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have to gather it all together again” (13-15). Emily’s mother does not want to solve the problem because she is afraid of looking back upon her past mistakes and regrets. For example, the mother remembers how Emily’s “cries battered [her]” (30). This onomatopoeia reflects one of the moments of the past that the mother wishes to forget. Later, after Emily’s mother has reflected on her past, she realizes that she “will never total it all” (65). The mother recognizes that “all that is in [Emily] will not bloom-but in how many does it? (81-82). Emily’s mother uses this metaphor to show that she is no longer worried about finding the solution to Emily’s problem because she knows that Emily will never lose her illusions.
Imagery is also used throughout the story to describe the situations that appeal to the senses of the reader. Visual imagery opens the story while the mother “moves tormented back and forth with the iron” (1-2). Here, the mother is expressing her frustration while ironing. Then, while recalling the appearance of Emily, her mother repeatedly describes Emily as being a “beautiful baby” (18). She recalls the time when baby Emily “blew shinning bubbles” (35) and “[laid] on the floor in her blue overalls” (38). Unfortunately, these happy visual images also cause the mother to remember her past struggles. She recalls Emily’s “cries” (30) and “weeping” (50) as an infant. These auditory images reflect the pain Emily’s mother endured in trying to be a good mother. Emily hated the years when she was “dark and thin and foreign-looking” (70), and would not even allow her mother to “touch her” (79). Sadly, everybody needs the feeling of being touched, and yet Emily felt so distant from her mother that she felt like she did not need that tactile feeling. Finally, the mother realizes that “[her] wisdom came too late”
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(80-81), and wants Emily to know that although she has “ironed” her with bad memories from the past, she still has hope to do whatever she wants in the world.
The diction in the story sets the mood of the passage. The story begins with words such as “tormented,” (2) “battered,” (30) and “ached” (31), which convey the feelings of the mother as a result of her daughter. She has been struggling for nineteen years to give her a daughter a better life than she had and gives off a mood of desperation. The mother grew up during the “depression,” (46) in which she lived in fear of being killed “atom-dead” (59). For this reason, she understands the pain Emily suffered when “she was a child seldom smiled at” (66) and when “her father left before she was a year old” (66-67). She acknowledges that like herself, Emily was a “child of her age, of depression, of war, of fear” (82-83). This parallelism between both of their struggles throughout childhood helps Emily’s mother to have a positive approach to Emily future.
The story ends with hope for Emily’s future with her mother. Through the use of language, imagery, and diction, the mother finally solves the mathematical equation by deciding to “let her be” (84). She only wishes to let Emily know that “she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron” (87-88). The image of the mother ironing the dress compares to actually raising Emily as a child. The dress represents Emily, and the iron is Emily’s mother and her environment, which has shaped her life. The ironing board itself is everybody’s’ expectations of Emily. The mother wants Emily to understand that she was “ironed” by all of her traumatic experiences in life, but Emily is still young and able to be changed. She hopes that Emily will develop into her
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own person based upon her positive experiences and goals, not by societies “ironed” preconceived model based upon her past.
