I Stand Here Ironing

Stream of consciousness is a literary device meant to mimic natural thought patterns. Very few people actually think in words, or at least in complete sentences that proceed in linear fashion. Most relive experiences or connect words with abstract ideas. Often people will see, hear, or smell something that will remind them of something else. Occasionally, somebody will seek to solve a problem by thinking through their knowledge and experience. Stream-of-consciousness narration seeks to capture these psychological realities through things like run-ons, sentence fragments, and non sequiturs, as in this passage from “I Stand Here Ironing”: “Except that it would have made no difference if I had known. It was the only place there was. It was the only way we could be together, the only way I could hold a job. And even without knowing, I knew” (750).

As most of the story takes place in the narrator’s head, Olsen uses stream of consciousness to mimic her thought patterns. The story largely unfolds chronologically, but the most significant connections between events are psychological, revealing The Gendering of Guilt as the narrator reflects on how she mothered her eldest daughter. The technique also evokes the hectic nature of the narrator’s life, and thus