John Updike’s ‘A&P’ and Tillie Olsen’s ‘I Stand Here Ironing’ are two short stories that seemingly do not have anything similar, yet share some themes that form the central core of the stories. Although there are more differences between the two short stories the themes of conflict, feminism and self-analysis runs through both the stories.
Updike is multifaceted and was a novelist, an art and literary critic and a poet. He was a proliferate writer and is one of the very few writers who won the Pulitzer Prize more than once. Most characters in his works go through a personal turmoil and have to respond to crises relating to religion, infidelity and domestic obligations. His short story ‘A&P’ is also on similar lines where the narrator Sammy goes through a personal turmoil or a conflict when he has to choose between conformity and rebellion. The narrative begins when Sammy sees three girls dressed in bikini’s walking barefoot into the store. Although they do not pay much attention to him, he watches them walk around the shop and analyses their choice of products. He also speculates about the personalities of each of the girls and ogles and jokes about them with his co-worker Stokesie. The problem begins when the store manager Lengel chastises the girls for walking into the store wearing skimpy bikinis. Sammy does not like this and tells Lengel that he quits and walks out of the store. The girls do not notice him even when he does this and although he hopes to see them when he walks out, he doesn’t. Although Lengel advices him to stay put, Sammy thinks he needs to carry on with his decision. At the end of the story he walks out with ambiguous thoughts and a sense of foreboding about his future.
Olsen was an American author and one of the first generation of the American feminists. Her works were influenced largely by her life and she wrote a lot about the struggles of women and the poor. She was also a political activist, mostly communist and in her works tried to bring the two elements of feminism and communism together. Her short story, ‘I Stand Here Ironing’ is a partly autobiographical account of her life. The narrator is a woman who gets a phone call from a person (could have been a counselor or a teacher) asking about her daughter Emily. The narrator is ironing when she gets the call. Over the course of the call and ironing she reminisces about her life and her daughter Emily. She talks and thinks about the various places Emily had o grow up in because she could not afford to take care of her. She also wonders if she could have done things differently and ponders why she should know everything about her child because she is the mother. The reader is taken through Emily’s life and the author uses stream of consciousness technique to achieve this. The narrator thinks about the past-of Emily as a kid, growing up with her grandparents, in day care centers, her sicknesses, her ability to tell jokes and act, her troubles in teenage years and more. The narrator is also in the present, ironing, talking about Emily, taking care of her son and watching Emily come home and get something to eat. After listing out all the possible causes for Emily’s troubles the narrator finally hopes that Emily will eventually see herself as a valuable creation of god.
Comparing the two short stories, some obvious differences come to the fore. To begin with, the narrative style in both the short stories is different. Although both the short stories are from a first person narrative, the style is different with Sammy in A&P recounting events in the present while the narrator in I stand here Ironing goes between the past and the present. Sammy’s dialogues and speeches are colloquial and not serious reflecting his age (he is nineteen), while there is nothing colloquial about the other narrator. The narrator in, ‘I Stand Here Ironing’ is a woman and a mother who is having a serious conversation with someone on the phone. The settings of the stories are also different. While Sammy works in a supermarket, the narrator in I Stand here ironing is at home, doing domestic chores and talking and worrying about her children. Her narration is also often non-linear and jumbled as opposed to Sammy’s narrative which is just about once incident that happens at work. In, I Stand Here Ironing, the narrator uses the iron as a symbol of her thoughts as it races back between the past, the present and the future. The constant movement of the Iron also symbolizes the constant effort she makes to help her child, iron out the problems from her life. In A&P however, the brands in the store serve as symbols for the narrator to think about the differences in class between him and the girls. The pack of herrings is enough to set Sammy thinking about the kind of parties that girl’s parents would have and how different it would be from the parties his parents throw.
The plot and the number of characters in both the stories are also different. There are four characters in I Stand Here Ironing while there are seven in A&P who talk between themselves. Unlike the conversation over the phone in the earlier story, in A&P, the dialogues are between the various characters in the store. In I Stand Here Ironing, the Author uses the technique of interior monologue. The interior monologue which reflects her thoughts could be answers to herself or an imagined audience. Although part of it is in the form of an answer to the person on the phone, they aren’t real answers. Instead of answering the question what, she keeps giving answers to why coming up with reasons as to why Emily is the way she is. The atmosphere in A&P is much livelier when compared to the somber and poignant space in I Stand Here Ironing.
There are however many similarities between the two short stories. For instance both the short stories are about the internal and the external conflict both the narrators face in their lives. In I Stand Here Ironing, the narrator goes through a personal conflict and tries to come to grips with her failure as a mother. She questions herself if her daughter had turned out the way she had because of her upbringing. The external conflict is between the narrator and the person on the phone. The narrator does not want and does not feel the need to know everything about the daughter because she is the mother. Also she does not feel the need to justify or explain her daughter’s behavior to the person on the phone. There are also other external conflicts present throughout her narrative. She has to fight against poverty and illnesses to raise her child and this affects Emily’s growth and character. The setting of the conflict is more internal than external. The conflict is personal and happens in the mind of the narrator. She goes back and forth alternatively blaming herself and justifying her choices in bringing up Emily.
The telephone calls sets the though process in motion and like the iron her mind goes back and forth. In A&P too, the conflict is both internal and external. The internal conflict is the personal turmoil or the conflict that Sammy goes through. He is conflicted between conforming to the rules of the store, confirming to the rules set by the store manager and confirming to the dictates of the society that tell him what to do. Sammy does not want to be sucked into the corporate culture like his colleague Stokeskie, who has to work in the store because he is married. Sammy always feels that he is beyond all these things and is sarcastic about his present condition. He also does not want to be like Lengel who is petty and wants to play everything by the rules. Just like the phone call leads to personal conflict in the narrator in I Stand Here Ironing, the arrival of the girls in bikinis set off a personal conflict within Sammy. Although Sammy rebels against what he sees as authority through his sarcasm and wit, with the arrival of the girls he realizes that while he criticizes what he sees, the girls straight away reject authority. He understands that when the girl tells Lengel that she is here to buy Herrings for her mother, she is not trying to apologize for her behavior but is rather trying not to create a scene. This sets off the conflict within himself and makes him quit his job. The external conflict in A&P is the conflict between Sammy and Lengel the store manager. Sammy takes offense to his behavior and quits as a protest. In spite of Lengel’s warning Sammy walks out of the store.
There is also a thread of feminism running through both the stories. Sammy becomes an unwitting feminist when he takes up the cause of the girls, especially Queenie, the girl he thinks is the leader of the three. Although he does it in a teenage hormonal fit to impress the girls, he also does it because he identifies with the girls. He realizes that they do not have to confirm to the rigid rules about decency and clothing as set by men and the society and that they are free to do whatever they want to. This however is in conflict to the Sammy that we see in the beginning of the story. When he notices the girls walk in the store, he acts like any normal chauvinist man would do. He is attracted to them, especially Queenie physically and jokes about them with his colleagues. He also talks about their minds saying no one really knows how a girl’s mind works and wonders if there is even one. But later on in the story, he stands up in a feminist protest saying that he is in solidarity with them in their choice of dressing and that women should be respected in spite of what they are wearing. Although he does not verbalize this, his actions prove it. There is also a feminist thread running through I stand Here Ironing.
The narrator agonizes over her decision to work and care for her child and sometime blames her for the way Emily has turned out to be. There is also a tendency to take the onus of Emily’s upbringing on herself. Nowhere in the story is the dad made liable for the upbringing of Emily. The fact that the mother should feel guilty about having to leave her kid at home smacks of male chauvinism. Olsen uses this guilt in the narrator to give a feminist perspective to the whole story. When the narrator wonders why she should know everything about Emily because she is her mother, she is making a protest against gender based roles for women. The narrator does her best to bring up her child in the absence of her father and that shows a strong woman. The fact that she accepts her mistakes, like the incident where she leaves Emily alone in the house for hours while she and her step father goes to work also shows that although she is strong she does not fit into the mold of a super woman. The super-woman mold where the woman is supposed to handle everything from the household chores to the rearing of the kids to having a professional career and doing everything without complaining and a smile on her face is something women are burdened with. When she says at the end of the story that she hopes Emily will not be a cloth like the one on the Iron table she reasserts her feminist thinking.
There is also a theme of self analysis that runs through both the stories. The narrator in I Stand Here Ironing examines herself and the life of Emily constantly to find answers to the questions the person on the telephone is asking. More than for the person on the phone, it is for herself that she goes through this self-analysis. She needs to find what she had done or not done to create Emily into what she is now. Sammy’s self analysis is in comparison to his colleagues. He knows he does not want to be like stokeskie, a corporate slave and neither like Lengel, a typical manager. He knows he is above these things. At the end of the story when he looks at Lengel through the glass, he sees a stony cold face and compares it to the future that awaits him when he is without a job. He wonders for a moment if what he does was right.
The two short stories share some very important themes although they have completely different plots and characters. The themes of conflict, feminism and self analysis run through the stories although they are different on many levels.
