Every Day Use - Alice Walker

In Feminism and American Literary History, Nina Baym succinctly captures the method used by male writers to chart the developmental trajectory of their male protagonists by the metaphor of “the whaling ship” (ix). As the term “whaling ship” implies, male bildungsromans such as Invisible Man narrate a young male’s relentless individual quest for a self of his own. In contrast, female African American writers like Zora Neale Hurston, Tony Morrison, and Alice Walker make the maturation as well as the narration of the maturation of their female protagonists a product of a collective effort in which the stories of their lives are put together and transmitted by sisterhoods of women. Interestingly, Nina Baym calls this activity quilting.

African American writers like Walker grew up in a hostile economic, political, and social climate. In response to the hostile and inaccurate portrayals of his race, W E B Du Bois advocated an Uplift program to improve the image of African Americans in  the US society. The Uplift agenda presented fine and upstanding African Americans who conformed to the social mores of the day. Writers like Hurston, Morrison and Walker rejected the Racial Uplift efforts to present African Americans in a way that would accommodate the cultural standards of the white majority. Their work was different from their fellow Harlem Renaissance writers whom Hurston described as the "sobbing school of Negrohood" that portrayed the lives of black people as constantly miserable, downtrodden and deprived. Instead, writers like Walker celebrated the rural, southern African-American communities as they found them.

Male realist fiction vs. female fiction

Making of the USA had from the beginning been projected as a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant male project (Greenblatt). Writers like Walker create vaginal creative space for Black women in a dominantly White phallocentric culture. In “Everyday Use”, Walker focuses on the bonds between women of different generations and their enduring legacy.

Context

The temporal setting of “Everyday Use” is the late 1960s or early 1970s. The spatial setting is the rural America. ‘60s and ’70 were times in which many African Americans were making a collective effort at redefining their sociopolitical identity in the USA and celebrating their contribution towards making of the USA. Towards this end features of African American culture were sought out and examined in order to reconnect with the past. Black and African-American replaced the term Negro that had derogative connotations. Groups such as the Black Panthers and Black Muslims were created to resist discrimination against Blacks. Dee’s character represents the Cultural Nationalism of that period. Hakim-a-barber is a representation of the more militant of the nationalistic groups. Walker is critical of those like Dee and Hakim who misappropriate the ideals promoted by Black resistance groups.

Walker by making Mama, the subaltern, the narrator of the story gives a traditionally downtrodden group agency (Gayathri Spivak – Subaltern Studies). Mama tells the reader her story in her own way. The focal point of the story is the ongoing friction between Dee and her family which reaches its climax when Mama is forced to choose who should have the quilts.

Techniques:

Humor - Mama’s reaction to Dee’s and Hakim’s difficult-to-pronounce name – lightens the atmosphere

Use of dialect gives a sense of realism.

Irony - Dee and Maggie (Mama, too) have different perceptions on the use for the quilts. For Mama and Maggie they are practical household items. For Dee who basically views her mother’s people as country bumpkins who are stuck in the past the quilts are merely display items. But making a display item out of something meant for everyday use defeats its purpose. It is by incorporation them in the daily life that history could be kept alive.

Symbols 

The Quilts (the dasher, too) – symbolizes the bonds between women down the generations and their legacy that is threatened by people like Dee who have no understanding of how to keep it going. It was Aunt Dicie and Mama who had quilted the contested quilts. No such joint ventures would be undertaken by Dee and Maggie. When we look at women as guardians of history and culture created by men, the act of quilting acquires a special significance.  It was Mama and Dicie who had decided which patch of fabric to preserve out of the ones they had received from their various family members and in what order. Thereby, through quilting women assert agency. Dee does not understand that aspect of quilting and look at the quilts as old pieces of family history to be displayed.  

The Yard - The yard which appears in the first and last sentences of the story is a domesticated part of nature. Mama calls it an extension of the living room. In fact, she prefers it to the confines of the house. The yard is a part of Mama’s life that she is in complete control of.  

Mama

Mama, the narrator of the story, is a strong a strong woman with very few illusions about herself or her daughters, very much like the mothers in Walker’s poem “Women” that celebrated rural black womanhood. Mama is very much a product of the African-American heritage of the USA which required women to be as strong as men. She is in tune with her world and proud of her self-reliance. In addition, she is honest to the point of being cruel in her assessment of herself and her daughters, Dee and Maggie. She occasionally daydreams; yet, she remains essentially a practical woman. She displays her rejection of what Dee has become by awarding the quilts – the history of her family – to Maggie who would keep the tradition of quilting going.

Maggie

Disfigured by the fire and handicapped by lack of education, Maggie lives a secluded life with Mama. Her way of life is both a boon and a bane; for, while her isolation protects her, it also leaves her ill-equipped to deal with people like Dee. She looks at the world from behind doors. It is highly unlikely that even her marriage would change her. Maggie seems to resent Dee. However, the only time it manifests visibly is when she drops the stack of plates she had taken to the kitchen for washing up and slams the door shut on her way out when she hears Dee asking Mama for the Quilts that have been promised to her. However, her habitual deference to Dee’d wishes surfaces and she immediately offers the quilts to her younger sister. Mama probably sympathizing with Maggie as well as to display her resentment towards what Dee has become snatches the quilts off her younger daughter’s hands and gives them to Maggie.    

Dee

Dee aka Wangero, a representative of the Black intellectuals of the 70s, is in search of a selfhood. Already she has redefined herself to an extent with her new name and costume. However, both acts are testaments to her limited grasp of history, personal as well as racial. Walker presents an ironical view of the so-called Black intellectuals who attempted to reconnect with an African past ignoring their past and present in the USA itself. For people like Dee whose lives are far removed from the harsh realities of the lifestyle of people like Mama, what they encounter is upon their sojourns to the back and beyond is just a photo-op.

Dee who is judgmental by nature makes both Mama and Maggie uncomfortable. But both crave her approval. In return, she basks in their attention. Unflappable, arrogant and insensitive are words that can be used in describing Dee’s personality. Instead of being grateful for the sacrifices Maggie and Mama make on her behalf she slights them – it is the money collected for the house that was spent on her education. Dee who has come back to reclaim some parts of her heritage ends up rejecting it violently.

Themes

African-American Heritage in the history of the USA

People like Dee have misunderstood and misappropriated African-American history/heritage in the USA. She rejects her name Dee under the misconception that she had been named after some white person. By doing so she hurts her mother and insults the memory of her aunt. Her new name and clothes are just empty statements as she had no real understanding of her roots. For Dee history is something dead to be mounted on walls for people to look at.  She wants the dasher and the quilts as artefacts for display but not for practical use. In fact she takes the dasher off the butter churn, depriving Mama a way of making an essential part of her meals. For Mama and Maggie, the objects in their house connect them with the people who made and used them.  When Dee says that Mama and Maggie did not understand their legacy, it is ironic for it is Dee who does not understand it.

The Divisive Power of Education

Dee has been educated in civil rights, greater visibility, and zero tolerance for inequality. The type of education Dee has received had created a gulf between her and her family and separated her from a true sense of self, heritage, background, and identity, which only family can provide. Maggie on the other hand can barely make herself understood when she read. The irony is that Dee’s education has alienated her from her family while Maggie’s lack of education has stifled personality and deprived her of agency to a large extent.