In the story ‘Everyday Use’ the narrator is telling a story about her life and two daughters, who are named Dee and Maggie. The narrator is very strong willed, honest, compassionate and very concerned with the lives of her two daughters. Her daughter Dee is not content with her lifestyle and makes it hard on Maggie and the narrator. The narrator is trying to provide for her family the best way she can. The narrator is alone in raising the two daughters and later sends her daughter Dee to college. The longer the story goes on the more the narrator shows how intelligent and how much she loves her two daughters.
Mama who is the narrator is a woman who can do any chore that a man can, because of the way she is described. ‘In real life I am a large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands’. Mama seems very content with her lifestyle because she seems like she loves to just do work at home and relax with her family. Mama is also very observant because when her daughter Dee comes and visits, Dee tells Mama that she changed her name to Wang ero Leewanika Kemanjo.
This makes Mama feel that her daughter is running from her heritage. So when Dee asks for some quilts that have been in the family for years, Mama tells her, ‘No, they are for Maggie’. This says to me that Mama is very quick to draw as far as the actions of her daughter. She notices that Dee changed her name and abandoned her heritage. Mama tells Dee that her name came from her grandmamma.
The Essay on Mother-Daughter Relationships in Short Stories
There are three mother-daughter relationships found within the stories “Snapshot: Lost Lives of Women” by Amy Tan, and “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker. In “Everyday Use” there are two. The first relationship is between the timid Maggie and her passive mother. The second mother-daughter relationship is between her pushy sister and their mother. The third relationship is in “Snapshot: Lost Lives of ...
Mama is very understanding also, because she isn’t mad at Dee for changing her name, and just tells her that she can’t have the quilts. Mama was a very interesting to me in this story, because she is so manly in the story. ‘I can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man’, she says in the story. Mama is also aware that she is not the brightest woman, because she says that she didn’t go any further then the second grade.
I love how honest she is with herself. Like when she talks about never being able to hold a tune. Most people would lie to their self and make it sound like they could sing if they wanted to. Mama is also a dreamer, at times because she refers to things the way that they were. Like when she refers to her education and the house that they use to have. They had a house before but there was a fire.
Mama also has some humor to her, ‘Why don’t you do a dance around the ashes?’ she says this because Dee hated the house that they use to have. Mama seems like she tries to be strong like a man to protect her family, and give them a since of a father figure. Throughout the story Mama does things that a father would do, but since there isn’t one around, it seems like she wants to fill that roll. Mama proves that she is a loving woman by the way she takes cares of her two daughters. Mama proves throughout the story that she is a good parent and takes care of business in her home.
