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Sometime in 1932, Tillie Olsen began a 42 year journey on a novel that would later be recognized as possibly the single most important work about the 1930’s. Almost 30 years into this journey, she published the novella “Tell Me a Riddle” along with three other novella’s including “I Stand Here Ironing”; the prior earning her the O. Henry Award as the best American story of 1961. The latter, however, is no less spectacular as it flows seamlessly from paragraph to paragraph for four pages and encompasses 19 years of life. “I Stand Here Ironing”, the focus of this paper, is found in Prof. Helton’s “moral choice” section of his Humanities 212 class. Unless you began reading this novella with this avocation in mind, it is easy to miss how this story ties into moral choice or even belongs in the section. However, for the majority of this selection, the author goes into relatively fastidious detail exploring how both the nature and nurture spheres of her first born daughter’s rearing has failed her. It is obvious the mother feels a rather cumbrous burden of guilt for her Emily’s rearing; however, through this reminiscence by the mother and the ingenious writing of the author, the reader suffers along with