Mother, Daughter and the Great Depression

In Tillie Olsen’s, “I Stand Here Ironing,” the depression that the country is suffering through negatively affects the personal relationships of the narrator. This social condition not only affects the people of this time financially but also emotionally. For the narrator, as a mother, the condition affects her relationship with her daughter, and this is seen throughout the short story.

The narrator went through some very difficult times trying to provide for her daughter. In the struggle of doing her part as the sole provider to her young daughter, she failed to be there for the young girl emotionally. The mother showed that she wanted to be there for her daughter, but it was tough to do so, “It was the pre-relief, pre-WPA world of the depression. I would start running as soon as I got off the streetcar, running up the stairs, the place smelling sour, and awake or asleep to startle awake, when she saw me she would break into a clogged weeping that could not be comforted, a weeping I can hear yet”(9). At the time the mother was not receiving any type of help, and she was a single mother which added to the desperate need of her to provide for the daughter financially. She found herself in a situation where she was helpless. There was no help during a time that the mother truly needed help. She was forced to sacrifice the loving mother-daughter relationship in order to be able to give her little girl the basic needs like food and shelter.

The nation’s depression was affecting families and the way they formed family relationships within themselves. There was no time to build a meaningful bond, because of the need to find a job and do the best to work and survive during this historically sad and hard time. The way their life unfolded was a direct look at what was going on around them, “She is a child of her age, of depression, of war, of fear”(55). Even though there are things the mother regrets about her relationship with her daughter and the way she raised her, she did what she thought was best. There was only so much that she had to give, because her resources were not what are available now. There was only so much the narrator was able to do especially when her surroundings were the harsh realities of the Great Depression.