Essay: Alice Walker’s short story, “Everyday Use”

Since its 1973 publication in Harper’s Bazaar, Alice Walker’s short story, “Everyday Use,” has become one of the most popular stories from the larger collection, In Love and Trouble. Told in first person by Mama, “Everyday Use” is set within the late 1960’s or early 1970’s, a time when Black America was undergoing a great transformation. When Dee Wangero returns to her home in the rural South, her differing notions of heritage and pride clash with that of her mother and sister. Because each character is inextricably linked to where they are from, setting operates within the story as a reflection of each character and contributes to the story’s overarching theme about the meaning of heritage. Description of the yard, dream sequence and house show how Dee fetishizes the setting and the objects within it as opposed to Mama and Maggie who understand, honor and are proud of their heritage.
Throughout the text, Walker uses setting to link Mama and Maggie to their surroundings and ultimately, their heritage. The yard appears in the first scene of the story, showing the comfort and pride they take in their home: “It is not just a yard. It is like an extended living room. When the hard clay is swept clean as a floor and the fine sand around the edges lined with tiny, irregular grooves, anyone can come and sit and look up into the elm tree and wait for the breezes that never come inside the house” (Walker 843). The meticulous care with which the two women tend to the yard shows the reverence they feel toward their space. The description of the yard is the first and last setting Walker details, emphasizing the importance of heritage in the story. Maggie is included in this almost ritualistic preparation that serves as a familial tie between the two, echoing Mama’s sentiment that heritage is a continuous, living creation that only family can provide.
Walker again uses setting as a reflection of character in Mama’s recurring dream where she is reunited with Dee on a TV show. Unlike Mama and Maggie who are linked to their home, Dee is linked, at least within the confines of Mama’s mind, to that of a stage setting. Despite the Black Pride movement Dee is associated with, here Mama appears the way Dee would want her to be: “a hundred pounds lighter,” with skin “like an uncooked barley pancake” (Walker 843). This suggests that Dee’s idea of heritage, like the African clothes and jewelry she wears, is merely a façade. In juxtaposition to the comfortable breeze depicted in the yard, the hot, glaring lights of the TV set emphasize the clash between Dee and Mama’s notion of heritage and exemplify Dee’s disconnection to her roots.
Setting in relationship to heritage is again seen when Dee continuously snaps photos of a house she would have once hated. While there is nothing inherently problematic about the “reclaiming” of one’s ancestry, Dee Wangero’s privileging of a constructed heritage rather than an authentic one results in a failure to identify with her past. Only now that the Black Pride movement has made reconnecting to one’s roots popular does Dee view her family home with the reverence that Mama and Maggie feel every day: “She never takes a shot without making sure the house is included. When a cow comes nibbling around the edge of the yard she snaps it and me and the house” (Walker 846). Dee turns her history into a novelty and becomes a tourist in the home of her own family. She photographs all this before actually greeting her mother, emphasizing her need to document her heritage rather than live it. Similarly, the act of photographing the house distances her from her mother and sister, setting Dee outside of her own history.
Dee fetishizes both the house and the items within. She desires Grandma Dee’s butter dish and churn almost as if shopping, and although both objects are used in a practical way by her family, she sees them as relics in a museum. Unlike Maggie who knows the exact history of the dasher, Dee is unsure of its origin and has no intimate, personal connection to it. Rather than using the items, she sees them merely as statements— “centerpieces” whose only purpose is to be viewed as “something artistic” (Walker 847). Although she is fascinated by the items, it is in a superficial way. In contrast, her mother and sister actually put the objects to use, animating and keeping their heritage alive.
In the turn of the story, Mama has a realization that it is Maggie who is truly deserving of the quilts. Dee’s desire to hang them as if in an exhibit suggests that while she feels respect for the quilts, they are essentially alien, impersonal objects rather than family heirlooms. In a moment of resignation, Maggie gives up the quilts to her sister saying, “I can ‘member Grandma Dee without the quilts” (Walker 848). In this moment, Mama realizes that it is Maggie who will respect the quilts by using them the way they were intended. Just as Dee does not understand the legacy of her name passed down through generations, she does not understand the history behind the quilts nor the people who made them. It is Maggie who knows how to quilt and is the one that took the time to learn the skill from Grandma Dee and Big Dee. This exemplifies the authentic tie Maggie has to her ancestry.
Walker addresses the meaning of heritage, a theme seen throughout the story, by employing setting as a link between the women and their environment. While the dream sequence shows the disjunction between Dee and her past, the yard and house exemplify Mama and Maggie’s strong tie to their roots. Although Dee has embraced the Black Power movement and its push to reconnect with one’s roots, her fetishism of setting and and the objects within it make her motives questionable.