I Stand Here Ironing

In many ways, Emily is the focus of “I Stand Here Ironing.” However, her character mostly emerges through her mother remembering her childhood and analyzing its effect on her young adulthood. It therefore reveals as much about her mother as it does about her—for instance, the need for hope that informs the narrator’s recollection that Emily “was a beautiful baby” (749).

That beauty soon fades as Emily faces the economic realities of life during the Great Depression. Emily adapts to this scarcity by curtailing some natural childhood traits, including obstinacy and argumentativeness: Her protests against nursery school were “never a direct protest, never rebellion” (750). This subtle resistance gives way to acceptance of her lot in life. Later on, her rebellion is clearer, but it is never very vocal or violent. Her mother says of her return from a measles care facility, “I used to try to hold and love her after she came back, but her body would stay stiff, and after a while she’d push away. She ate little. Food sickened her, and much of life too” (751). Despite the mother’s attempts to love and nourish her, Emily resists; she isn’t used to nurturing and therefore experiences it as unwelcome. It is difficult for her to find the joy in life.

Emily’s sensitivity carries over into her teenage years: “She was too vulnerable for that terrible world of youthful competition of preening and parading, of constant measuring of yourself against every other” (752-53). This supports the pattern of Emily continually receiving less than her peers and siblings. Even when Emily exhibits a talent for mimicry and performance, her mother says, “Now suddenly she was Somebody, and as imprisoned in her difference as she had been in her anonymity” (753). Because the story revolves around the mother ruminating about the failures of Emily’s childhood, it is not surprising that even this good thing brings more difficulty into Emily’s life. Similarly, in the final scene, Emily is described as being “lovely,” but then she makes a joke about the inevitability of “atom death” (753). Her mother must face the fact that Emily’s childhood is over and her life will forever be informed by the decades of scarcity that comprised her formative years.

Susan first appears as the small baby the narrator must care for when Emily gets the measles. Stretched thin, the narrator gives Emily less care than she would otherwise give a sick child: “Twice, only twice when I had to get up for Susan anyhow, I went in to sit with [Emily]” (751). In the context of the narrator’s relationship with Emily, this creates conflict around Susan and the sudden scarcity of care her birth creates. Of course, this scarcity is not infant Susan’s fault, but it positions the two girls as rivals.

As she ages, Susan isn’t in much of the text, but she is the subject of a particularly telling paragraph:

Susan, the second child, Susan, golden- and curly-haired and chubby, quick and articulate and assured, everything in appearance and manner Emily was not; Susan, not able to resist Emily’s precious things, losing or sometimes clumsily breaking them; Susan telling jokes and riddles to company for applause while Emily sat silent (to say to me later: that was my riddle, Mother, I told it to Susan) (752).

Susan is clearly confident and capable. In her appearance and attributes, she seems to be the perfect child. However, her behavior is less than admirable, especially toward Emily. She steals, breaks, and loses things that are important to Emily. She plagiarizes things Emily tells her in private. She seems needy and demanding. None of this is unusual in a child, but that is perhaps the point: Susan is allowed to behave as a child whereas Emily is not. Susan thus plays an important role as a foil for Emily.