I Stand Here Ironing

“I stand here ironing, and what you asked me moves me tormented back and forth with the iron.”

The use of figurative language is key to Olsen’s opening line. She first invokes the image of the iron—a simple, well-known household tool that is associated with women. She then creates a metaphor by saying that “what you asked me moves me tormented back and forth with the iron” (749). The image of the iron’s movement conveys the stressful nature of her rumination; tying the latter to a household task invokes The Gendering of Guilt.

“Why do I put that [the story about nursing Emily] first? I do not even know if it matters, or if it explains anything. She was a beautiful baby.”

Olsen uses stream of consciousness to interrogate the mother’s feelings. In this quote, the mother thinks about where to begin her ruminations as she stands at the iron in the present and tells stories about the past. The first memory that occurs to her involves nursing Emily and highlights The Competing Pressures of Motherhood: The narrator worries that the way she nursed Emily harmed her, even though she was heeding the era’s recommendations and (as her remark about Emily’s beauty demonstrates) doing so had no discernible ill effects.