Tell Me a Riddle by Tillie Olsen
"Tell Me a Riddle" by Tillie Olsen is a poignant collection of four short stories that explore themes of lost dreams, identity, and the passage of time. The narratives delve into the contrasting realities of who individuals aspire to be versus who they have become, using characters from diverse backgrounds and experiences. Each story features protagonists grappling with the limitations imposed by their environments, such as Emily in "I Stand Here Ironing," who confronts the impact of socioeconomic factors on her development.
The characters, including Whitey, Carol, Parialee, Eva, and her husband, reflect the struggles of finding their place in the world while navigating personal desires and societal expectations. In "Tell Me a Riddle," Eva and her husband face divergent views on their future after decades of marriage, highlighting the complexities of long-term relationships and individual needs. The collection culminates in a powerful commentary on generational differences, particularly in how younger women are portrayed as resilient and capable of charting their own paths, contrasting with the sacrifices made by older generations. Through rich characterizations and emotional depth, Olsen invites readers to reflect on the intricacies of human relationships and self-discovery.
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Subject Terms
Tell Me a Riddle by Tillie Olsen
First published: 1961
The Work
Tell Me a Riddle includes four short stories that build from the introspective “I Stand Here Ironing” to the title story, “Tell Me a Riddle.” Each of the stories recounts lost dreams, lost potential, and the ravages of time. The “who we could have been” and the “who we have become” are presented in stark contrast.
Emily, the focal point of “I Stand Here Ironing,” has been limited by the fact that her parents did not have the wherewithal to “afford for her the soil of easy growth.” Whitey (“Hey Sailor, What Ship?”), Carol and Parialee (“O Yes”), and Eva and her husband in “Tell Me a Riddle” have been scarred by forces that were beyond their control. They are all attempting to find their respective niches and to reinvent themselves within their immediate environments.
For Whitey, the search for identity is propelled by his competing desires for a drink and for a contributory role within a stable, adopted family. For Carol and Parialee, the search is the result of the social and psychological influences that often make it impossible for adolescents to maintain the friendships they established in their preteen days.
In the case of the grandparents in “Tell Me a Riddle,” the situation is more complex. After forty-seven years of marriage and seven children, Eva and her husband are free of immediate familial responsibilities but, despite their evident love and concern for each other, have completely different views of how they should spend the rest of their days. He wants to sell the house and move into a group home, but she wants to remain in a space that she has come to define as her own. They have clearly come to need and value different things.
When Eva’s health declines, however, the entire family comes together and tries to protect her from the knowledge of her impending death. Tillie Olsen uses this event as an opportunity to juxtapose several generations and to leave readers with the impression that the younger women are more than capable of forging their own destines. The younger generation of women is unlikely to sacrifice emotional or intellectual integrity, as Eva clearly has done. To demonstrate this point, Olsen introduces readers to Jeannie, who, like Emily in “I Stand Here Ironing,” “will find her way.”
Bibliography
Culver, Sara. “Extending the Boundaries of the Ego: Eva in ‘Tell Me a Riddle.’ ” Midwestern Miscellany 10 (1982): 38-49. Culver suggests the waste that results from using women as servants and breeders. Suppressing their intellect, artistic ability, courage, and idealism causes women bitterness and is a blight on their children as well, in part because those children learn to assume a mother’s self-sacrifice as their due. Eva is thus betrayed by the cultural confinement of motherhood.
Jacobs, Naomi. “Earth, Air, Fire, and Water in Tell Me a Riddle.” Studies in Short Fiction 23, no. 4 (1986): 401-406. Jacobs contends that earth, air, fire, and water are metaphors for Eva’s various spiritual states on the continuum between isolation and union, quarrel and embrace, silence and song, life and death.
Kamel, Rose. “Literary Foremothers and Writers’ Silences: Tillie Olsen’s Autobiographical Fiction.” MELUS 12, no. 3 (Fall, 1985): 55-72. Kamel discusses each of Olsen’s works, including her postscript to Rebecca Harding Davis’ Life in the Iron Mills, which blend critical analysis and self-scrutiny. Davis and Olsen both experienced working-class hardship, observed human misery, and suffered sexism’s demands on women, which Kamel discovers in such stylistic features as inverted syntax, run-on sentences, fragments, repetitions, alliterative parallels, and incantatory rhythms that reflect the chaos and drudgery of working women’s lives.
Nilsen, Helge Normann. “Tillie Olsen’s Tell Me a Riddle: The Political Theme.” Etudes Anglaises 37, no. 2 (April-June, 1984): 163-169. Nilsen suggests the essentially political identity that Eva needs to cultivate once her children are grown, in order to offset the stunted development of her talents and faculties incurred by stifling motherhood. With a radicalism that Nilsen argues is rooted in American transcendentalism, Eva sees that love transcends personal, familial boundaries to include a commitment to better the world.
Olsen, Tillie. Silences. New York: Delta Press, 1978. The self-referential voice of the extended wail in Tell Me a Riddle offers an apologia or lamentation for Olsen’s own sparse literary output and for the waste of creative potential in working-class women’s lives. Olsen cites the ongoing tension between artists who crave a voice and an audience, and societally imposed, psychically internalized silence.
Trensky, Anne. “The Unnatural Silences of Tillie Olsen.” Studies in Short Fiction 27, no. 4 (Fall, 1990): 509-516. Trensky studies silence as a theory and metaphor that give form and definition to women’s lives in Tell Me a Riddle.