Why does Dee's mother refuse to give Dee the quilt Dee wants
During the old days of approximately the 1920s, education wasn't a common factor to African- Americans. They practically had to teach themselves because, they were so few schools or they had close. With this little use of education they stayed home and cared for their younger siblings and help around the house with daily errands and chores. Once they were old enough to care for themselves some left their homes and started new lives, while others stayed and maintained the same lifestyle that they once abided by. In Alice Walker's Everyday Use, a mother decides to draw the line to her older daughter Dee who prefers to be called Wangero, who comes back home for a visit and tries to take a quilt handmade by Dee's grandmother. Dee fails to realize that her mother has previously made up her mind to give the quilt to her younger sister Maggie. As the story opens, Walker describes the yard that the mother and Maggie cleaned for the arrival of Dee. Maggie knows that her sister thinks she better than her because she went off and left her and their mother. "She thinks her sister has held life always in the palm of one hand, that "no" is a word the world never learned to say to her."(93) The mother then goes off and thinks about
" In real life I am a large, big boned woman with rough, man-working hands. I am the way my daughter would want me to be: a hundred pounds lighter, my skin like an uncooked barely pancake. Some of the pieces, like those lavender ones, come from old cloths her mother handed down to her. In the end Dee goes on and on about family heritage and how Maggie would take care of the quilts like she would. There I meet smiling, gray sporty man like Johnny Carson who shakes my hand and tells me what a fine girl I have. The mother had offered Dee a quilt before she went off to college but she didn't want it, but she didn't even bring it up to Dee's attention. "(98) The mother argues with Dee that Maggie wouldn't do such a thing because she sees how she had been saving them and not putting them to everyday use. She just couldn't stumble on it in her heart to tell her the truth. " (95) As the story goes on the mother, Dee, Maggie and the gentlemen sat down to eat dinner. "The truth is, " I said, "I promised the to give the quilts to Maggie, foe when she marries John Thomas. (93) This makes Walker reminisce about the hard times that African-American families shared. The mother then describes herself in a real life perspective. Johnny Carson has much to do to keep with my quick and witty tongue.
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