Free Sample Essays > North American
Values an Heritage in "Everyday Use"
than that of her mother. While she now rejects the names of her immediate ancestors, she eagerly values their old handmade goods, such as the hand-carved benches made for the table when the family could not afford to buy chairs. “Everything delighted her. Even the fact that we still used the benches her daddy made for the table when we couldn’t afford to buy chairs” (68). Dee loves these benches that she once rejected.
Dee explains that she wants Grandma Dee’s butter dish with the churn top and the dasher. Dee describes her purpose for wanting these items: “I can use the churn top as a centerpiece for the alcove table and I’ll think of something artistic to do with the dasher” (69). Dee wants these items to decorate her house.
Dee also wants the two quilts that “had been pieced together by Grandma Dee and then Big Dee and [the narrator] had hung them on the quilt frames on the front porch and quilted them” (69). The quilts were made of pieces of clothing that belonged to different family members. Even though the quilts were promised to Maggie, Dee would rather not let her keep the quilts. Dee explains, “…they’re priceless! Maggie would put them on the bed and in five years they’d be rags. Less than that!” (70). Dee thinks that Maggie will destroy the quilts as time passes on. Dee believes she can make better use of them as decorative objects.
Even though Dee may seem to value these items, they are nothing more to her than mere artistic objects. It never occurs to her that they represent an important part of her heritage. Her family probably made these things because they could not afford to buy them. Rather than putting sincere interest in her heritage, she wishes to put the handmade objects on display as an art decoration for her house.
Walker makes it clear that values and heritage are major themes in the short story. Even though Dee tells her mother and Maggie that they do not understand their “heritage,” because they plan to put “priceless” heirloom quilts to “everyday use,” it is really Dee that does not understand (70). She doesn’t understand that her name is very valuable to her family and that the family heirlooms are all precious items of her heritage and not simply artistic decorations.