Analytical essay using Marxist critical approach to Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use”
This is a story of the differences in family members. There is an illustration of the need for understanding and appreciating family values and the present situations in life in relation to the culture and beliefs of a family. By use of carefully calculated attitudes and descriptions, Alice Walker creates a demonstration of the factors, which contribute to the context and values of the heritage of a family. She does this through the illustration of the fact that appreciation of family values if not a construct of appearance or possession of objects, however, it is the attitude and lifestyle of an individual that creates the need for appreciating ones culture. It is through the personification of the characters of Maggie, Dee and their mother that the writer creates the contrasting sides of heritage and cultural appreciation. On the part of Dee, she feels higher in class ranking than her family and feels that the quilts are better in her possession than in Maggie’s possession. “Maggie can’t appreciate these quilts!… “She’d probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use” (Walker 94).
Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” is ironical. Dee is enthusiastic about her learning of the African American culture and goes home to pick up the quilts from her parents. She is apprehensive of her own culture and tries to be a different person from whom she really is. In contrast, the person who deserves having the quilts is Maggie because of her appreciation of their culture. She knows the connection the quilts have in her family more that Dee does. It is obvious that giving the quilts to Maggie would promote their continued circulation within the family generation. It is like killing the generation by giving the quilts to Dee and that is what makes it obvious to say that, as much as the quilts must leave home at some point, the significance of their living lies on who takes them away. “The quilts might leave the home, but how they do so is significant. They must move through the hands of Mama and Maggie” (Walker 2). However, Maggie is not lucky enough to have the quilts. She is not even lucky to go to school and has to struggle for everything she ever owns.
Despite the efforts Maggie puts, there is so much frustration vented on her making her childhood to be a very bad experience. All the frustration her mother has bounces on her making a generation of troubles and tough childhood such as the one her mother and grandmother had when they were young. That aspect would make her to have a different capacity for appreciating the quilts unlike the manner in which Dee would think of the quilts. It hurts Maggie to compete for the quilts with her sister who thinks she is less responsible to for taking care of them and she says, “She can have them Mama…I can ‘member Grandma Dee without the quilts”(94). Maggie represents the many black women who suffer while their lucky sisters have things easy. Dee already has a valuable gift by the fact that she attends school and is getting education unlike her sister Maggie. Therefore, the quilts ought to be Maggie’s gifts because to her, they are as valuable as reading and writing would be to Dee. These are gifts she would dearly appreciate and love having because she even knows how to make quilts. Because of the knowledge of the time and effort, making them requires and consumes, she is in a better position of appreciating them more than Dee is.
Dee is overly materialistic and mean and this creates an emotional detachment between her and the family members. A situation creates distance between the family members because they cannot understand the esthetic opinions of Dee for the quilts. It gets to a point when mama has to make a decision between allowing Dee to take the quilts and transform them into a different economic aspect without caring for their ancestors. She does not want to hurt Dee and tries to do everything in a manner that avoids any rejection for Dee, who has since turned into Wangero, but the emotional attachment she has towards the quilts makes her realize that they are treasures she cannot afford losing in the name of style and fashion according to the perceptions of Dee. The opinion of Dee may be to have the quilts for sale, make money out of them and life a classy life.
That is contrary to the cultural opinion of her family who are so attached to the quilts regardless of their lean economic situation. There was a turn in the view of the traditional American culture and its ties to a given generation. Giving the quilt to Dee was like losing a cultural identity with American ties the way Dee had already done while her family still wanted to maintain and respect the memories of those who lived ahead of them. It was not enough for mama or Maggie to have their precious quilts circulating in an economical ways, which could trigger no meaningful emotions and memories to those who used them. It is yet ironical that a family, which could have gained much from the art of making quilt they mastered cared less about the economic value of the commodity they held dearly.
To them, the value of quilts had no economic representation, it was all about the memories and, therefore, the quilts never wondered, gelled, traded or sold in any capacities, but only stayed within generational homes. The family had its misgiving regarding the commoditization of the quilt as Dee would have opted given her little concern about the quilts. This makes mama to snatch the quilts from Dees’ arms and throws them to Maggie. It is a point where she saves the quilts from circulating beyond the family generation in economies far away from home knowing that with Maggie, there will be a preservation of generational ties held by the quilts.
In the story, mama and Maggie represent ordinary people who keep things at home without putting them into any unique use ‘Everyday use,’ while Dee is a contributor to the value and esthetics of items. Their opinion for the quilt is that it is a process while Dee views the quilt as a commodity that can circulate. Mama kept the quilts without putting them to everyday use, which in a Marxist opinion may symbolize the opinion of the quilts having no value. But, to mama the value of the quilts was held for Maggie “for when she marries” (33). This goes against the opinion of Dee as her mother further retorts that, ‘She can always make some more…. Maggie knows how to quilt”‘ (Walker 33), as a sense of the knowledge of production.
Work Cited
Walker, Alice. “Everyday Use.” Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and the Essay. 4th ed. Robert DiYanni, Ed. New York: McGraw Hill, 1998. 408-413.
