Alice Walker
is the dreamer whose fictional universes pay equal respect to animals,
plants and people of every racial, cultural, religious and sexual orientation.
In my opinion this woman is amazing, thus, I have decided to concentrate
in this essay several of the most outstanding features of her life which
I think encouraged her to create her writing style. Besides, I have commented
the short story “Everyday Use” which belongs to her book In Love and Trouble
published in 1973. This was the heyday of the Black Power ideologies when
“Black was beautiful”, the Afro hair style was in fashion and Blacks were
seeking their cultural roots in Africa, without knowing too much about
the Continent of the Atlantic slave trade.
Regarding
the short story “Everyday Use”, in an interview with Mary Helen Washington,
Alice Walker revealed that she saw three women in her story as herself
split into three parts,
“I really see that
story as almost about one person, the old woman and two daughters being
one person. The one who stays and sustains- this is the older woman- who
has on the one hand, a daughter who is the same way, who stays and abides
and loves, plus the part of them- this autonomous person, the part of them
that also wants to go out into the world to see change and be changed.”
“Everyday Use” is
a short story told by a mother about the visit of her daughter Dee from
the city to her house in the country. She lives with her other daughter
Maggie. The account is narrated in first person so that through the mother’s
eyes we perceive the disparity between the two sisters and their opposite
ways of life.
Whereas Maggie is unsteady,
Dee acts without hesitation. Maggie has grown up working in the country
while Dee was sent to the school in Augusta because “she wanted nice things.
”
Dee does not like country life. She is a woman with a “style of her own”
ever since she was a teenager. The country was very small for great aspirations.
She never liked her house. When it burnt she was neither sad nor sorry.
She had just “a look of concentration on her face as she watched the last
dingy gray board of the house fall in toward the red-hot brick chimney.”
Now Dee feels guilty because she has never told her mother she feels grateful
for the education she gave her. Thus, she starts to give importance to
things she had never previously liked as a means of reward to her mother’s
effort. For example she takes photos of them but “she never takes a shot
without making sure the house is included.” She also asks for various old
quilts made by her mother and her aunt which she refused before going to
college because she thought they were “out of style.”
On the contrary, Maggie
was born and bred in the country. She works there and moreover she loves
it. She has not a strong personality. Maggie always leans heavily on her
mother, as she did when the house burned, “sometimes I can still hear the
flames and feel Maggie’s arms sticking to me, her hair smoking and her
dress falling off her in little black papery flakes.” This quote
also implies her love for the family house. As regards the quilts, Maggie
does not give them the same importance as her sister does. She is used
to them because she is able to make them. Dee scorns her sister because
she thinks Maggie is going to use the quilts everyday, that she is not
going to appreciate them sufficiently.
Another
important feature is that the mother, although she tries to see good qualities
in Dee, starts wishing her daughter to thank her for what she did for her
in a TV show, which demonstrates she has not forgiven Dee yet. At the end,
she realises Maggie is biased to lead a life like hers and,
on the other hand, Dee is a city-girl, and she does not like it much.
Racism
is obviously present in the lives of black people. Our three main characters
are black and Dee is the only one who is not afraid to deal with white
men maybe because she lives in a city. She does not feel inferior to them,
“she would always look anyone in the eye.” Whereas the mother would not
dare clash with white men, “who can ever imagine me looking a strange white
man in the eye? It seems to me I have talked to them always with one foot
raised in flight, with my head turned in whichever way is farthest from
them.” She is resigned to live like that, as if black people were different
or inferior to whites.
Furthermore,
Dee changes her name to Wangero because she cannot bear “being named
after the people who oppress” her. This is her way of protesting and of
demanding tolerance.
Summing up, this is the story of a woman, her daughters and their contradictory
feelings. The mother and Maggie prefer a country life: peaceful and without
worries. However, Dee is happy and prefers to live in the city. She
bears in mind the idea that her sister is missing many wonderful things
one can find in a city when she says “you ought to try to make something
of yourself, too, Maggie. It’s really a new day for us. But from the way
you and Mama live you’d never know it.” Nevertheless the mother decides
to leave her legacy, the quilts, to her daughter Maggie because she thinks
she will give them an extraordinary everyday use.
As
a conclusion to the whole work I would like to say that despite the fact
that Walker has made long strides in the literary world since 1973, it
might be useful to remember that this victory has not come easily. And
also that the woman writer’s fear of rejection is always there, especially
now when we are about to enter a new phase of writing in cyber space, dominated
by Bill Gates and his, so to speak, all male crew. As a result, women are
forced to be creative, innovative in order to survive in a hostile environment.
Año académico 1999/2000
Asignatura: 4595 - Narrativa en Lengua
Inglesa I
© a. r. e. a./ Dr. Vicente Forés
López
© Francisco Olmedo Fernández
Universitat de València