English 2130:
Alice Walker, “Everyday Use”
a. Question: Why do quilts make such potent symbols for the story (or history)
of one’s family? What does their material and their making have to do with
it?
i. Collect: how is a quilt made? What do you need?
ii. What is the significance of the stitching (or making in general)?
1. the quilting bee
iii. What is the significance of the patches/fabric?
iv. What is the significance of the patterns?
1. family stories and remembrance of family events
2. spiritual and religious symbols
3. Use of quilts to send covert messages as a means of
subversion/resistance for women and slaves
a. E.g. quilts hung in windows on ‘underground railroad’
to send secret messages
b. Quilt patterns: (SHOW ON SCREEN!)
i. Lone Star
1. referring to the Star of Bethlehem, the Morning Star, the Star
of the East
ii. Walk around the Mountain
The Mystery of the Walk Around the Mountain Quilt Pattern
[http://www.womenfolk.com/quilt_notes/everyday-use.htm]
I find one of the most frequently searched items on my site is for this pattern mentioned in Alice
Walker's short story, "Everyday Use".
"Everyday Use" is a wonderful story about what we value and why. In this story the sister who
has gone off to college has a new interest in the family quilts as valuable heirlooms. Her mother
had offered them to her when she went to college but she had refused them as old fashioned; now
she wants them. Meanwhile the other sister who stayed home has been promised the quilts as a
gift to use when she gets married. In the end the quilts go to the sister who will give them
'everyday use'.
In the story one of the quilts is a Lone Star Quilt while the other is called Walk Around the
Mountain. My article at History of Quilt Patterns: A Quest for Their Stories points out that most
patterns have several names and often a single name refers to more than one pattern. In my
search for the Walk Around the Mountain pattern I have not been able to find it either on the
Internet or in any of my many quilt books.
I asked about it on a quilt history forum and others there had not been able to find the pattern
either. Some thought it might have been the Around the World pattern. It could also have been a
regional name, family name or even possibly a fictional name. In her "Encyclopedia of Pieced
Quilts" Barbara Brackman lists a quilt called, "Walk Around" which is make up of diamond
patches just at the Lone Star Quilt. But even the name Lone Star Quilt has been given to many
quilt patterns not just the eight pointed star make of diamonds that we most often think of when
we see that name.
So what is the lesson to all this? To me it is to realize quilt pattern names are varied and
personal. Or as Barbara Brackman puts in the introduction to her encyclopedia, "The right name
for a pattern is what you call it." If we get fixed on finding the exact pattern mentioned in Alice
Walker's "Everyday Use" we have lost the whole point of the story.
______________________________________________________________________
In an interview with Walker for his book on African-American quilters, Roland
Freeman asks her "what she would like to say to people in general about
quilting." Walker replies,
"That they should learn to do it. That they should think less
about collecting quilts and give more thought to making them.
It may do all kinds of good things, too, to collect what others
have made, but I think that it is essential that we know how to
express, you know, our own sense of connection. And there is
no better sense of understanding our own creation than to
create, and so we should do that."[3]
[3] Roland Freeman, A Communion of the Spirits: African-American Quilters,
Preservers, and Their Stories, Rutledge Hill Press: Nashville, Tennessee.
1996, 153.
c. CLASS: Does anyone have an especially “valuable” quilt in the family? How
do you define “value”? Does anyone have a quilt story/history?
______________________________________________________________________
2) The Story
a. What do the quilts mean to
i. Mother and Maggie?
ii. Dee?
iii. “Old-fashioned” or “priceless”? Question of value?
iv. Significance of “everyday use” for mom/Maggie and Dee?
v. Importance of “knowing how to quilt”?
vi. What different ideas about “heritage” does each view represent?
What evidence from the text can you find to describe how
mom/Maggie and Dee think differently about heritage, family, and
memory?
“You just don’t understand,” she said, as Maggie and I came out to the car. “What don’t I
understand?” I wanted to know. “Your heritage,” she said.” (p. 70)
1. Dee: ideological, academic, radical-militant
2. mom/Maggie: tied to tradition, family, home
ii. Naming/renaming: Why/how does Dee change her name?
- Dee: militant black idea of returning back
to Africa as the ultimate “roots” of
African American identity, not tainted by
white/western interference
- her boyfriend: Islam as counterculture
Analyze: the argument over her name’s origin (p. 67, bottom)
- Dee: “named after the people who
oppress me”
- Mom: named after family as long as one
can remember (esp.: she can trace it
beyond the civil war; thus: this name is a
family tradition independent from the
power of the oppressor!)
3. Especially, focus on ALL MATERIAL or PHYSICAL
IMAGES/OBJECTS—including the quilts—used throughout the
story! [COLLECT ON BOARD!]
a. THE QUILTS: (P. 69, top)
i. Made on the front porch by three generations of
women in the family
ii. Made from scraps of dresses worn by Grandma
Dee long ago and Grandpa Jarrell’s paisley
shirts
iii. ESP: piece from Ezra’s uniform worn in the
Civil War [IT IS BLUE, I.E. IT IS A UNION
UNIFORM; => Great Grandpa Ezra fought for
freedom/against slavery!]
iv. Hand-stitched
b. THE BENCHES/BUTTER DISH/CHURN AND
DASHER [P. 68, middle]
i. Dee: using them for decoration
ii. Mom/Maggie: still using them to make butter
(“She jumped up from the table and went over in
the corner where the churn stood, the milk in it
clabber by now.”)
iii. Hand-made by family members, from tree in
family’s yard
iv. Showing “small sinks”; evidence of long use
c. THE HOUSE(S)
i. Old house: p. 66, top (burned down)
ii. New house: p. 66 middle
d. MAGGIE’S BURN MARKS/SCARS! (p. 65, top)
i. Experience; pain of family’s poverty inscribed
on her body
e. THE YARD/ELM TREE (p. 64, bottom)
i. Simplicity, connection to ground/soil/land
ii. Poverty
iii. Peacefulness (aren’t the irregular grooves in the
sand exactly a Zen technique?
POINT OF VIEW:
What does the story seem to convey because it is told from the point of view of the
mother?
What is the mother “lacking” or “missing” according to Dee?
What is Dee missing according to mom/Maggie?
How would the story be different if told from Maggie’s point of view/Dee’s point of
view?
What does mom’s final act of defying Dee represent?
(for mom, for Maggie, for Dee)
What seems to be the author’s take on the conflict?
- Does this mean Walker is opposed to the ideas/ideology of the national
black movements of the 70s? What seems to be her criticism?
- Given what you know about her biography, what is the relation of the
writer to her past?
Would the meaning of the story be the same or different if it was
a) written by a white author?
b) Told about white characters?
CHARACTERIZATION:
Collect other details that contribute to Walker’s intricate characterization of
each character!!
Compare: characterization in EXPOSITION [to p. 66, up to “When she comes….”]
and rest of the story!
- mom’s recollection
- conversation/characters’ actions
OPINION: Is the story/are we entirely “fair” toward Dee? Should we turn her education,
her success, and the changes she as gone through (as well as her early rejection of her
family’s poverty and ignorance) entirely against her?
______________________________________________________________________
LAST QUESTION: Why is a quilt/quilting a perfect image for the craft of story-telling or
writing a story?
FLANNERY O’CONNOR, “GOOD COUNTRY PEOPLE”
1. What does Mrs. Hopewell mean by her phrase “good country
people,” which O’Connor uses as the story’s title? Does the
significance of this phrase change for the reader by the end of the
story?
2. How significant are the names O’Connor gives her characters in
‘Good Country People”? Doe the names Mrs. Freeman, Mrs.
Hopewell, Joy Hopewell (Hulga), and Manley Pointer suggest—
literally or ironically—something about the characters?
3. Why does Joy privately rename herself Hulga?
4. Can we identify some Southern stereotypes associated with the
characters? In particular, what are the weaknesses, fallacies, and
prejudices of each character? Who or what is Manley Pointer,
then?
5. What larger points about religion and faith does O’Connor seem to
make?