Everyday Use

"When I looked at her like that something hit me in the top of my head and ran down to the soles of my feet." - Alice Walker.

For this blog I am going to formally answer a question included in the text book.  The question is this:

Does the mother's refusal to let Dee have the quilts indicate a permanent or temporary change of character?  Why has she never done anything like it before?  Why does she do it now?  What details in the story prepare for and foreshadow that refusal?

I believe the mother's refusal to let Dee have the quilts indicates a permanent change in character.  Like the quote I used above says, "something hit [her] in the top of [her] head and ran down the soles of [her] feet."  This wasn't just a random feeling of sympathy she had for Maggie.  It was like suddenly she realized that she had to let Maggie win this one thing.  Forever, now, the mother will let Maggie have more over her sister because she realized that she too deserves to have what her sister has.  The reason her mother has never done anything like this before is because it has never hit her upon her head before.  She relates it to when she is in church and suddenly the spirit touches her and she gets happy and shouts.  It was random and sort of came out of the blue.  One detail in the story that foreshadows that refusal is at the very beginning when the mother says, "You've no doubt seen those TV shows where the child who has 'made it' is confronted, as a surprise, by her own mother and father, tottering in weakly from backstage."  I didn't realized until later that the mother was talking about confronting, standing up to, and refusing to give the quilts to her daughter, Dee.