Comparing Love and Acceptance in I Stand Here Ironing and Everyday Use :: comparison compare contrast essays

Love and Acceptance in I Stand here Ironing and Everyday Use Tillie Olsens I Stand present Ironing, and Alice Walkers Everyday Use, both address the issue of a perplexs guilt over how her children turn out. twain suffers blamed themselves for their daughters problems. While I Stand Here Ironing is obviously about the mousy daughter, in Everyday Use this is camouflaged by the circumstance most of the action and dialog involves the mother and older sister Dee. Neither does the mother in Everyday Use say outright that she feels guilty, but we gravel a glimpse of it when Dee is trying very hard to claim the handmade quilts. The mother says she did something she had never done before, hugged Maggie to me, then took the quilts from Dee and gave them to Maggie. In I Stand Here Ironing the mother tells us she feels guilty for the way her daughter Emily is, for the things she (the mother) did and did not do. The mothers neighbor even tells her she should smile at Emily more when you lo ok at her. over again towards the end of the story Emilys mother admits my wisdom came too late. The mothers unknowingly gave Emily and Maggie second best. Both mothers compare their two daughters to each other. In Everyday Use the mother tells us that Dee is lighter than Maggie, with nicer hair and a fuller figure. She Fahning -2-speaks of the fire that burned and scarred Maggie. She tells us how Maggie is not bright, how she shuffles when she walks. Comparing her with Dee whose feet vwere always neat-looking, as if God himself had molded them. We also learn of Dees style and the way she awes the other girls at school with it. The mother in I Stand Here Ironing speaks of Susan, quick and enjoin and assured, everything in appearance and manner Emily was not. Emily thin and dark and foreign-looking at a time when every little girl was supposed to look or prospect she should look a chubby blonde replica of Shirley Temple. Like Dee, Emily had a physical limitation also. Hers was ast hma. Both Emily and Maggie show resentment towards their sisters. The sisters who God rewarded with good looks and poise. Emilys mother points out the poisonous feeling between the sisters, feelings she contributed to by her inability to balance the hurts and needs of the two.