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Mrs.G.is like Gilman and the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” in that
she is essentially placed in solitary confinement and forbidden to work, but
Mitchell emphasizes massage and “electric passive exercise” in which the mus-
cles are stimulated by mild electric shocks. She gets better, he claims, and he is
able to “overfeed” her and to sneak iron supplements into her food. Everything
about her treatment is decided for Mrs.G., but readers do not sense the level of
condescension that Gilman’s narrator receives from her husband. Perhaps this is
because we hear Mitchell’s tone as he addresses other doctors and not as he
speaks to Mrs.G.Unlike Gilman, she stays with the program, and unlike the
narrator of Gilman’s story, she does not slip into madness. Mitchell takes full
credit: the woman remains at the time of his speech “what I made her.” Implied
in the description of Mrs.G., however, is the notion that she suffers from exhaus-
tion because she seeks to go beyond her strength. There is no way to know from
this distance what Mrs.G.’s problem was or why Mitchell’s treatment worked in
her case and not in Gilman’s.
Mrs. G. is offered as evidence of success, not as a case study that gives
detailed observations from which his audience can draw their own conclusions.
The gaps make comparison difficult, and readers are usually too influenced by
our reading of Gilman and our knowledge that isolation and lack of exercise are
debilitating. Still, we may appreciate the need of busy people to have some
respite from the duties of life and the recognition that it is not a good idea for a
woman to have babies too often. Mrs. G. may recover in spite of Mitchell’s
treatment.
Modern readers cannot miss the signs of anorexia and bulimia that would
indicate a need for more calories and mineral supplements and would cause
weakness that might require bed rest. It may strike young working mothers as
appropriate that this woman’s case comes up in a speech that also describes what
we would now call post- traumatic stress disorder, in American Civil War soldiers.
Today’s women often feel embattled. When stress is the cause of illness, rest
alone may bring relief. Mitchell’s description of the male patient with “ loco-
motor ataxia” is more puzzling, since some physiological condition seems to be
involved. The gaps in his description are too great to draw any real parallels with
Mrs.G.or Gilman’s character. From the details we are given, the woman’s care
is managed more closely. Students may find it significant that Mitchell distin-
guishes between his male and female patients. In speaking of men with battle
fatigue, which he sees as a variety of “Neurasthenia,” Mitchell says that such
cases are “more certainly curable than are most of the graver male cases which
now we are called on to treat.” Does this imply that female cases are less grave
or that male cases are taken more seriously? One wonders too if Mrs.G.would
have received such solicitous, albeit intrusive, attention from the famous doctor
if she had been of a lower social class.
In the passage from John Harvey Kellogg’s 1882 The Ladies’ Guide to Health
and Disease, women are advised about their responsibilities as childbearers. Like
today’s nutritionists, who encourage women of childbearing age to eat a diet high
in folic acid and other nutrients that prevent birth defects, Kellogg encourages a
healthy diet and exercise, arguing that these should begin even before concep-
tion occurs. But his tone reveals warrants close to those of the eugenics move-
ment of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as he uses words such as
Writing Researched Arguments 45
46 Writing Researched Arguments
stock- breeder and propagate. Prenatal care for mothers focuses on the breeding of
superior children. He assumes as fact some notions about the prenatal responsi-
bilities of mothers and fathers that modern readers find laughable. The mother’s
“mental condition” at the time of conception is important, Kellogg says, though
he states with no apparent fear of contradiction that the father’s condition as the
couple is having sexual intercourse is naturally more important in forming the
child’s character. One is reminded of medieval descriptions of homunculi, tiny
beings implanted in the mother’s womb wholly through the father’s influence,
though women were blamed, of course, if the child was the wrong sex. With no
real understanding of genetics and prenatal development, Kellogg reveals his
warrants as he suggests reasons for symptoms of fetal alcohol syndrome and per-
haps other birth defects in the opening paragraph. If the child is retarded, both
parents must have been “in a state of beastly intoxication” when the child was
conceived. Because the child can be further marked during gestation, the
mother “should not yield to the depressing influences” of pregnancy. The
assumption is that she should be happy to find herself pregnant, her opportunity
of “molding a human character” being a “ Heaven- given” one.
Although Kellogg differs from Mitchell in his emphasis on a vegetarian diet,
exercise, and “interesting conversation, reading, and various harmless and pleas-
ant diversions,” he agrees with the avoidance of excitement and the need for the
woman to think happy and calm thoughts. If she wants her child to acquire high
culture, the pregnant mother must concentrate totally on the art in which she
wishes her child to excel. One presumes that if the child is born without talent,
she didn’t think hard enough. If she does not want her child to crave stimulants,
she should avoid spices, coffee, tea, and so forth. But throughout his list of sug-
gestions, Kellogg gives the impression that women must be saved from their
emotional tendencies and that husbands should gently control the lives of these
flighty bearers of their children if they want healthy progeny. When he goes on
to discuss “puerperal mania” — or postpartum depression — the connection of
this text with Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is evident. They seem to be
describing the same woman. We might ask students considering majors in medi-
cal or social science fields to research current knowledge about this condition.
Some readers will recall the biography of poet Anne Sexton, whose psychosis
following postpartum depression led both to a career as a writer and to her ulti-
mate suicide. As late as the middle of the twentieth century, Sexton insisted that
her work as a poet kept her alive rather than contributing to her psychosis, even
though her intellectual activity was not able to keep her from suicide. Although
the condition is taken seriously in Kellogg’s 1882 quotation from a medical
expert, the wording borders on the pejorative; there is a “sullen obstinacy,” for
example, and a shocking “immorality and obscenity” sometimes occurs in
patients’ speech. This “insanity of childbirth” is characterized by “active mania”
much like that of Gilman’s narrator. Kellogg’s text implies paranoia in the fre-
quent suspicion that one’s food is being poisoned, whereas Gilman’s protagonist
centers her paranoia on the wallpaper and the house.
In both texts, however, postpartum symptoms may trigger underlying ten-
dencies. Gilman’s narrator tells of childhood experiences in which she saw her
surroundings in an imaginative way that may either reflect fantasies or presage
mental illness. Whereas Gilman’s narrator is freed from the responsibility of
caring for her child and doesn’t seem to think much about the baby, Kellogg
describes the rejection of the child and even its attempted murder that we some-
times read about in court cases today. One of the ironies of Gilman’s story is the
husband’s unwillingness to accept his wife’s condition as real. Many mental ill-
nesses are now being recognized as having a physiological basis in brain chem-
istry and function. Although Gilman’s narrator blames her treatment for driving
her over the edge, Gilman did not try to raise her own child. Given the climate
of divorce at the time, perhaps she had no choice. It is more likely, however, that
she feared the recurrence of her illness or her inability to function as both
mother and writer. Like Mitchell, Kellogg advises isolation during the manic
phase of the disorder and counsels against excitement. He prescribes a change of
scene, as the husband of Gilman’s narrator has provided for her. But Kellogg
ends with the suggestion that a “dear friend” could be called on to visit. Readers
wonder if his wife’s obsession might have been avoided if John had allowed her
to have her cousins visit, as she so greatly desired.
If Kellogg’s text were published today, readers would find a great many of his
assumptions faulty. We know that genetic and congenital factors play a large part
in the development of a child but not in the naive ways assumed by Kellogg.
Still, many pregnant women cultivate a peaceful atmosphere for the unborn
child, playing classical music to influence developing neural pathways. Many of
Kellogg’s insights about eating whole foods and vegetables rather than meat are
more accepted today than they were in his time. We are horrified when Gilman’s
character is forced to eat meat and to avoid exercise and when Mitchell fattens
up his patients as they lie idle. We find Kellogg’s ideas about sex a bit odd, how-
ever, and would not prohibit sex during pregnancy for fear that this might make
the children more prone to sexual activity. We usually allow diet and exercise to
naturally take care of constipation and do not fear poisoning by the “effete prod-
ucts” of digestion. Although his warrants may be outdated, many of Kellogg’s
ideas about diet, exercise, and the avoidance of stimulants during pregnancy
would be accepted today. Most modern readers find his assumptions about the
treatment of mental illness in women to be more problematic, however.
Writing Researched Arguments 47
Chapter8
Writing with Critical Approaches
toLiterature (p.270)
If you assigned Chapter4, “The Reading Process,” your students will have seen
how topics of literary theory and criticism can open up a work of literature. They
will have seen how Linda Hull’s “Night Waitress” can be unpacked using topics
of literary criticism such as social class, boundaries, politics and ideology, perfor-
mance, and the body. In Chapter8, we take a similar approach, this time using
critical “schools” as lenses. After briefly defining several such schools, from
venerable New Criticism to recent postcolonial criticism and queer theory,
weunpack James Joyce’s story “Counterparts” from each critical perspective. We
close the chapter by asking students to try out the approaches themselves on
another story from Dubliners, “Eveline.” We chose another story from Dubliners
because many of the same issues in “Counterparts” recur in “Eveline,” freeing
students to pay more attention to how the critical approaches fit the details of the
story (and vice versa) than giving them an entirely new fictional world toabsorb.
PART TWO
Literature and Arguments
Chapter9
Families (p.299)
MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS: STORIES (p.301)
TILLIE OLSEN
I Stand Here Ironing (p.301)
Readers tend to have strong reactions to texts by Tillie Olsen. Many feel that she
challenges class- and gender- based societal barriers, whereas others see her as
simply making excuses for failures to overcome them. In her nonfiction book
Silences, published in 1978, Olsen supports her assertion that both men and
women of the working class were long denied political, intellectual, and literary
voices because of the realities of labor and survival. Olsen was in fact instrumental
in bringing texts written by women back into print and into the literary canons of
universities during the 1970s and beyond. “I Stand Here Ironing” blends fiction,
dramatic monologue, and autobiography. Many of the details of the story echo
details of Olsen’s earlier life as a working mother during the 1930s and 1940s.
Today’s college students, living with many of the benefits brought about by
social movements propelled by Olsen’s generation, sometimes have trouble
understanding the narrator’s situation. In one memorable presentation in an
introduction to literature class, a student saw Emily as retarded and the narrator
as obsessive- compulsive, as evidenced by the fact that she is ironing! A show of
hands revealed that several students had never seen their mothers iron. Ironing
as a metaphor for oppressive but necessary work may therefore be an elusive
concept for young readers. An equally simplistic reading sentimentalizes the
characters as victims of poverty, reducing them to cardboard cutouts.
The ambiguity of the ending’s optimism or pessimism suggests that the
issues are more complex than they appear on the surface. The narrator despairs
at ever being able to explain why her daughter needs help, but she holds out
hope that the girl will find her own way if she is empowered by self- knowledge.
50 Families
A critique of social conditions is implicit in the text, while the narrator explicitly
sorts out her failings as a mother. She may be trying to forgive herself, and this
issue — of where personal responsibility ends and societal responsibility
begins — may be the major theme of her story. Students could explore other
perspectives by acting out an imagined conference among the characters men-
tioned in the story, perhaps even bringing Emily’s father, stepfather, and grand-
parents into the mix. Reactions to the first- person voice of the narrator vary.
Some students sense an effort to impose a narrative line on fragmented memo-
ries, and others dismiss the narrator as a whiner. The narrator may resist a confer-
ence with the teacher because she wants to avoid blame, but she seems primarily
to resist an intrusive and profitless discussion that would oversimplify complex
issues. She also hints that the power for change is not in the mother but in the
daughter herself.
AMY TAN
Two Kinds (p.308)
After Amy Tan discovered that her mother had been forced to leave three living
daughters in China rather than the dead twins that play a climactic part in “Two
Kinds,” she had fears that her mother would drop her for the “good” China
daughters. These fears compounded the already difficult relationship that lends
realism to the stories of The Joy Luck Club, from which this story is taken. A trip
to China with her mother helped Tan place these fears into perspective, how-
ever, when she found that her mother was just as critical of her half- sisters, dash-
ing their dreams of the nurturing mother they had fantasized about having. For
Tan, writing her mother’s stories has become both a way of finding her own voice
as a writer and a way of coming to terms with her painful resistance to the older
woman’s controlling personality. Learning to forgive herself for being the wrong
kind of daughter, the disobedient kind, has been a major task for Amy Tan. She
says, however, that learning to forgive herself has helped her to forgive her
mother as well.
Because the cultural differences between the mother who came of age in
China and the daughter who was born in America are so obvious, the writer
admits that the cultural and generational differences are difficult to sort out.
These factors and her mother’s great personal losses intensify their struggles.
Asian American young people maintain that the cultural expectations of their
parents still cause similar difficulties in some families, and non- Asian students
may recognize their own families in the story as well. Americans who travel to
other countries, Tan included, realize that social mobility is more possible in the
United States, but we cannot say that race, gender, and other differences do not
matter. Perhaps the little Chinese girl can be a prodigy, but she cannot be Shirley
Temple. The argument does not settle the matter for either character. The
mother is wounded deeply but still cannot accept her daughter as she is; the
narrator becomes the wrong kind of daughter but discovers the power of her own
will. We know less about the mother’s feelings since we see and hear her through
the eyes of the daughter, whose thoughts we are allowed to share. Dialogue and
descriptions of body language bring the mother to life, as do anecdotes of her
walker Everyday Use 51
failed attempts to make a “prodigy” of her daughter. The characters are dynamic
but remain locked in their struggle with each other.
The mothers in the stories by Amy Tan and Tillie Olsen provide a sharp
contrast between oppressive control and frantic neglect. Olsen’s narrator wishes
for her daughter to be empowered and to find her own way. The mother of Tan’s
narrator seeks to empower her daughter by directing her life and does not see the
irony in this attempt. Both mothers unintentionally reject their children but love
and want good things for them. Because the stories are told from different points
of view, it’s hard to say which daughter has the more difficult life. We know more
of the pain of Tan’s narrator, but we know that she grows up to be successful and
wins the battle for selfhood. We are less sure about Olsen’s Emily. It may be that
living with an overpowering mother is more intense but less painful than living
without one.
ALICE WALKER
Everyday Use (p.317)
One of the major themes of Alice Walker’s short story “Everyday Use” is the
indeterminacy of history and identity, especially for African Americans. Walker’s
characters raise issues about what constitutes a family’s heritage. As autobiogra-
phers must, we all identify the major events in our lives and the characters
representing our ancestry by choosing those that fit into the narrative line we
have chosen for our story. We look back at the poem we wrote in third grade
and interpret this as a signpost along the road to the career in English studies,
foreshadowing the budding literary giant we hope to become. Since we didn’t
become Michael Jordan, we omit the hours perfecting the free throw on the
basketball court, or we reinterpret them as evidence of perseverance. We
choose our ancestors as well, literary or otherwise. Alex Haley finds the West
African griot and the courageous Kunta Kinte as he explores his Roots and writes
the text that becomes a culture- changing miniseries on television. Never mind
that some of the details are borrowed; this narrative explains Alex Haley to Alex
Haley.
As we approach Alice Walker’s story, we might ask students to tell about
ancestors — genetic or chosen — that they claim as their own. Alice Walker picks
fiction writer and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston, a Harlem Renaissance literary
figure who gave voice to the African American storytellers of the rural South.
But she also searches out the strengths of her mother and other remarkable,
everyday women of Minnie Tallulah Grant Walker’s generation — and earlier
generations — who paved the way for the independent African American woman
who strides through today’s world. These are the women who worked in the
homes and took care of the children of white families or labored on farms to
battle for the education and equality — and survival — of their own children.
Most of the students coming into our college classrooms today know these
women, if they see them at all, as elderly neighbors and grandmothers, and their
struggle in many cases may seem far away.
Like the mother in “Everyday Use,” many women of Alice Walker’s mother’s
generation found ways to send one or two promising children away to college. As
52 Families
often happens in working- class families, regardless of race, the hard- bought edu-
cation sometimes separates the young person from people back home, and what
was intended to uplift may lead to conflict and isolation.
African American students born in the 1980s feel far removed from the
afros, the dashikis, and the earnest quest for black pride of their parents’ 1960s
and 1970s youth and glimpse images from the period perhaps in the stereotypes
of television reruns. Ironically, although “Everyday Use” could be taught until
recently as a contemporary view of conflicting values about history, today’s stu-
dents need a historical context to understand the characters in Walker’s story and
the issues of concern to them, including the trendy Dee/Wangero, who now
seems dated to many readers.
Although we are meant to see Dee and her male companion as pretentious
and ironically humorous, Alice Walker’s treatment of them in 1973 was not
applauded by all African Americans. She was questioning blind political correct-
ness before the term was invented, and there was a risk involved in holding black
pseudointellectuals up for ridicule. What was to stop white Americans from
interpreting her text to mean that a person of color is ridiculous unless he or she
lives in poverty and ignorance? In this context, we should raise the issue of audi-
ence and purpose. This is not a text written to explain black folks to the white
reading public but a text about cultural issues within the African American com-
munity. Readers who are not African American can also be cruel to family mem-
bers, however, and thus miss much of value in their own heritage. The story thus
has universal applications. We may also benefit from the reminder that there is
no one monolithic “African American community.”
Most readers will agree that Walker visualizes an audience that needs to be
reminded that family and community values are not to be discarded simply
because one acquires an education. There is history that we read in books, and
this is good. As a writer and speaker, Walker has shown that she knows this sort
of history. She has lived in Africa, and the topics of her writing are international.
In her imaginative fiction, she has traveled as far back in African history as one
can go, which means she has traveled as far back in human history as one can
go. But there is a history that is not found in books or formal archaeological and
anthropological studies, and this sort of history is good, too. This is oral history,
the true if not always factual history of folklore, the material history that can be
touched in a handmade quilt or churn or bench, and the living history of parents
and grandparents.
While a valid argument could thus be made that Dee, in her newly awak-
ened consciousness about African American history, has more in common with
the writer Alice Walker than the stay- at- home Maggie ever could have, Walker
makes Maggie the more sympathetic character. Walker calls on us to feel com-
passion for Maggie from the second paragraph, in which Mama, the narrator,
indicates that Maggie has been burned and that she is in humble awe of her
sister. Because the narrator clearly has more tender feelings for the damaged
sister, we more readily accept her “everyday use” of items of material culture over
the museum curator’s impulse that would take them out of context. Maggie is a
part of folk culture, while Dee is a romantic — disconnected — collector. Mama
is hostile to Dee because she recognizes the rejection and coldness behind
Dee’smotives.
walker Everyday Use 53
Dee seeks her roots because this activity is in style, and she is concerned
more with style than with substance. She thus misses her chance to see the more
immediate history that her mother could pass on to her because hypocrisy and
arrogance blind her to its value. Most college readers can understand Dee and
would probably feel more comfortable having coffee with her than with the
formidable narrator and her pathetic daughter Maggie. We’d be more likely to
hang the quilt on the wall than to put it to everyday use. Looking at a portrait of
Alice Walker, we know she would not join them in a dip of snuff. But we can
imagine her sitting in a nearby rocking chair, really listening and learning.
Rather than opposing “getting back to one’s roots,” Walker seeks to open the
eyes of educated African Americans like herself to the emptiness of doing this in
isolation from the living people in one’s family and the immediate ancestors
whose memories they preserve. Walker’s characterizations of Maggie and Dee
therefore border on the symbolic two- dimensional traits of allegorical figures.
Her characterization of Maggie seems more balanced than that of Dee. While
Maggie is portrayed as a sympathetic character who carries on the traditions and
remembers family members as real people, we see her limitations. If she is
Cinderella, her Prince Charming has “mossy teeth,” and she carries on the tradi-
tion of dipping snuff, details not likely to reassure us that the quilts will be pre-
served in her hands. Walker paints Dee with an even broader brush, however,
allowing us to see only the pretentious arrogance and superficiality that Mama
finds so distressing. We do not know what she is thinking as a child when she
watches with concentration as the house burns or why she has so desperately
tried to educate the people around her as an adolescent. Mama puts a negative
connotation on these actions, but they could be interpreted as love and concern.
She might have portrayed Dee as an insecure person searching for her identity,
and Mama might have found a way to force Dee to listen to the oral history that
gives the objects meaning beyond their value as folk art. A less positive view of
Dee might have painted her actions as even more deliberate than they seem in
the narrative as it now stands. Dee seems uncomprehending rather than deliber-
ately evil. Like white liberals who exhibit unconscious prejudice while thinking
they are free from any taint of racism, Dee shows by her attitude toward her
mother and sister that she does not truly value her African American culture.
The problem with Dee is that she comes to take in, not to share in, her true
heritage. She gives the distant kiss on the brow instead of the full embrace. She
grasps and insists and belittles. Her self- esteem depends on pretense, and she
must protect herself from her true history and identity. Like many African
Americans and others who acquired names reminiscent of slavery or colonial
domination, Dee has chosen a new name. This can be a positive act, an assertion
of independence from a constant reminder of oppression and stolen identity. But
Walker seems critical of Dee’s choice to do this. Perhaps she opposes the super-
ficial, imitative, faddish quality behind the decision for some people.
For Dee, the impulse differs on the surface from slavish assimilation into
white society, but underneath lies a similar falseness and fear. Dee and her friend
pass for political thinkers who celebrate their African roots, but they bypass the
living family heritage. Walker has the narrator remind us how much is owed to
the hardworking people who lived and created in between the romanticized
African ancestor and the beautiful, educated woman of the late twentieth
54 Families
century. Their names deserve to be continued and put to everyday use. But the
newly christened Wangero denies this honor to the Dees in her ancestry.
Students interested in exploring the social and historical issues raised by the
discussion of Alice Walker’s texts might turn to other texts in our anthology that
deal with similar issues. For example, they might compare the conflict here with
generational conflicts in texts by Nikki Giovanni (p.391) and other writers in
this “Families” chapter. We can have them research contemporary African
American and Caribbean writers to determine how many chose new names and
what reasons they give for the change.
The conflict in values between Maggie’s and Dee’s mutual desire for the
quilts raises the definition of culture. Dee represents “high culture” and art. To
people who see culture in this way, Maggie and the narrator are uncultured.
The work of family members is not art but craft and is desirable because it is
quaint and currently in vogue among sophisticated people. Maggie, however,
knows how to make quilts. She values them because they are links to people
she has known and valued: her grandmother and her aunt. She uses the educa-
tion they have given her to create new quilts. She is willing to give them up
because she has the memory without needing a material reminder. She knows
the stories behind each object because she has paid attention. The creators
arenot anonymous to her. Her mother remembers the hands that have worn
the marks on the churn.
The narrator does not share the story of the blue piece of cloth from the
Civil War uniform or the knowledge that Dee’s name goes “back through the
branches” much farther than the younger woman realizes. Dee has cut herself
off from the family tree and chosen other ancestors. She devalues Maggie’s keen
memory, saying that her “brain is like an elephant’s.” Their difference highlights
the difference between recorded history (fixed in writing or displayed on
museum walls) and oral history and folklore (worn and constantly changing with
everyday use). It is easy at this point to see these views of history as being in con-
flict, and the narrator must choose between their competing values. But the
question is complex.
In her famous essay “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” Walker describes
being inspired by an exhibit in the Smithsonian Museum, a quilt created by an
anonymous black woman. Obviously, if the quilt had not been hung on a wall,
Walker would not have experienced it. In “Everyday Use,” Walker has her narrator
choose the way of human love and compassion, choose to value the person who
needs uplifting rather than the one who unwittingly takes on the role of spoiler and
oppressor. To Dee the quilt is an object, just as the man who accompanies Dee
looks at the narrator as an object, “like somebody inspecting a Model A car” — and
just as their ancestors were objects to slave traders and slaveholders.
The symbolism of the quilt now seems important to Dee, standing for the
art of working women. The irony, of course, lies in our recognition that Dee
values the working people who created the artifacts but not the working women
in front of her face. The symbolism of the quilt could be expanded to stand for
America itself. The cliché of the melting pot does not capture the reality of an
American culture that is not homogeneous but rather is made up of separate
subcultures that retain their identities. Like a quilt, the colorful scraps are sewn
together but form one functional whole. This image of diversity is striking; we
walker Everyday Use 55
should recall that it comes close to Booker T. Washington’s metaphor in his
Atlanta Exposition Address in 1895 (p.1160). Washington argued that blacks
and whites should remain separate but equal, like the fingers on a hand, one in
social responsibility but segregated in all other ways.W.E.B.Du Bois strongly
disagreed with Washington, arguing for full integration and equality of opportu-
nity (p.1163). Students may think of metaphors that more closely capture the
fluidity and overlapping of subcultures within American society, perhaps coming
up with organic examples or examples from computer technology. The issue of
whether affirming ethnic differences tears or weaves together the American fab-
ric is a complex one. Emphasizing genetic and so- called racial differences,
accepted as essential categories that cannot be changed, can lead to dangerous
social results (as it did in Nazi Germany), but a recognition of the different his-
torical and cultural experiences of ethnic groups can enhance understanding
and add to the richness of all our lives. Seen in microcosm, America is a culture
made up of diverse families, a fact to which any newlyweds — even if they come
from similar ethnic groups — can attest as they negotiate holiday traditions and
details such as who keeps the checkbook and which way to hang the toilet paper.
We reject some family values and fight for others.
At one point in the story, the educated daughter proclaims of her former
identity as Dee, “She’s dead.” For her, culture and family history are reduced to
lifeless commodities, things that can belong to her but are no longer filled with
the memory of life that gives them value to Maggie and the narrator. Dee has
been influenced by her education and by the political movements of the time,
as represented by the farming collective that operates in the neighborhood, one
of many efforts to organize people and to better economic conditions in the
South. Dee’s friend makes it clear that he is not involved in this sort of active
labor. The implication is that he wears the trappings of black pride but doesn’t
allow the philosophy to sink in to the extent of helping others or breaking a
sweat. Dee seems to be influenced by him. But she has always been concerned
with whether or not something was in style, and even refused the quilts as “ old-
fashioned” when she left for college.
Few readers would suggest that Dee should be like her mother and sister;
what she needs most is to learn to respect them and to find out who they are and
what they know and value. This is not easy. Walker has given them qualities that
have figured in racist stereotypes and have been used in some African American
groups to sort by social class. The narrator and Maggie are dark- skinned.
Numerous people of color have spoken of the “paper bag rule” or the “blue vein
society” that kept African American women out of debutante balls and social
clubs if their skin was a shade darker than a paper bag or too dark to see the vein
on the inside of the wrist. The beauty criteria of white society thus continued to
oppress and influence class even in social arenas where no whites were involved.
Dee, in contrast with her mother and sister, is a golden girl — light- skinned,
intelligent, strong- willed. The mother anticipates Dee’s visit as if she were a
famous movie star, even fantasizing about a television meeting in which she
herself becomes miraculously lighter- skinned and less heavy.
Mama’s weight also contrasts with Dee’s trimness, which reaches even to her
“neat” ankles and feet. The narrator is so heavy that she has difficulty moving.
This makes her look like the stereotype of “Mammy” in Gone with the Wind, a
56 Families
Bertha- type housemaid and cook, or an Aunt Jemima. We learn that she works
like a man. She is the image of the black woman as the “mule of the world” who
shoulders all the burdens and takes all the abuse. We can admire and respect her
strength, while we understand that Dee would not want such a difficult life for
herself; nor would we, nor — we can assume — would Alice Walker.
Mothers often side with daughters with whom they are more politically or
culturally sympathetic, but the reverse sometimes happens, as well. Working-
class mothers are often less forceful than Mama of this story and would not have
been able to stand up to a daughter like Dee. If Dee’s mother had internalized
the values of the dominant culture (as Dee herself may have internalized them
before encountering people proud of their African heritage), Mama may have
despised herself and her daughter Maggie. Elements of this attitude are apparent
in the early scenes of Walker’s narrative in which Mama imagines herself to be
lighter- skinned, less heavy, and quick with the repartee of television talk shows.
The narrator of the story would be intellectually capable of identifying with Dee,
but she chooses the traditional values of her family, one of which seems to be
compassion for the underdog. Basic human kindness seems to be lacking in
Dee, and this shortcoming is what finally causes Mama to side with Maggie, the
daughter who needs her. Although most mothers try to be equally supportive of
each of their children, children seldom see it this way. Some parents favor the
successful child, but others spend an inordinate amount of time with the child
whose needs seem most compelling, often to the detriment of seemingly more
independent children in the family.
We feel compassion for Maggie. She may remind readers of Celie in
Walker’s novel The Color Purple in her shyness and the extent of her pain. Her
life is limited not only by her burns but also by her future with the husband with
“mossy teeth in an earnest face.” Students sometimes ask if Dee set the fire that
burned down the hated house and damaged her sister. The story does not reveal
this, and there is no sign that the narrator suspects such a thing, but we notice
that Dee is absorbed in her own thoughts rather than the injury to her sister.
She seems more self- absorbed than evil, and this seems to be the message that
Walker sends to those who have escaped unscathed, perhaps including herself.
Open your eyes and ears. Respect those who have endured labor and pain. By
making Maggie a burn victim, Walker insists that we feel compassion for her
rather than seeing her as backward or stupid. Some readers see the story as an
allegory of the conflict in values between intellectuals and the working class
that makes their success possible. Others argue that it is about shaping an iden-
tity for oneself as changes take place in society and fooling oneself by donning
trendy masks rather than dealing with real issues. It has been interpreted as a
reversal of the parable of the prodigal son. Other critics interpret the narrator’s
attitude toward Dee as idolatry that she comes to see as false. We can focus our
reading on the character of Maggie and the empowerment her mother achieves
by supporting her.
Most readers will take the story seriously, though they recognize the humor
and irony. Certainly there is nothing funny about the image of Maggie’s arms
sticking to her mother or about the rejection the other women feel from Dee.
But we laugh when the narrator humorously refuses to understand the name of
the man who comes with Dee. She first pretends that she confuses his name with
walker Everyday Use 57
the greeting — meaning “Peace be with you” — that she has heard used by
people at the collective farm; then she mispronounces his Muslim name so that
it sounds as though he’s a barber. This makes him look ridiculous, as does Dee’s
African greeting, which we know she uses simply to show off. The characters are
exaggerated, and the hyperbole makes us smile. By contrast, hints of a real politi-
cal situation are understated. The narrator has gone out of her way to see the
farmers guarding the collective with rifles after whites poison their cattle. This
contrasts with Dee and her companion, who playact at fighting oppression while
others do the work. The narrator seems justified in her evaluation of Dee’s world
as characterized by lies and make- believe. She speaks of Dee reading to everyone
as if it were a punishment. It is as if she reads at them rather than to them, using
reading as a weapon. But don’t we value reading and make- believe? Do we agree
with the definition of fiction as lies? We may be left with the question of how far
Alice Walker may have reeled us in with an unreliable narrator and convinced
us to accept her value judgments as correct.
It is always difficult to predict how a child will respond to different styles of
parenting. The mother in Tillie Olsen’s “I Stand Here Ironing” blames her pov-
erty as a single mother for the emotional neglect of her child, but the mother in
Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” is also poor and seems to be on her own as a par-
ent but doesn’t neglect. Both mothers lack a true bond with their eldest daugh-
ters, however, and try to puzzle out the reasons why. The mother in Olsen’s story
sees her daughter Emily as “homely” during the long years she has not been
close to her, though she thought she was a beautiful baby and recognizes her
“ now- loveliness” as a young adult. Her monologue paints a picture of a child
suffering from the low self- esteem that stems from always feeling inadequate and
unwanted in her mother’s life, despite the older woman’s guilt- driven rationaliza-
tions. Dee’s mother in “Everyday Use” has always seen Dee as beautiful, though
she is bewildered and frustrated by Dee’s strong- minded bossiness. Dee has been
allowed to rule the family. Emily has not been a full member of her family.
In spite of these differences, both are outsiders. Had Dee been brought up
by unloving surrogates rather than by her mother and had her teachers failed to
recognize her abilities, she may have become more bitter and vindictive, but she
may have been less self- absorbed and demanding. Olsen’s narrator ends by blam-
ing society, saying that Emily has been “a child of her age, of depression, of war,
of fear.” Dee, growing up a generation later, benefits from her own turbulent age
and is shaped by the civil rights movement and the subsequent black power and
black arts movements. As a gifted African American woman, Dee would have
found few avenues for her talents in the early twentieth century and would have
found herself frustrated and angry, trapped in a society that offered little help for
people of color or of the working class. Ironically, it is her success that separates
Dee from her mother, while Emily’s life has been characterized by failure.
If Dee had been the elder sister of Amy Tan’s “Two Kinds,” her alienation
from the family would have been even more profound. The older sisters in this
story died in China, but Tan’s real half- sisters were left behind. If Dee had been
brought up like the protagonist of Tan’s narrative, her behavior might have been
much the same, since both girls have an independent spirit and reject the values
of their mothers. Dee, without the pressure to become a prodigy, actually
becomes one, but this outcome is not what her mother seems to want.
58 Families
Taken together, the three narratives of this cluster demonstrate three differ-
ent responses to a generational conflict in values. Emily seems to have bad luck,
suffering illness that only complicates the division between mother and daugh-
ter. After a lifetime of unintentional rejection, she seems to be coming into her
own, choosing the life that suits her, rejecting the academic world that tries to
supply pat answers to complex issues. Emily, like Dee, could come to reject her
mother’s values, but the story’s ending indicates that perhaps she will not, that
her mother approves of Emily’s independent action and does not want a passive
daughter. And Emily’s wry comment about her mother’s constant ironing hints
at an understanding of the reasons her mother has neglected her and an accep-
tance that this is just the way her mother is, a woman constantly working. One
could see her comedy, however, as a way of turning pain into art. Although Dee
could be seen as doing something similar by hanging quilts on the wall, she fails
to recognize the pain of her sister. Emily’s motives seem to run deeper. The
daughter in Amy Tan’s story seems closer to Dee, and perhaps the major differ-
ence in our evaluations of the two exists in the point of view of the stories.
Because we hear Tan’s story from the daughter’s perspective, readers may have
more empathy for the daughter than we do for Dee. Looking from the outside,
we might see the pleasure of the daughter in Tan’s story when her mother gives
her the piano as similar to the nostalgia Dee seeks to gain from the artifacts of
her childhood home. But unlike Emily, who does not get enough from her
mother, and Dee, who overachieves to please herself, Amy Tan’s protagonist
feels that she is mothered too much. Thus, she reacts by refusing to give her
mother what she wants, effectively rejecting the older woman to maintain her
own identity. If the child is Tan herself and the narrative a veiled autobiography,
one could argue that her attitude is quite similar to Dee’s attitude in terms of art,
since Tan takes her culture and turns it into art. She differs, however, in that she
allows us to see her own shortcomings and her adult understanding of her
mother’s actions. Her use of her ethnic heritage in art does not objectify but
shows respect, even when describing her complex feelings about her family.
Of the daughters in the stories, readers will find Dee the least kind. The
daughters in the stories by Tan and Olsen seem less cruel. Most readers will find
Tan’s narrator the kindest in the end, since we know her thoughts and see that
in the long run she cares about her mother, while insisting on her own auton-
omy. Dee’s sister Maggie seems perhaps to be the kindest character in the stories,
but her willingness to completely efface herself and her needs in favor of her
sister stems from an attitude of worthlessness, and it could be argued that one
must have a certain amount of power for kindness to be meaningful.
Dee may be the smartest daughter if we use academic ability as a measuring
rod, but she is blind to the deeper significance of the objects she seeks to collect
and to the value of the people of her childhood. She may not be as smart as
shethinks she is. The daughters of the other stories, by contrast, may be smarter
than they think. The narrator of Amy Tan’s story reveals depth and critical think-
ing that supersede the trendy knowledge that Dee demonstrates. Emily, too, may
reveal self- knowledge by choosing acting over academics. She may be brilliant,
but school has hampered rather than enhanced her potential. Dee is arguably
the most ambitious of the daughters in these narratives. All seek to be the person
wolff The Rich Brother 59
they define themselves to be, however, rather than conforming to their mothers’
ambitions for them.
A case could be made that each daughter is troubled, and certainly the
mother- daughter relationships are not bringing any of them self- esteem. Emily
may seem to be in the most danger of having a troubled life, but she is the young-
est when we encounter her. Amy Tan’s character is a good candidate for least
troubled because we observe her working out her rejection of her mother. Dee
does not seem capable at this point of doing this, and she continues to reject her
mother, thus rejecting a part of herself. Because she has suffered so much rejec-
tion, Emily may have the hardest time succeeding in life and in love, since
individuals often tend to replicate their childhood experiences in love relation-
ships. Tan’s character should bring the same sort of self- examination and insight
into other relationships, but no one will own her, and she may see domination
where it is not intended. Dee seems to have found a partner as pretentious and
superficial as she is. She may succeed on the surface but keep flitting to the next
trend and the next man, respecting what she reads but never quite seeing the
reality around her. While the mothers must take responsibility for their actions
toward their children and how they turn out, most readers will agree that adult
sons and daughters need to reevaluate the attitudes they have developed from
childhood perceptions and take responsibility for their own responses to parental
actions.
SIBLINGS IN CONFLICT: STORIES (p.326)
TOBIAS WOLFF
The Rich Brother (p.326)
As this story ends, the older brother imagines the voice of his wife calling him to
account for his brother. “Where is your brother?” is a question of biblical propor-
tions, and the circumstances here recall at least two similar stories. After killing
his brother and thus committing the first murder, the eldest son of Adam and
Eve is asked this question by God, and he (Cain) answers, “Am I my brother’s
keeper?” Much later, Jesus describes two brothers in the parable of the prodigal
son. In the parable, the younger son wastes his inheritance in riotous living, and
the conforming elder brother is furious when the slacker is welcomed home with
ceremony. In Wolff’s story, the elder brother seems to accept that he must be his
brother’s keeper in spite of its injustice. Ironically, the younger brother’s prodigal-
ity is too Christian for the Christians, and his riotous living is generous and naive
to the point of holy idiocy. Still, a bit of doubt remains for Pete that the prodigal
may be rewarded with the fatted calf after all. “What a joke if there really was a
blessing to be had, and the blessing didn’t come to the one who deserved it, the
one who did all the work, but to the other.” The title begs the question of which
brother is the rich one. Pete has all the trappings of prosperity, but Donald is the
one who gives everything away, the one who acts with largesse, the one who
invests.
60 Families
The language Wolff uses to describe Pete identifies him as the typical
money- grubbing bourgeois salesman, a literary character we have learned to
view with contempt. Donald is the dreamy romantic whom we expect to have
unexpected wisdom. The hitchhiking Webster seems sinister and even Satanic
at first, identifying the darkness as “Stygian,” and we expect some terrible thing
to happen. Later, when Pete hears a twig snap in the woods as he leaves his
brother on the road, we wonder if the terrible thing will now take place.
Webster’s story of Peru smacks of the formula of romantic adventure, and we
agree with Pete that it is not credible. But we view it all from Pete’s point of view,
and we can’t be sure what has happened. Like Pete, we expect the ironic ending,
a true climax to the story; instead, we’re left in the middle of the road. Rather
than give stock answers based on our past reading of fiction, we might respond
by questioning the formulas we have come to expect. Pete and Donald do not fit
the stereotypes of fiction when examined closely. Pete, the practical brother,
appreciates the mystical experience of skydiving, whereas Donald, the spiritual
searcher, questions its cost. There is a mixture of mutual dependency and rivalry
between the brothers that surfaces as they sleep or pretend to sleep, as children
or adults. The young Pete strikes the young Donald, who turns a blind eye; the
adult Pete dreams that his brother guides him in his blindness; Pete sleeps while
a mysterious contract is made between Donald and Webster. The reader is left
in the dark to fill in the gaps where the issues may really lie.
JAMES BALDWIN
Sonny’s Blues (p.339)
Like the protagonist of Tobias Wolff’s “The Rich Brother,” the elder brother in
“Sonny’s Blues” must deal with the question of being his “brother’s keeper.” This
phrase takes on metaphorical significance in its African American context even
while the story stands on its own as a narrative about family relationships.
Brothers, in James Baldwin’s Harlem, must be there for each other but can some-
times only stand and watch. The story begins as the schoolteacher protagonist’s
younger brother has gone to prison for using heroin. He tells us that his students
remind him of his brother, and we walk down a Harlem street with his brother’s
friend. In a flashback, his mother reveals in their last conversation that his father
had seen his own brother maliciously killed by white people in a car that was
speeding down a road like an uncontrollable force. We see inside bars and look
out the window at gospel meetings where participants call each other brother
and sister. Other flashbacks reveal class conflicts within the extended family, and
dialogue often carries the story line and the debate between brothers. Baldwin
both shows and tells a parable about letting one’s brother be who he must be,
within both the family and the community.
The story belongs to the elder brother at the beginning, and we continue to see
through his eyes. We get to know Sonny better as the brothers’ dialogue proceeds,
however, and by the end the story belongs to him, as the title has indicated all along.
Both brothers are dynamic characters, and we see them struggle — less with each
other than with forces beyond their control, the “darkness outside.” Their dying
mother places the responsibility for Sonny on the older brother, but he is forced by
hemingway Soldier’s Home 61
World WarII to shift this responsibility to his wife’s family, and Sonny must reckon
with the judgment of the middle class and deal with his brother’s expectations
without his presence. In this case, to be one’s brother’s keeper may be to deny him
the freedom to keep himself. At the end of the story, as Sonny plays his music, his
brother is finally able to listen to him. This happens as he recognizes that the men
playing the blues with Sonny function as a family tuned in to each other, as the real
brothers have failed to be. Perhaps our sense of responsibility for our siblings limits
our ability to see them as separate from ourselves.
Baldwin’s characters come closer to understanding each other in the closing
scene. They have talked throughout the story, but music and gesture communi-
cate more in the end. Wolff’s brothers are less articulate and less able to find real
closure, though perhaps this is because we leave them at a different point in their
relationship. Students might want to discuss popular psychology studies about
birth order as they look at the conventional older brothers and their passionate
siblings. It may be that parents, by making the older child somehow responsible
for the younger, subtly suggest the roles that the children will play. Students will
choose their own answers to the possible themes of these stories, even going
beyond obvious family issues to social, political, or religious ones.
RETURNING HOME FROM WAR: STORIES (p.364)
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
Soldier’s Home (p.364)
Ernest Hemingway, himself a veteran, published the short story “Soldier’s
Home” in 1925. The story chronicles a young soldier’s difficulty in re- entering
civilian life after several years serving in France and Germany during World
War I. Unlike other soldiers, who returned home to excitement and fanfare,
Krebs’s return goes largely unremarked because he’s sent back home so late.
Being among the last divisions to return from the Rhine in 1919, Krebs is coming
home to a town that’s already heard its fill of war stories and celebrated too many
homecomings.
While at first he doesn’t want to discuss the war, Krebs soon changes his
mind, discovering only too late that no one wants to listen. He starts lying about
his experiences to get people’s attention, but even those stories go unheard. He
is understandably upset with himself for the lies and tries to live as simply as
possible, avoiding relationships even with his family members in an attempt to
keep from adding more complexity to his life than he can handle. Although he
experiences very few connections to the people at home, Krebs does find a keen
enjoyment in watching girls walk down the street. He likes their shoes, their col-
lars, and their short haircuts, but he is uninterested in doing the work to actually
woo one of them. Having spent several years in the war, he determines no doubt
accurately that their lives have taken different paths.
Hemingway’s frequent use of the word complicated suggests that Krebs is ulti-
mately working to center himself and regain control over his life. He seems unable
to fully process his experience, struggling to understand the battles he participated
62 Families
in. Toward the end of the story, he finds great fulfillment in reading historical
accounts of those conflicts — the books perhaps help him to locate himself a little
better. Krebs ultimately decides to leave home, in part because he doesn’t feel he
belongs there. His family keeps hoping that he will fit back into the mold he left
behind, and they don’t seem to understand the ways in which he might have
changed. At the same time, he is tired of telling lies, of pretending to have feelings,
and decides he might be better off living at a distance. Although his treatment of his
mother, the lies he tells upon his return, and his tendency to let others take care of
him, all make him a slightly less likeable figure, his decision to leave his hometown
suggests also that he does care about his family and his own mental health. Although
he may say he doesn’t love his mother, for example, in leaving he is potentially spar-
ing her the heartache of watching him struggle to find himself again.
LAuREN GROFF
Good People (p.370)
Lauren Groff’s short story “Good People” chronicles the homecoming of the
couple’s son, who has spent three years deployed in the Middle East. He has
ostensibly come home a hero, but it is not clear what acts he committed to earn
the designation. “Good People” is a provocative title for this piece because it’s
not at all clear that they are, in fact, good people. The title draws attention to the
ethical component of the situation. The husband, in particular, comes across as
a bully; we learn that he has been suspended from his position as a fish and game
warden for pistol- whipping a boy into a vegetative state. Towards the end of the
story, even his wife has begun to distrust her memories of him as a decent man.
She recalls an incident the night they met in which he chased after, and possibly
murdered, a man who had attempted to rob them. But she was nevertheless
complicit: “She preferred not to know. She was not without blame” (p. 379).
While the particularities of their experiences are potentially unique, these char-
acters are not necessarily out of the ordinary. The title implies that perhaps
everyone is made up of such nuances and gray areas.
Silence plays a key role in “Good People,” in that the husband seems to do
the majority of the talking. Readers have insight into the wife’s thoughts and feel-
ings, but for her husband, we have only his ill temper and childish remarks. When
their son returns home from the war, he is silent, unapproachable. He closes his
parents out just as, we later learn, his father always closed his mother out. We are
led to believe this has something to do with trauma from his experiences and the
unimaginable difficulty of being back home after three years overseas. The wife is
most troubled by his behavior and repeatedly refers to him as “my son,” “my boy,”
and “her boy.” It is clear that she views him as primarily her son, not her husband’s,
although her ruminations about what he has done to earn his discharge eerily echo
her concerns about her husband’s past misdeeds. But towards the end of the story,
readers likely sense that something irreparable has taken place. Standing in her
kitchen, she believes that she can somehow delay the dawn by continuing to bake
into the night. She refuses to look outside: “What it was wouldn’t exist if she didn’t
look” (p.380). While we aren’t sure precisely what has taken place, there is some-
thing in the coming light that she is determined to resist.
hayden Those Winter Sundays 63
RECONCILING WITH FATHERS: POEMS (p.382)
LuCILLE CLIFTON
forgiving my father (p.382)
Lucille Clifton’s extended analogy between paying one’s bills and seeking emo-
tional resolution between father and daughter begins with the language of blunt
earnestness. The speaker has been thinking hard. She has come to a conclusion.
After many years of delay, it’s time for a resolution. Although both her parents
are dead, Clifton’s speaker focuses on the continuing emotional tug of unre-
solved pain and disappointment. Both the speaker and her mother tried to get
emotional nurture from the father, but, as she notes, he was never capable of
such commitment. He was too needy himself to give to others, a trait that appar-
ently ran in his family. In the analogy, the father never had emotional reserves to
give but instead was “the pocket” that was empty to the women who hoped for
more. In the last stanza of the poem, the speaker suggests that she is trying to be
rid of the exhausting blame game. She realizes that her father can give her noth-
ing. In a kind of neutral reconciliation with herself, she will have nothing more
to do with his memory. Neither parent can supply emotional restitution or ulti-
mately satisfy her. Her epiphany that her desires are futile leads to as much
“forgiving” as she is capable of extending to her father.
The answer to Lucille Clifton’s question in line 21 — “what am i doing here
collecting?” — seems to be “wasting my time,” since the last two lines strongly
