Question

Read the passage.

[Dee (Wangero) is still admiring the quilts, but the narrator explains that she has promised them to Maggie as a wedding present.]
She gasped like a bee had stung her.
“Maggie can’t appreciate these quilts!” she said. “She’d probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use.” . . .
[The narrator exclaims that she hopes Maggie will use the quilts. No one has used them all this time that she has saved them. She also remembers that Dee (Wangero) had once told her that the quilts were old-fashioned and that she didn’t want to take one to college with her.]
“But they’re priceless!” she was saying now, furiously; for she has a temper. “Maggie would put them on the bed and in five years they’d be in rags. Less than that!” . . .

In “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, what does Dee’s dialogue reveal about her feelings toward her sister?


She sees Maggie as a source of competition.


She believes Maggie is simple and ignorant.


She is jealous that Maggie has the quilts.


She thinks Maggie does not deserve marriage.

Answer 1

She believes Maggie is simple and ignorant.

Step-by-step explanation:

Everyday Use is a short story written by Alice Walker. It's written from the point of view of an African-American mother (Mrs. Johnson), who lives in the Deep South with her shy younger daughter, Maggie. It tells about differences between Mrs. Johnson and Maggie, who follow the traditional black culture in the rural South, and her educated daughter Dee, who has embraced cultural nationalism.

Dee chose a new, African name, Wangero, and has begun wearing more African clothing. She wants to take hand-made objects, such as the quilts mentioned in the given excerpt, that were used in their family for generations. Unlike Maggie, who would use them practically, she would simply display them as artifacts, as pieces of art. She thinks that Maggie is backward for wanting to use them. It's not that she is jealous that Maggie will get the quilts, but she sees her as inferior, backward, simple, and ignorant. She sees herself as superior to both her and their mother.

This is why the second option is the correct one.