"(Walker, ). And at that time, Mrs. Johnson realized that Maggie carries the tradition of quilting as well as the quilts itself. For her and Maggie quilting is more of an important tradition to pass on than to just know how “priceless” it is. And in the end of the story, the mother chose to give the quilts to Maggie, instead of Dee, because by giving them to Maggie, Mrs. Johnson knows the connection of heritage of her family will continue to exist in the future. From the explanation above we could conclude that Dee is someone that wants to preserve heritage and believes that they are objects to be observed and looked upon.
Imagine!" She held the quilts securely in her arms, stroking them… Maggie can't appreciate these quilts!" She said. "She'd probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use."' (423-424) Mama decides to give them to Maggie because she thinks she will use them as they were intended.
When Mrs. Johnson tells Dee that she cannot have them because she has already given them to Maggie; Dee gets furious that Maggie could come before her. Dee tries to argue that Maggie will ruin the quilts by using them everyday. Maggie tells Dee that she can just have the quilts, but Mrs. Johnson won’t have it. Dee gets mad that she did not get her way, and says hateful things to her sister and mother as she is leaving. You see, one person’s glamour, may be another’s misery; just as what someone may display, someone else could put to personal everyday use.
ENG 1102 July 27, 2014 Word count: 1014 Heritage in an Everyday Quilt In Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use,” as the narrator, Mrs. Johnson’s perspective changes from the beginning of the story to the end, at first favoring Dee and eventually favoring Maggie instead. Why does Mrs. Johnson end up favoring Maggie over Dee by the end of the story? What does their heritage have to do with the story? To Mrs. Johnson, each daughter defines heritage to her in a different way. All entwined together with her family quilts, each their own ideas of what heritage means to them through the quilts.
Maggie deserves the quilts because they were hers to begin with. “I [Mama] promised to give them to Maggie, for when she marries John Thomas.” (202) As demonstrated on page 202, Maggie clearly already considered them her own. On this page, Walker implies that Maggie overheard Dee asking for the quilts. Her reaction: “I [Mama] heard something fall in the kitchen, and a minute later the kitchen door slammed.” Shortly after, Maggie was standing in the door, scraping her feet over each other while listening to the argument (203). It is implied that Maggie is worried Dee will take the quilts away from her, after all, “‘no’ is a word the world never learned to say to her [Dee].” (196) As Dee “held the quilts securely in her arms,” (202) she probably didn’t expect to have to let them go.
The quilt is described as,” They are all pieces of dresses Grandma used to wear.”(75). Dee perspective was she think Maggie could not appreciate them as she does, but she wants it to use to decorate and display in her home as a piece of her loss heritage. While Mama said,” I promised to give the quilts to Maggie for when she marries John Thomas.” (75). Mama’s perspective is she knows Maggie is going to use them every day not like Dee. Another symbol is the churn use for the butter.
I was so excited because it was my first real job, and I had a friend from school that worked there also, her name’s Jessiee. Jessiee’s co-workers called her “hipster”, for good reason. She couldn’t have weighed over 100 pounds and dyed her hair an unhealthy amount of times a month. When she wasn’t working she had plugs in her ears and many piercings. I’ve went to school with her since we were in the seventh grade.
It’s the face of my sewing teacher, perfect. My project was done over how the sewing machine changed our society and for my physical project I made a quilt for my cousin in Iraq. I took a deep breath and just let the words flow. I received a twenty-nine out of
The women of the time made quilts that were put to "everyday use" that were then passed down from generation to generation. The quilts during this time were used to symbolize the love of the slave’s mothers and the things they had to go through just to make the quilts. A lot of times every square in a quilt symbolizes something of its own. One square may symbolize the love of a person and the other may symbolize the death of another. Each quilt is prepared differently which gives it a since of purpose.
Ulrich used Ballad’s diary to open Ballad’s life to light so everyone could know. On the film they showed her doing all the cleaning at her home and going out the garden to plant. Also when Ballard was at Mrs. Howard’s home watching and taking care her son because the boy was ill and needed medication. The film opened my eyes because Mrs. Ballard did everything to take care of her own children and struggled through her life, living through the chaotic decades and the American Revolution. Also that the Historian Laurel T. Ulrich spent eight years going through research about Martha Ballard’s diary and making her life light up to show everyone what a women went thought in the 18th Century.