Complexities in Mother-Daughter Relationships

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Complexities in Mother-Daughter Relationships
Olsen, Tillie. I stand here ironing. ProQuest LLC, 2002.
The story depicts the mother-daughter relationship complexities through the undeclared
motherhood burden. The novelist proposes that the selfless mother’s role that society anticipates
a mother to hold is a barrier to any successful discovery. Instead of helping a woman accomplish
self-actualization, motherhood strands a woman in life laden with toil alongside excessive roles
and responsibilities. Olsen represents parenthood laid unadorned, shorn of romantic
embellishment. Instead of presenting a perfect case of a cultivating role model guiding her
charge path to triumph, Olsen shows us a central character zealously mediating on harsher
alongside bitter family life realities.
The narrator (Emily's mother) deflates some overblown ideas about motherhood,
specifically mother-daughter relationship/bond primacy. The mother no more comprehends her
daughter than a counselor or teacher who requests her presence at the meeting. The mother is
never evil, abusive, or deliberately neglectful; however, Olsen presents her as the conflicted
victim of a situation whose personal resources cannot give her daughter the best of her interests.
Her inability to participate fully in her daughter's life resulted in undefined issue, which besets
Emily. The mother can only provide the basic physical needs of her children but unable to form a
more in-depth, emotional bond with her kids.