Is Society To Blame?

Is Society to Blame? (Not always)

Society seems to be portrayed differently from generation to generation. As the world has evolved over the last century, times and ways have been altered greatly. In the course of the short story, "I Stand Here Ironing," a rationalization is made of how a child has evolved with problems during the latter part of the first half of the twentieth century. The story begins with a mother of a troubled teen being asked by her daughter's school counselor to come down and help her understand the child. The mother hesitates and runs through a stream of consciousness trying to realize what really has made a difference in the child's life. Though a literary argument was made speaking of different ways society is and was to blame for the negligence of children, one can definitely come to a different conclusion. The mother cannot give a direct and concise answer, as one can read in the second to last paragraph in the story, to the counselor because of the narrator's inability to "total it all" at the beginning of the story. Throughout the course of the fiction one notices that the mother uses rationalization of the way society worked at the given time as an excuse for poor decisions and overall bad parenting, even though she felt bad about the child's upbringing in the end.

The narrator's first child can be assumed to be illegitimate at the beginning of the story. When the mother explained that at the beginning of the child's life that she was employed,"...Or looked for work and for Emily's father, who 'could no longer endure' (he wrote in his good-bye note) 'sharing want with us (p 442),'" she infers that it was not her husband that left, but merely the father. This could make one believed that they were not married in the first place. Overall, even if it is not safe to say that it was the mothers fault for the brief stay of the father in the household, one could assume that the choice to run the risk of pregnancy at a young age at an economically troubled time would be one decision that was probably the root of the child's problems to begin with.

While for the mother to be working was definitely the most pragmatic thing to do at the beginning of Emily's life considering the extenuating circumstances, and also under the circumstances "it came to where I had to bring her to his family and leave her (442)," was definitely not selfish but at the time one can be sure it was the right thing to do. On the other hand, the choice to take back the child after an extended period of time seems in some light to be selfish considering the child resembled something the reader can assume to be a sore subject to the mother: "I hardly knew her, walking quick and nervous like her father, looking like her father, thin, and dressed in a shoddy red that yellowed her skin and glared at the pockmarks (p 442)." Comparing the child to its father, not only in looks, but also in actions seem to be a turning point in which the mother looses direct affection for the child. The fact that the mother put Emily into a daycare program rather than to leave her child with the father's family also reiterates the mother's selfishness in having the child for her own sake rather than giving the child a constant and possibly a relatively normal life away from her.

Once again, after Emily was getting settled at home with her mother, she was sent away again and one more time security and abandonment had to have made a detrimental impact on Emily. After already being neglected at home while living with both her "new father" and her new sister, it was not long before Emily was placed in an orphanage where she could "Not...Be Contaminated by Parental Germs or Physical Affection (p 444)." From a psychological standpoint, it seems this child must have barely ever in her early life felt secure or loved. As before, circumstances of the family may have become as they were because of society, but one (a mother especially) is to try to at least put one's children in equal standings in the household, rather than send one away to start fresh on another.

Emily's character development during the story is rather vague. She seems to be explained as rather distraught towards the beginning of her life, and then, as told by the narrator, develops a stage presence. "I think I said once: 'Why don't you do something like this in the school amateur show?' One morning she phoned me at work, hardly understandable through weeping: 'Mother, I did it. I won, I won; they gave me first prize; they clapped and clapped and wouldn't let me go.' (p 447)." This