The family is a trio: Dee, Maggie, and their mother. Maggie and her mother live at home and have more in common than with Dee. Mama is somewhat protective of Maggie, noting her insecurities that seem to stem in large part from the fire that burned their former house to the ground:
Have you ever seen a lame animal, perhaps a dog run over by some careless person rich enough to own a car, sidle up to someone who is ignorant enough to be kind to him? That is the way my Maggie walks.
Mama longs for a closer relationship with Dee. In the beginning, she dreams of being brought together on a television show where Dee would embrace her with "tears in her eyes."
Dee is smarter and prettier and knows it. Before moving out, she would impart her scholarly knowledge to Mama and Maggie, "a lot of knowledge [they] didn't necessarily need to know."
When Dee returns home, Mama learns that she has changed her name to Wanegro Leewanika Memanjo. She says that she no longer wants a name of "people who oppress" her, but mama reminds her that she was named after her Aunt Dicie. In actuality, Dee is trying to distance herself from her own family, including her mother.
As it turns out, Dee has come home to ask for things. After laying claim to various items around the house, she asks for two quilts:
They had been pieced by Grandma Dee and then Big Dee and me had hung them on the quilt frames on the front porch and quilted them . . . In both of them were scraps of dresses Grandma Dee had worn fifty and more years ago. Bits and pieces of Grandpa Jarrell's Paisley shirts. And one teeny faded blue piece, about the size of a penny matchbox, that was from Great Grandpa Ezra's uniform that he wore in the Civil War.
When Dee tries to claim these as hers, Mama has a choice to make. She has already promised these quilts to Maggie.
Maggie is quite submissive to her sister's wishes. She says, "She can have them, Mama," even after Dee calls her sister "backward" and says that she'd likely use them for "everyday use."
Mama protects her promise to Maggie. Dee ends by telling her sister that she "ought to try to make something of herself." When she leaves, Mama and Maggie find peaceful contentment in each other's company.
Dee brings tension to both the relationship with her mother and with her sister, while Maggie and Mama exist in an easy understanding of each other.
In Alice Walker's "Everyday Use," the family dynamic is tense between Dee and the rest of the family, Mama and Maggie. Dee has gone away to college and has also gotten in touch with her African roots. She wants to be called by a new name, Wangero. The tension in the story becomes clear when Dee/Wangero comes home for a visit.
The narrator, Mama, and her daughter Maggie live together. Maggie was seriously burned in a house fire some years before the story takes place. Maggie seems to lack confidence and to be very quiet. Mama tells us, though, that she is a gifted quilt-maker, following a family tradition. This detail is key because when Wangero returns, she asks to take quilts made by her grandmother to display as art on her walls. Mama feels that Maggie should keep the quilts and has already promised them to her. Maggie and Mama become more assertive in the face of Dee's challenges, and Mama wonders how deep Dee's connection is to the quilts, as her interest in them is so sudden. Maggie possesses the skill to make the quilts, and Dee is concerned that instead of appreciating the artistry of the quilts, Maggie will put them to "everyday use." Maggie and Mama, though, feel that the true way to honor the skill that goes into the quilts is to do just that: to use them.
The central conflict in the story is between two sides of the family: Mama and Maggie on one, and Dee/Wangero on the other. The tension between them has to do with their education levels and their connection to the family's history.
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