everyday use character ana.

In “Everyday Use” the narrator, Mama, is displayed as a strong black woman. Mama strives hard to provide for her daughters’ needs. She is patient with both of her daughters’ different personality needs, along with the emotion ride. Mama does without in order to provide a stable home for her children. Throughout the short story “Everyday Use”, Mama has been a single parent only with a second grade education. She works her fingers to the bone doing women’s and men’s work to provide a sturdy home for her children. Mama can milk and slaughter cows before nightfall. She uses her muscles to use a churn to turn the milk into butter for her family’s supper. Mama struggled being able to send her oldest daughter, Dee, to Augusta in order to further her education after losing their home to a fire. She tucked her pride away and sought out help through the church. Not only has Mama rebuilt her home from scratch, but has helped her other daughter, Maggie, cope through her living disabilities. “She has been like this, chin on chest, eyes on ground, feet in shuffle, ever since the fire that burned the other house to the ground” ( 71). Throughout “Everyday Use” Mama describes Maggie as a shy, uneducated, but appreciative person. Mama’s strength comes from Maggie, her right hand daughter. Mama is strongly protective over Maggie, because she is not as outgoing and as intelligent as Dee. However, Mama helps Maggie find a husband and shows her the ropes of being a house wife. She teaches Maggie how to do women work and make beautiful quilts out of hand me down clothing. Mama also supports her nearly blind daughter as she struggles to read out loud. With the long strenuous work Mama does on a daily bases to keep her house afloat, she is able to be there for daughter.
One criteria of having strength, is having patients. Mama reveals patients throughout the entire short story. Her eldest daughter, Dee, is very bold and selfish. Her daughter has once written to Mama, “… no matter where we “choose” to live, she will manage to come see us. But she will never bring her friends” (72). Her daughter shown a huge deal of disrespect towards her by being ashamed of the home her mother is able to provide. Dee is only appreciative that her mother sent her to school and letting her take their ‘heritage’ back home with her to decorate her house. Dee wrapped up the churn lid and dasher to take back home to display. She didn’t ask or take into consideration that her mother and sister still used it. Mama used her patients and let her daughter wrap up the items and still make do with what she has.
Along with strength patients can only go so far. Sometimes having strength is putting a person back in their place before they walk all over them. At the end of “Everyday Use” Dee wants to take the quilts that were meant for Maggie and her husband. She felt that Maggie was going to destroy the quilts by using them every day and tried to convince her mother to let her display the quilts in her home. Mama was resilient and stated, “‘God knows I been saving ‘em for long enough with nobody using ‘em. I hope she will!’” (75). It was very apparent that no one has really talked to Dee this way and told her no, especially her own mother. Mama had been durable for Maggie and protected her belongings.
Mama has gone through a rougher life than most. She rises from bottom and works hard to provide for her family. She has done all of this without a good education and a husband at her side.