The mother is the narrator in the story and she is telling us about the events that have taken place in Emily’s life as she is ironing her daughter’s dress. The monologue started because someone (possibly a teacher at Emily’s school) called and wants to discuss her daughter and this has caused the mother to recall Emily’s life and why she has become the person she is. The mother is imaging what the conversation would look like if she were to go talk to this person about Emily.
The conflict in the story is the mother questioning herself on how Emily was raised and the difficult decisions she had to make concerning care. She had to decide to work or stay home with Emily, and then when she did work she had to find someone to take care of her daughter which proved just as difficult and these child care providers had a definite impact on Emily’s personality and who she has become today. These decisions that the mother had to make were not the normal decisions for a new mother in these times. The story takes place during the time of the great depression era and that is generally a time that mothers stayed home and took care of their children, but due to the unforeseen circumstance that Emily’s father left because he “could no longer endure sharing want with us” the mother was on her own having to juggle work and child care for her new baby daughter.
Who’s fault is it that Emily’s life was so difficult was the mother making the wrong choices as a new mom all alone after only eight months? Or has society forced her to make the choices regarding her daughter that proved to seem so detrimental in Emily’s life?
She nursed Emily because “they feel that’s important nowadays” but even when “her cries battered me to trembling and my breasts ached with swollenness, I waited till the clock decreed.” She waited until the clock said it was ok to feed her because that is what the book said to do and she was a new mother who did not know better. She wasn’t ignoring her baby’s wants and needs of her own accord, she had decided to follow the only guidance she had and that was a book that said set a schedule and stick to it. The mother seems to know better now that she has experienced having more children.
Emily’s mother had to leave her daughter with “the woman downstairs to whom she(Emily) was no miracle at all”, when she would finally get home after running to go see her daughter after work Emily would break into a “clogged weeping” that the mother can still hear. Although it was better after she found a night job the mother was forced to send Emily to go live with her father’s family until she could raise the money to bring her back. The question here is why couldn’t Emily’s mother find the appropriate care for her daughter and still be able to work? Why was there no program to help someone in this situation have the ability to still care for her daughter and work at the same time. Society made it impossible for her to survive because it was so rare for a mother to need assistance in caring for her child and it was very rare indeed for her to even be working.
“She was two. Old enough for nursery school they said.” Again the mother recognizes that she was forced to do something that she would not do with her subsequent children, pried by the norms of society into following the sheep, or drinking proverbial the Kool-Aid. She sent Emily to nursery school and she knew that the teacher was evil and that Emily hated it, but even if she hadn’t known she was still forced in having to send her there. It was the only way she could hold a job, she had to send her to this “parking place(s) for children”, otherwise she would end up losing her child yet again. Emily’s mother had no other options.
Emily was ill with the fever of the red measles and “They persuaded me at the clinic to send her away to a convalescent home”, again Emily’s mother has allowed someone else to convince her that they know what is best for her child. It is clear that she is exhausted after just having another baby and she can’t handle the care necessary for Emily to get better and the people at the clinic took advantage of the situation, they made the home sound like it was a good place where Emily would get wonderful care. While she was away she wasn’t allowed to keep the letters her mother wrote her because they “simply do not have room for children to keep any personal possessions.” She didn’t eat because the food was terrible and she looked more and more frail each time that the mother was allowed to visit and yell up to Emily on the balcony where they kept the children separated from the parents in order to protect them from being “contaminated by parental germs or physical affection”. After eight months of Emily being in that home, not allowed to have physical affection or caring for one another the mother was able to convince the social worker to send her home.
Emily is beginning to feel the pressure of society as well, she is becoming extremely aware about how she looks and how that fits in with what she is expected to look like. Emily is “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”. She was not glib or quick either and so the teachers deemed her an “over conscientious slow learner” because “glibness or quickness were easily confused with ability to learn”. Her mother is glad that her sickness slowed her physical development; she feels that Emily is “too vulnerable for that terrible world of youthful competition.”
After Emily’s sister was older and the mother was home with another baby, she started going against what society said she should do. She would allow Emily to stay home with a pretend illness and would keep Susan home as well “to have them all together”. “Those were the only times of peaceful companionship” between the two sisters.
Emily has found some acceptance in the world with her humor, she performed for her school amateur show and won first prize, “they clapped and clapped and wouldn’t let me go” she recounted to her mother on the phone. She was then asked to perform at other schools and even colleges.
“She runs up the stairs two at a time with her light graceful step, and I know she is happy tonight.” “She is so lovely. Why did you want me to come in at all? Why were you concerned? She will find her way.” Yes Emily is finding her way regardless of the choices the mother was forced into making in all those hard years. At the end of the story her mother asks the person who called to “Let her (Emily) be. Help make it so there is cause for her to know-that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron.” Please society, the mother is begging you to allow Emily to be the person she has become, do not expect her to bend to the norm, to change and fit into some predetermined expectation. Let her just be Emily and allow that to be ok rather than forcing her to change to meet your guidelines. She is perfect just the way she is.