The narrator of "I Stand Here Ironing" describes her daughter as "a child of her age, of depression, of war, of fear." Though the story was published in 1961, it has been seen as having ties to the Depression era and to "the socially conscious literature of the thirties." Regardless of whether Olsen's work in 1961 bears much resemblance to writings from the 1930s, the Great Depression remained very much a part of the American psyche long after the decade was over. Even during the more prosperous 1950s and 1960s many people still remembered the severe deprivations caused by the country's disastrous economic collapse in the 1930s and lived in fear of repeating the experience. Differences in the values of those old enough to remember the Depression years and the values held by their children, who were too young to remember those years, have been cited as a...