Exploring Contradictions in “Everyday Use”

Alice Walker’s short story “Everyday Use" demonstrates the opposition between heritage and tradition through the narrator, Dee, and Maggie. As the narrator, the mother of the two girls wonders if her eldest daughter Dee will continue to look down upon her cultural background. As a child, Dee was embarrassed of her home, poverty, and her family’s lack of education, so she fled to college while her younger sister Maggie remained at home with their mother. Scholar Susan Willis suggests that Walker’s blend of folk culture and fiction reveals a contradiction that goes beyond a typical mother and daughter tale (Walker 10) Indeed, contradiction emerges as the dominant theme because Dee documents her past with pictures of her mother, Maggie, and childhood house and uses the butter churn and quilts as a demonstration of pride for her African heritage; however, Dee merely views her culture as aesthetic art pieces. 

Walker examines the oppositions between longstanding heritage and family tradition. Longstanding heritage implies one’s cultural roots. As a black woman, Dee believes that she should embrace her ancestor’s cultural traditions instead of her African American familial traditions. For example, as Dee arrives, she mentions that she has changed her name to “Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo” (Walker 10). Dee explains that she does not use the name Dee anymore because she did not like “being named after the people who oppress” her (Walker 14). However, while she believes the name equates oppression, it is actually a testimony to her family’s long history. Dee shares her name with her great-grandmother, grandmother, and aunt, but she does not seem to understand that her name is a tradition. Instead, Dee embraces the artistic value of her ancestry and wears brightly colored garb, jewelry, and hair that “stands straight up like the wool on a sheep” (Walker 10). Thus, Dee’s first contradiction actually lays in her inability to value her immediate family’s culture. On the other hand, the mother wears “flannel nightgowns to bed and overalls during the day” (Walker 16) while Maggie wears a “pink skirt and red blouse” (Walker 16). Consequently, their clothes are suitable for their lifestyle as working women. It seems that Maggie and her mother value the hard work of their past family members, and it is part of their tradition to ensure that their family home and behaviors reflect their culture. 

In another example of opposition, as a child, Dee was embarrassed of their poverty and home; however, now she appears to embrace her past. At one time, Dee writes to her mother to let her know “that no matter where [they] ‘choose’ to live, she will manage to” (Walker 17) visit them. In other words, Dee implied that it was choice rather than circumstances that her family lived in poverty. Now, Dee is delighted by the culture that she left behind, and she takes “picture after picture” (Walker 4) of her mother, sister, cow, and house with a Polaroid.  Ultimately, Dee views her background as art. However, it is art that holds no meaning for her. On the other hand, Maggie and her mother enjoy their surroundings because they replicated the same design as the former family house that burnt in a fire. In addition, the mother and Maggie show pride in their yard because to them it is “like an extended living room” (Walker 17).  Therefore, while the mother and Maggie view their home as practical shelter, Dee pretends it is a prop that one would see in an art exhibit that represents this particular era of African Americans. 

Furthermore, although they are sisters, Dee and Maggie are in direct contradiction with one another due to their behavior. For example, Dee asks for “Grandma Dee’s butter dish” (Walker 6), so she “can use the churn top as a centerpiece for the alcove table…[and] something artistic to do with the dasher” (Walker 10). While Dee viewed them as artifacts of another era, Maggie revealed that they are pieces of tradition. In response, Maggie reminds Dee that “Aunt Dee’s first husband whittled the dash… [and] His name was Henry, but they called him Stash” (Walker 12). Because Maggie recalls the makers of the churn and the dash, she reveals that she is immersed in her families’ tradition. As another example of the sisters’ contradictions, when Dee went to college, she did not take the quilt that her mother offered her because she thought they were “old-fashioned” (Walker 13). However, now she wants to take home two quilts.  Ironically, while Dee desperately wants the quilts her grandmother and aunt sewed, she ignores that she is named after them. While Dee believes her family’s history oppresses her, she does not mind using their items as a means for art. Correspondingly, Maggie understands her heritage because she will use the quilts for “everyday use” (Walker 12) and when they grow old, she will replace them because she “knows how to quilt” (Walker 12) whereas Dee wants to “Hang them” on a wall. Ultimately, Maggie values her family’s labors and plans to continue their traditions while Dee will glorify them as a fictionalized past. 

These contradictions occur because at times the past and the future clash. Many times some may believe that tradition is old-fashioned and does not allow a family to evolve. However, traditions are what make each family special and unique. Formerly, Dee’s past revolted her, and it seems that the only way she is able to reconcile the two is to romanticize them. In direct opposition to Dee’s passion for evolution, the mother and Maggie do not find it important. Thus, the contradiction lies within Dee, the mother, and Maggie. Each is unable to understand each other’s culture, and it is this fear of the past and the future that will inhibit their relationship. Nevertheless, Maggie and her mother will continue to live the way they are comfortable and Dee will seemingly go on to embrace her former life as an artistic token of the past. 

Work Cited

Walker, Alice. Everyday Use: Woman Writers. Ed. Barbara Christian. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1994. Print.