.1 Motherhood as Freedom to Love: Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987) In Beloved (1987), Toni Morrison represents the destructive force of maternal love through Sethe, an enslaved mother of four who commits infanticide to prevent her children from becoming themselves victims of the slave system. Her violent act prevents her former slave owners, referred to as ‘schoolteacher’, from taking her family
Published in the late eighteen hundreds, the oppressive nature of marriage in "The Story of an Hour" may also be a reflection of, even though not specific to, that time period. Even though Chopin relates Mrs. Mallard 's story and does not write it in first person point-of-view, Chopin expresses the story via a narrator 's voice. The narrator is not clearly an observer, however. For Example, the narrator knows that Mrs. Mallard, for the most part, did not love her husband (Paragraph 15). It is apparent that the narrator is aware of more than can be physically observed.
The effect of irony in Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” enhances the protagonist’s situation, it introduces the effect of the foreshadowing, and indirectly characterizes the protagonist. The irony in Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” enhances the protagonist’s situation by revealing a deeper meaning. The quote, “She had loved him - sometimes. Often she did not. What did it matter!” shows that although Mrs. Mallard was married, she had not always loved her husband (8).
The narrator is omniscient, because it seems like it knows everything about everyone and in that case it seems more objective, but when we are in the head of the mother it gets a bit more subjective. The characters are described directly by the author and they are round. “She was a poet, translator, part-time college teacher, and divorced mother of a fifteen-year-old son. For the past seven years, since the divorce, she’d lived in Olean, New York” (page 1, line 9-11). When woody sends some snapshots he is describes as well.
The perception through which the story is told lies within the captain and his orderly simultaneously. The narrator remains suspended in the background as depersonalized-lacking definable personality but has a distinguished voice and own opinions about characters. The narrator sees through the minds of both characters that helps in recognizing the complexity of the situation in the characters world and allows reader to observe more closely their world. The narrator is free to comment on a situation: “It was not that the youth was clumsy”(narrator calls orderly a youth who is not clumsy but innocent)’. The way Lawrence has depicted his characters sufferings with employing omniscient single narrator with two different focalizer’s presents very well the discourse on the implications of suffering on humankind.