Twyla says that “my mother won’t like you putting me here”. Then Twyla is talking about that her mother has told her “that they never washed their hair and they smelled funny. Roberta sure did. Smell funny, I mean,” the assumptions one might make from this is that Twyla’s mother have a racist view about the other race, however this tell very little about which race the protagonists has. On the other hand during the first meeting between the protagonist’s mothers, it is Roberta’s mother who acts in a racist’s way; instead of shaking Twyla’s mother’s hand she looks down at both Twyla and her mother then grabs Roberta and walks away.
Both fail to recognize and see each other for who they really are. Hulga/ Joy is bothered daily with her simple-minded mother because she portrays herself as a very kind and patient person towards other people. For example, she gives compliments and tell people that Mrs. Freeman‘s daughters Glynese and Carramae “are the finest girls she knows”, and Mrs. Freeman “is a lady and she would not mind taking anywhere with her.” (51). Mrs. Hopewell is embarrassed with how the way Hulga/Joy behaved and how she would dress inappropriately by wearing worn tattered clothes. Knowing that Hulga/Joy disposition toward those girls was unfavorable and she ignored daughter’s need to be accepted.
She had no confidence in her mother growing up, and saw her as a “limit” and an “embarrassment”. Later in Tan’s life, she found several surveys which led her to realize that she was not alone; there were other Asian-Americans who may have shared the same struggles as her. Tan creates a symbolic diction through the use of words like “broken”, “limited”, and “fractured”. She is very repetitive with her use of these words, although she explains how she hated when people described her mother’s english that way. Although Tan knows that the way her and her mother converse is not grammatically correct, she has grown to love it.
After being suffocated by the images of this absolute world, Mrs. Breedlove strives to acquire the white’s life style. While in her employer’s house, Mrs. Breedlove role plays as the household’s main woman because this is the closest she will get to living this fairytale life. Mrs. Breedlove also shows how little she values her family by “neglect[ing] her house, her children, her man” (127). She demonstrates the strain in her mother-daughter relationship with Pecola by allowing the little white girl she looks after call her Polly. Pecola does not address her mother in this casual manner.
As she refuses to talk to anybody, the child created her own imaginary world being unwilling to look at the reality: “Why couldn't he understand that if he kept quiet, if all of them kept quiet, her parents would hear her and come to take her home?” (47). Through the story, her illusion state changes and tend to become a realistic one. Step by step she has no choice but to find in herself enough courage to accept and to surpass the situation. Nandana can be considered a hero because, as it painful, she finally accepts and begins to talk. Secondly, there's Nirmala, Nandana's grandmother, who was binged back to reality.
Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” is a short story about heritage. A thriller in which heritage is seen in different ways. In “Everyday Use”, Walker tells a story about the conflict between a daughter and her family. Even though, the character of Mama is poorly educated, she still knows the meaning of love of her heritage. She wishes to teach this to her two daughters but times have changed and her daughters have difference views of what they think heritage is.
Meanwhile, the grown up Susie (Sandra Dee), neglected by her mother, seeks consolation with her mother’s suitor. When Annie dies, her daughter realizes how selfish she has been; simultaneously, Lora awakens to the fact that she has not been much of a mother for her own daughter. The young Sarah Jane is none too happy about her station in life, a
“Now suddenly she was Somebody, and as imprisoned in her difference as she had in anonymity.” In the narrators point of view her child was an outcast, a nobody, but when she got the call from her daughter it seem the sun finally started to shine in her daughter path, she was free. Narrator heard was the happiness in her daughters voice and started to accept who she had become. In Everyday Use, a mother regrets bringing her children in a world of poverty and
The theme in the story illustrates societal and parental expectations when it comes to being a girl and how the narrator eventually gives in to these expectations. For example, the grandmother tells the narrator, "girls don't slam doors like that." (Munro 52) The narrator thinks, "A girl was not...joke on me." (Munro 52) She realises that she is expected to fulfill the duties of a girl by helping her mother in the kitchen. As a result, she tries to fight these stereotypes by slamming doors and working outside with her father.
Maggie was very uneasy around her sister; her mother tells her anxiousness in regard to Dee’s visitation: “Maggie will be nervous until after her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in corners, homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eyeing her sister with a mixture of envy and awe” (119). Dee undermines her sister, not always knowing what type of impact she impresses upon Maggie. Dee does not appreciate her sister or her mother, both of which is barely educated and lives in a poor, dilapidated home. In fact, Dee had her own way of making this noticeable in one instance when she stood off in the distance while their first home burned down with her mother and sister inside (121). She does not feel comfortable taking on the old fashioned lifestyle her mother and sister do.