I Stand Here Ironing Power Quotes

The asker of this question is never specified; it could be a teacher or a counselor, but certainly someone in a position to "help." The question suggests that the asker, whoever it is, doesn't know Emily well enough and needs her mother's insight.

The narrator mistakenly puts her trust in authority – in this case, medical authority. But see Emily's attitude toward authority in quote #9.

The voice of power in the story is often referred to as a "they." Here medical authorities at the clinic convince the narrator to send Emily away to a convalescent home, as if just keeping her way from her working-class mother will make her better. (It doesn't.)

These "sleek young" wealthy do-gooders stand in stark contrast to the plaintive children at the convalescent home. The comment that they fill Christmas stockings for the children is especially ironic, given that we learn a few sentences later that the children aren't allowed to keep anything.

Love is antithetical to the regime at the convalescent home. The lifelessness of the children there has an eerie echo in the "atom-dead," the victims of the atomic bomb, mentioned in quote #9.

There's something sinister about Emily's popularity, which her mother calls an imprisonment.

That's one way of looking at school. The threat of nuclear annihilation felt very real in the wake of World War II. Emily's reference to the atomic bomb ("atom-dead") in the same breath as her rejection of the educational system seems to indicate her defiance of power.