Time and Guilt in a Mother-Daughter Relationship

As the narrator continues ironing, and as Emily inadvertently “leaves her seal” on the family, time is ticking faster and faster on the clock. In Tillie Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing,” the precious gift of time persistently speaks whenever the mother harbors her guilt about Emily’s childhood. Just as the clock “scared [Emily] what it talked,” the clock, likewise, frightens her mother, as it diminishes her chances of reversing her mistakes and mending her daughter’s childhood. Through this short story, Olsen reveals the consequence of a true mother-daughter relationship: although time spares a child certain animosity from his or her childhood, the mother forever harbors her guilt from her child’s youth, whether expressing that via herself or via an object, an iron.

Although insecure, ill, and distressed, Olsen’s descriptions of Emily’s heartbreaking childhood present Emily with a chance for her to get better, become happier, and challenge the notion of time that worries her. From the beginning of her upbringing, “. . . . there was not time for [Emily]. She had to help be a mother, and housekeeper, and shopper” (641). Emily, able to overcome her mother’s disregards during her childhood, suffers through an immense amount of pain, yet is able to become “Somebody” by performing in numerous plays. Interestingly enough, her mother is the one who suggests her performing, possibly a way of altering her guilt into something that is ultimately responsible for Emily’s sudden happiness, a gift to both Emily and her mother.

The narrator knows that time is running out for her to love Emily, for her to fix Emily’s childhood and relieve her own guilt when she sees that “[Emily’s] physical lightness and brightness . . . [are only] momentary” (640). This guilt almost comes involuntarily to the narrator when she connects her own action of ironing to Emily’s own “. . . . struggle over books . . . .” (641). The narrator’s guilt interjects into her parenting abilities when she permits Emily to be sent away to a home in the country that forbids children to keep their parents’ letters, or when she allows her children to stay home from school, merely for her own insecurities that arise when her family is apart. With this, Emily’s mother attempts to recapture the time before she “released” Emily from her grasp by trying to make up for her unintentional negligence from Emily’s childhood after “now when it is too late,” she checks in on Emily during the night (639). The narrator knows her mistakes; she understands that her “wisdom came too late” after she sees the life of “a child of anxious, not proud, love” (642). And yet, she also recognizes that she cannot go back and fix the past with Emily; guilt will remain an eternal feeling within her.

The iron harbors the narrator’s guilt toward herself every time she sees Emily; her guilt fails to be washed away until she sees a glimpse of happiness in her first daughter. When Emily arbitrarily asks her mother, “Aren’t you ever going to finish the ironing, Mother?,” the answer is no. Emily’s mother will always “stand there ironing” because time will forever engrave the remorse obtained from her daughter’s childhood. Olsen illustrates through a typical household item, the iron, that guilt is something that can never be fully washed away; even after the narrator witnesses Emily’s joy, she still irons, showing that she will always face her guilt, especially when she relives Emily’s childhood with “a weeping [she] can hear yet” (638). The clock that worries both Emily and her mother will continue ticking, just as the narrator will continue ironing. (605)

Is it the End or the Beginning?

During class, we started to discuss whether or not Norma Jean committed suicide at the end of Bobbie Ann Mason’s “Shiloh.” Did she end her life by jumping off the bridge? Did she feel the need to commit suicide because her marriage was going downhill, and her mother had caught her smoking, and her life was going back to when she was eighteen? Or did she not commit suicide at all? Did she merely go onto the bridge to obtain a peaceful, serene landscape where she can gather her thoughts without Leroy or Mabel, and just release everything that has happened in the past? I think the latter.

Norma Jean is confused. She feels like she is going back to her life when she was eighteen again with Leroy, and she “can’t face that all over again,” yet she “ha[s] this crazy feeling [she] missed something” (612, 606). I see Norma Jean as a woman full of contrasting thoughts. She never seems to know exactly what she wants. It seems like Mason characterizes Norma Jean as a woman who may be independent and seemingly okay with everything in her life, but truthfully, she is not. She has a fed up type of attitude with her life, which she discovers after certain triggers, such as Mabel catching her smoking. But does that make her want to commit suicide? I feel that Mason’s final paragraph gives Leroy a sense of false hope of living a happy life, but it gives Norma Jean a sense of real hope for her life as a truly independent woman. With a tranquil landscape such as the Tennessee River, her newfound hobby of exercising, and her words to Leroy, Norma Jean is able to reevaluate her own life in respect to herself, rather than to Leroy, rather than to Mabel, rather than to anyone else but herself. Her independence had already been previously shown through her want of Leroy to leave the house more often, but her self-reliance truly shines when she is alone on the bridge during the final scene of this short story. To me, overlooking such a landscape allows one to see further into the future; Norma Jean sees her dreams and her hope and her future over that river. Mason does not give an ending to Norma Jean’s part of the story. Norma Jean’s being on the bridge is not the final curtain of “Shiloh”; rather, it is a continuation of the story for Norma Jean. Perhaps it is the end of the story for Leroy, and possibly Mabel, but Norma Jean’s story continues after the author stops writing.

So, I think the notion that Norma Jean committed suicide is very interesting because I look at the scene from a more optimistic view when I see a sense of hope sprouting as the beginning, not the end, of something for Norma Jean. In my opinion, it’s almost as if Leroy is the one who metaphorically commits suicide. When “Leroy is trying to comprehend that his marriage is breaking up, but for some reason he is wondering about the white slabs in a graveyard,” he shows that deep within his heart, he does not care all that much about his marriage (612). Maybe he is concerned about Norma Jean and his own future, but they both know that the marriage is over, so there is no point for Leroy to have a sense of false hope, but I still feel Leroy’s false hope in the final paragraph. Norma Jean represents the stronger person in this story because she is able to gather herself even after the realization that things aren’t working out the way they should have. Leroy, on the other hand, almost pushes it to the back of his mind by thinking about other things and fails to take Norma Jean seriously when she states that she is leaving him. On the contrary, Norma Jena gives herself a sense of real hope when she tries to better herself with her exercises in the end, yet Leroy has a sense of false hope when he thinks Norma Jean is waving to him when she is standing on the bridge (613). Even after she leaves him, he still stands “admiring” her and gathering his thoughts when he wonders “Is she beckoning to him? She seems to be doing an exercise for her chest muscles” (613). (730)

The Unexpected Chosen One

During class, the question arose about who the true religious person in Flannery O’Connor’s “Parker’s Back” is. Is it Parker, the seemingly rebellious, non-religious, tattooed man? Or is it Sarah Ruth, his seemingly deeply religious wife who thinks Parker’s tattoos are ways of him “putting some more trash on [him]self” (394)? Through this short story, O’Connor questions traditional beliefs pertaining to both understanding God and exactly what being religious means. Through Parker’s back, the author shows that to have God choose you does not equal being a fanatically “religious” person like Sarah Ruth; sometimes, God picks the person least expected to carry His religious torch.

In the beginning of “Parker’s Back,” Sarah Ruth seems to worship God in the sense that she shows the reader and Parker that religion is the very definition of her life; however, this type of behavior appears as a type of falsehood: she merely devotes herself to God, not to find salvation but to act like she has been saved, for her own purposes. As the story proceeds, the reader gets the impression that Parker develops a better and deeper connection with God and religion, even though he does not fully understand that feeling. A turning point in the story that exemplifies this deeper connection with God is when Parker finally acquires the tattoo of God on his back, but unlike the other tattoos that he often examine in the mirror, Parker refuses to see this one, stating “That tattoo ain’t going nowhere. It’ll be there when I get there” (392). What does Parker, the rebel to religion, mean by that? I saw it as Parker thinking, or knowing, that God will be there for him whenever Parker gets there. At whatever time Parker finds religion and is able to devote himself to that type of life, he knows that God will be there waiting for him. This begins a certain change in the story, focusing the reader on the connection between Parker and religion, rather than Sarah Ruth and religion.

Another revelation happens when Parker whispers his real name, Obadiah, into the door after Sarah Ruth refuses his entrance into the house. When he murmurs his religious name aloud, suddenly he “turn[s] his spider web soul into a perfect arabesque of colors, a garden of trees and birds and beasts” (394). His soul and his tattoos are no longer “haphazard and botched” because of the significance between his name and the tattoo on his back (385). The final connection between his reaching his “destination” from the first time he sees the beauty that the colors on the man at the fair exerts to his crashing into the tree to his dwelling at the Haven of Light Christian Mission all end up happening for the same reason: God has chosen Parker.

So, maybe Parker is the more religious one in the story, and maybe God selects Parker as a man of religion, but is that the only reason Parker becomes the true religious person? In a way, it almost seems like Sarah Ruth is the one who makes him religious in the end. Parker had only wanted tattoos where he could see them; he did not necessarily care about where other people could see them, until the end of the story. He gets a tattoo on his back because of Sarah Ruth; he is willing to please her, but at the same time, this pushes him onto a path to find a religious connection. It seems like Sarah Ruth plays a role, however significant, in Parker finding religion. (593)

The Confession of Pain

During class, for Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Interpreter of Maladies,” we discussed the question of why Mrs. Das tells her secret to Mr. Kapasi. Obviously, because Mr. Kapasi tells the Das family about his job as an interpreter, Mrs. Das feels the need to confess her secret to someone she hopes can interpret it and help her release her feelings of both pain and guilt within, as Mr. Kapasi later states. But, was this the only reason she confessed her adultery to the tour guide/interpreter? And is Mrs. Das the only person who needs someone to vent to about her life’s problems? Did Lahiri give readers more insight into Mr. Kapasi or Mrs. Das?

From the way Lahiri frames this short story, I would say that this story is told from Mr. Kapasi’s point of view, but the small, seemingly insignificant details in which the narrator describes Mrs. Das and her actions represent her background in a way that the reader is able to paint an illustration, physically and internally, of Mrs. Das. Descriptions such as, “The car rattled considerably as it raced along the dusty road, causing them all to pop up from their seats every now and then, but Mrs. Das continued to polish her nails,” subtly describe a part of Mrs. Das and the type of life she lives (582). After reading this sentence a few times, I realized that this is how I picture Mrs. Das living her life: while life is bumpy and not always set in stone, she continues to live her life, following whatever path life decides to take her on. With this description, I see Mrs. Das as a passive woman; she failed to stop the actions of her husband’s friend and instead, just went along with whatever he wanted. Maybe this is because she felt unhappy in her marriage, but does that make her a better person or a more likable character if she uses that as an excuse? This merely presents her passivity even more. Lahiri depicts Mrs. Das as a character who lives her life in the backseat, waiting for everyone else to drive the car, to instigate the direction, to control her life. When Mr. Kapasi attempts to make the bumpy ride in the car smoother for the Das family, I saw that as a foreshadowing moment in which Mrs. Das would later try to make Mr. Kapasi make her own bumpy life smoother by using him as a person she can confess her sins to.

At the same time, it isn’t just Mrs. Das who needs someone like Mr. Kapasi; Mr. Kapasi also needs someone like Mrs. Das. I felt that Lahiri presented two people with a similar problem in the big picture but different problems surrounding that big picture. The big picture shows that both Mr. Kapasi and Mrs. Das need someone to be there to appreciate them, otherwise they feel like failures. Because of his own unhappiness and his thought that “the job [as an interpreter] was a sign of his failings” and that “his wife had little regard for his career as an interpreter,” he is intrigued with whoever asks about his job at the doctor’s office, not particularly Mrs. Das; she just happened to fill this void (584-5). I feel that Mr. Kapasi harbors these feelings toward Mrs. Das because she presents a fresh aspect to his life that actually makes him feel good about what he does; it makes him feel important, as contrasted with how his wife views his job. Mr. Kapasi is almost self-deprecating based on other people’s views about him and his job.

As Mrs. Das is a passive character until she realizes that Mr. Kapasi may be able to help her release her “pain and guilt,” this is the first time Lahiri shows that Mrs. Das instigates a conversation with someone. This is the time where she is the active one telling him her problems. At the same time, Mr. Kapasi hangs on to the thread Mrs. Das figuratively attaches him with because for once, he feels appreciated. (678)