I Stand Here Ironing

She was dark and thin and foreign-looking in a world where the prestige went to blondness and curly hair and dimples, she was slow where glibness was prized. She was a child of anxious, not proud, love. We
were poor and could not afford for her the soil of easy growth. I was a young mother, I was a distracted
mother. There were the other children pushing up, demanding. Her younger sister seemed all that she was
not. There were years she did not want me to touch her. She kept too much in herself, her life was such she
had to keep too much in herself. My wisdom came too late. She has much to her and probably little will come
out of it. She is a child of her age, of depression, of war, of fear. (Olsen 262)

The most noticable irony with this passage fro...