The Great Depression Essay Example for Free

The Great Depression Essay Tillie Olson’s semi-autobiographic story â€Å"I Stand Here Ironing† focuses on a mother’s reminiscing of the decisions she’s made regarding her first child, Emily, and the resulting impact those decisions had on her daughter. The mother, also the narrator, paints a picture of guilt, resentment, and remorse toward her choices while raising Emily. Throughout the story, there’s several instances that point to the mother possibly being a victim of postpartum depression. Emily. Although the consequences of the mother’s choices have already taken effect, she can’t help but to think about what she could have done or what Emily could be if she’d made the â€Å"right† decisions, as deemed by then society’s standards. The setting takes place during a time of struggle and hopelessness in the United States, the Great Depression of the 1930’s. The birth of Emily, in this trying time, made for a much needed contrast to the sense of despair in the air. â€Å"She was a beautiful baby. The first and only one of our five that was beautiful at birth (312).† Here, it’s apparent the joy that every first-time mother has. This effervescent sentiment only lasts for eight months, though, when Emily’s father abandons his family. For a young mother living in those times, that is devastating. Being a single-parent mother in the 1930’s was unheard of and extremely taboo. She’d be seen as an outcast and a failure to her family. In her mind, the only option was to leave Emily to her ex-husband’s family, in order to make a better living herself and her daughter. Upon Emily’s return, at the tender age of two, the mother hardly recognizes her and sees her in a new light. The baby who was once beautiful is no longer. â€Å"I hardly knew her [†¦] All the baby loveliness gone (313).† The culmination of separation, as well as the angst and disappointment that she felt for Emily’s father has taken effect and is now transferred to her daughter. Everything about Emily, from her appearance to her walk, now reminded the mother of her estranged husband. That very moment reveals the reason behind Emily’s jaded life postpartum depression. Postpartum depression is a mood disorder that begins after childbirth and usually lasts beyond six weeks. Occurring in 8%-20% of all new mothers, postpartum depressed women exhibit behavior that is neither healthy nor motherly, which in turn has an adverse effect on the child. These effects became more than apparent in Emily’s case. PPD would help to explain the narrator’s constant distancing herself from Emily and difference of treatment her daughter received compared to her other children. The narrator’s environment, economic standing, social status, and many other factors contributed to her developme nt of PPD. According to a study by Child Psychiatry and Human Development, children of postpartum depressed mothers have results showing a plethora of adverse outcomes relative to community sample children. Children whose mothers were diagnosed with PPD demonstrated lower ego-resiliency, lower peer social competence, and lower school adjustment (Doesum). These results heavily support the claim that the mother in â€Å"I Stand Here Ironing† had severe PPD in Emily’s early stages of life. The mother acknowledges her daughter’s social awkwardness in a passage from the story. I am glad for that slow physical development that widened the difference between her and her contemporaries, though she suffered over it. She was too vulnerable for that terrible word of youthful competition, of preening and parading, of constant measuring yourself against every other, of envy, â€Å"If I had that copper hair, â€Å"If I had that skin†¦.† She tormented herself enough about not looking like the others, there was enough of the unsureness, the having to be conscious of words before you speak, the constant caringwhat are they thinking of me? Without having it all magnified by the merciless physical drives. (316). In addition to these findings, girls of postpartum depressed mothers show lower verbal intelligence (Doesum). â€Å"School was a worry to her. She was not glib or quick in a world where glibness and quickness were easily confused with ability to learn (315).† Emily, during her teens substituted in for her step-father while he was away at war, acting as the second parent to her siblings. She had to grow up quick and even as a child, she didn’t have much of a childhood. The mother admits that Emily’s aiding her at home may have had an influence in her shortcomings in school, stating, â€Å"There was so little time left at night after the kids were bedded down. She would struggle over booksâ₠¬ ¦ (317).† Surprisingly, daughters of mothers who had PPD were also rated as less externalizing by their mothers than girls in the community sample. One of the interpretations of this result may be a tendency among girls of depressed mothers to show more role reversal or â€Å"parentification,† in an effort to fulfill the parent’s need for comfort and care. An example of this is when a young Emily was sent to nursery school. She gravely disliked the nursery but she never outright expressed it to her mother. She would come up with excuses such as the teachers being sick in order to persuade her mother to let her stay home. Emily would feel pain on the inside and never externalize it to the outside world. Regarding the other children, the mother always describes them in a positive light and shows favoritism toward them compared to when Emily was their age. With her second daughter, Susan, the mother always chalks up in a highly favored fashion. â€Å"[†¦] Susan, golden- and curly-haired and chubby, quick and articulate and assured, everything in manner and appearance Emily was not (316).† Susan exemplified what it was to be the â€Å"it† girl during those times with her appearance as â€Å"a chubby blonde replica of Shirley Temple.† This created a tense feeling of envy and jealousy within Emily, according to the narrator. Even during the story, the narrator interrupts her monologue to announce that her youngest child, Ronnie, needs his diaper changed. Afterwards, she and he â€Å"sit for a while and I hold him, looking out over the city spread in charcoal with its soft aisles of light (316).† This, a scene that would never be depicted during Emily’s childhood. The only mention of her at that age is depiction of the mother picking up Emily from the babysitter at nights which was always met with an outbreak of tears and weeping, â€Å"a weeping I can hear yet.† She’s always look at Emily w ith an expression of tightness and worry. â€Å"You should smile more at Emily when you look at her (313),† a neighbor once said to her mother. Her less than motherly attitude to Emily is further exposed when she reveals that she’d let Emily be absent but is noticeably stricter with her siblings’ school attendance. These conclusions support the idea that Emily’s mother at one time had severe postpartum depression. A mothers feeling of self-confidence and self-efficacy is determined by many different factors including contextual characteristics such as social support, infant temperament, and maternal mental health. Defined, maternal self-confidence is the mothers perception of her own ability to take care of the child and to correctly interpret the childs signals. It governs adjustment to motherhood and is of great importance with respect to a positive mother–infant relationship (Doesum). The mother makes it clear throughout her retelling of Emily’s past that she doesn’t view h erself as a very good mother. She internally expresses her frustration with the way she raised Emily and the choices she’d made. Of course, motherhood doesn’t come with a handbook but she could have done some things differently. Ever since she was eight months old, Emily had continuously been neglected. Her father left her as a baby and as a result, her mother sent her off to live with his family for a while. Then, she was placed with a babysitter and later on dropped off at a nursery, then to a convalescent home. The narrator not once referenced to Emily having a best friend or a child over to play, at an age where forming relationships with peers is crucial. Even at the convalescent home, Emily had made a bond with another child, until her friend was immediately placed in another home. The establishment wouldn’t let children keep the letter they received in the mail from parents and had strict rules for visitation. This so called â€Å"home† established an â€Å"invisible wall† so to speak between visiting parents and the children above on the balcony (Frye). â€Å"They don’t like you to love anybody here,† explains Emily (315). It represents a separation Emily would feel for the rest of her life. All her life, Emily has invariably been pushed to the side and abandoned by the people whom she thought loved her or at least had her well-being in mind. Because of this, she became a lonely, isolated child. Even through her gift of mime, performing for high schools and colleges, Emily still felt isolated and alone. High levels of stress, low quality mother–infant interactions and insecure attachment early in a child’s life can adversely affect the development of the brain, which can have long-term consequences, for example for the child’s capacities to regulate emotions and cope with stress. Whenever Emily’s mother went out with her step-father, she couldn’t take it. She would open the door, thinking it might make her mother come back sooner and place the clock on the floor, claiming the clock â €Å"talked loud.† The clock is just one of many symbols in the story, representing the time mother and daughter never spent together and the separation between the two. The narrator is convinced that Emily is â€Å"[†¦] a child of her age, of depression, of war, of fear (318). As she reflects on her daughter’s life, she feels resentment, angst, and guilt yet she doesn’t let this consume her. She still has faith that her daughter will lead a different path and not have to go through the same painful struggles she faced as a lonely, 19-year-old, single mother during the Depression. Hardships turned her into what she is today, a strong and mature woman which is apparent due to her unbiased analysis of what she could have done better while raising Emily. The mother always heeded the advice of others and never herself as a first-time mother, always looking for validation through outside externalities. She corrected these mistakes with her subsequent children but by the time she realized it for Emily, it was too late. The damage has already been done. Although she may forever be reluctantly under the power of the iron, she wants Emily to be persuaded â€Å"[†¦] that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron.† She has the capability to make something of herself, regardless of the way she grew up. Emily, at 19, has more opportunities than her mother had at the same age. That slight tinge of hope leads readers to interpret their own future for Emily, which she jokingly hints to through her budding talent for comedy by inferring that the human race will be atom-dead in a few years. She has a strong resource with her talent for pantomime that hopefully will foster as she grows older and gives her a chance to see what life is like outside of poverty. Emily is a survivor, through it all and has the ability and capacity to take life by the reigns, if she so chooses (Yahnke). Bibliography Doesum, Karin T. M., et al. Early School Outcomes for Children of Postpartum Depressed Mothers: Comparison with a Community Sample. Child Psychiatry and Human Development43.2 (2012): 201+. Academic OneFile. Web. 30 Apr. 2012. Frye, Joanne S. â€Å"I Stand Here Ironing’: Motherhood as Experience and Metaphor.† Studies in Short Fiction 18.3 (Summer 1981): 272-292. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed David L. Siegel Vol 11. Detroit: Gale Research, 1992. Literature Resource Center. Web 19 Mar 2012. Gerstenlauer, Jakob, et al. Effects of Postpartum Anxiety Disorders and Depression on Maternal Self-confidence. Infant Behavior and Development 35.2 (2012): 264+. Academic OneFile. Web. 30 Apr. 2012. Olsen, Tillie. â€Å"I Stand Here Ironing.† 1953. Portable Legacies 4th Edition. Schmidt, Jan, and Lynne Crockett, editors. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009. 312-318. Yahnke, Robert E. Magill. â€Å"I Stand Here Ironing† Robert E. Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition, September 2006, p1-1 Short Fiction (Work Analysis). Literary Reference Center. Web. 28 Mar 2012.