"I Stand Here Ironing" was written in the first person so that we could see Emily the way her mother (narrator) saw her. Through her reverie, we feel the mother's pain that her daughter felt ugly as a child. We ache with the knowledge that she had to send Emily to the daycare with the "evil teacher" and to a convalescent home when she was desperately ill. We feel her regrets that she couldn't be …showed first 75 words of 2337 total…

…showed last 75 words of 2337 total…work to provide for her. After her mother remarried we might see that the child felt even more isolated from her mother and abandoned after being shipped off to the convalescence home. She might have had extreme yearnings for any attention or token of her mother. Towards the end of the story we would see the daughter coming into her own self as she found her place in the world and her peace and happiness.