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)