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

Love and Acceptance in I Stand Here press and Everyday Use Tillie Olsens I Stand Here Ironing, and Alice Walkers Everyday Use, some(prenominal) address the issue of a engenders guilt over how her children turn out. 2 fathers blamed themselves for their daughters problems. While I Stand Here Ironing is ostensibly about the mousy daughter, in Everyday Use this is camouflaged by the fact most of the action and dialog involves the mother and older infant Dee. Neither does the mother in Everyday Use say instantly that she feels sheepish, but we catch a glimpse of it when Dee is trying very trying 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 look at her. 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 flatboat 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 beau ideal himself had shaped them. We likewise 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 vocalise 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 thought she should look a chubby blonde replica of Shirley Temple. worry Dee, Emily had a physical limitation a lso. Hers was asthma. 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.