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Character Analysis
The Narrator (Mrs. Johnson/Mama)
The narrator and protagonist is a working-class black woman from the American South; her surname is Johnson, but Walker provides her with no first name. At the time the story takes place, Mrs. Johnson has two adult daughters (Dee and Maggie) and is therefore likely middle-aged or perhaps slightly older. Although she never received more than a second-grade education, the wry and observant nature of her narration makes it clear she is both intelligent and level-headed. She is also hard-working, as well as physically and mentally resilient; she describes herself as “a large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands” who “can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man” (Paragraph 5), and who seems to have raised her daughters largely on her own (she mentions their father at one point, but it is unclear what happened to him). Mrs. Johnson’s strength of character is bolstered by a deep sense of personal and familial identity; while explaining the family history of the name “Dee,” she remarks, “I probably could have carried it back beyond the Civil War through the branches” (Paragraph 32).
However, even with this strong understanding of who she is and where she comes from, Mrs. Johnson is prone to moments of insecurity. This is in large part the result of internalized racism; having grown up in the Jim Crow South, she learned to be deferential as a survival mechanism. The success of her daughter Dee has further exacerbated this tendency towards self-effacement, because Dee—now educated and at least moderately well-off—has made no secret of the fact that she considers her family an embarrassment. When dreaming about reuniting with Dee on the Johnny Carson show, Mrs. Johnson therefore imagines herself as Dee “would want [her] to be: a hundred pounds lighter, [her] skin like an uncooked barley pancake” with a “quick and witty tongue” (Paragraph 5).
This underlying lack of self-worth helps explain why Maggie’s much more obvious self-abasement makes such an impression on her; when Maggie defeatedly offers the quilts to her sister, Mrs. Johnson recognizes her own tendency towards resignation and hopelessness and decides to challenge it. The moment when she refuses to give the quilts to Dee is therefore important not only because of the effect it has on Maggie, but also because of the change it signals in the narrator herself. In teaching her daughter to value and stand up for herself, Mrs. Johnson is also reclaiming her own sense of self-worth.
Dee (Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo)
Dee is Mrs. Johnson’s daughter, although Walker implies that the two are somewhat estranged. Growing up, Dee was a beautiful, intelligent, and assertive girl who became the first person in her family to go to college (and perhaps complete high school). However, far from feeling grateful for the people who made her education possible, Dee came to see her mother and sister as backwards and unintelligent, treating them with barely concealed disdain: “She used to read to us without pity; forcing words, lies, other folks’ habits, whole lives upon us two, sitting trapped and ignorant underneath her voice” (Paragraph 11).
At first glance, Dee’s attitude towards her family seems to have undergone a shift by the time the story takes place; where she once described family heirlooms like the quilts as “old-fashioned” and “out of style” (Paragraph 67), she now gushes about everything from her mother’s cooking to the handmade benches the family sits on. It soon becomes clear, however, that Dee’s interest in these things does not stem from genuine affection for her family, but rather from an abstract notion of the objects’ significance as symbols of African-American culture.
Ironically, this desire to treat the quilts, churn top, etc. as static works of art is actually premised on a Western understanding of art as wholly separate from the realm of day-to-day life and use. Like her rejection of her given name in favor of the more African “Wangero,” Dee’s newfound interest in her heritage is therefore a way for her to distance herself from the experiences and values of her immediate family. Mrs. Johnson ultimately denies Dee the quilts, but there’s little indication that Dee will become more self-aware or less entitled as a result; as she says goodbye to her mother and sister, she implies that the two have no sense of cultural or racial pride, when in fact it is Dee herself who is in many crucial ways blind to her own culture and ancestry.
Maggie
Maggie is Mrs. Johnson’s other daughter, and her sister’s virtual opposite in looks (thin and plain) and demeanor (shy and fearful). Her nervousness and reserve stem partly from trauma; the family house burned down when Maggie was still a girl, and the burns she sustained on her arms and legs are a source of deep embarrassment to her. The “envy and awe” with which Maggie regards Dee likely also reflects a sense of intellectual inferiority (Paragraph 2); Maggie has more formal schooling than her mother and can read with some difficulty, but even Mrs. Johnson describes her as “know[ing] she is not bright” (Paragraph 13). All in all, Walker depicts Maggie as someone who has learned by hard experience to expect very little from life and to accept whatever comes her way—for instance, by marrying her fiancé John Thomas in due course, despite his own homeliness.
This meek resignation is nowhere clearer than in Maggie’s willingness to allow Dee to have their great-grandmother’s quilts. Like her mother, Maggie has a strong affinity for her family’s history, and one of the ways she experiences that sense of connectedness is via heirlooms that remind her of her ancestors. Nevertheless, it doesn’t even occur to Maggie to fight Dee for the quilts, and her sense that the loss is simply her “portion” in life is what ultimately convinces Mrs. Johnson to overrule Dee (Paragraph 75); she does not want Maggie to continue accepting injustice and mistreatment simply as a given. As the story ends, Maggie’s smile suggests that Mrs. Johnson’s actions have paid off in her daughter’s renewed sense of self-confidence and hope for the future.
Hakim-a-barber
Hakim-a-barber is Dee’s boyfriend (or possibly husband). He is a “short, stocky man” who wears his hair “a foot long and hanging from his chin like a kinky mule tail” (Paragraph 19). His unorthodox appearance likely reflects a conscious rejection of Western culture in favor of his African roots; his greeting (“Asalamalakim”) and his refusal to eat pork suggest that he has also converted to Islam. As with Dee, however, Hakim-a-barber’s identification with African culture is the subject of some skepticism. In declining a quintessentially Southern and African-American dish like collard greens, Hakim-a-barber refuses to participate in his more immediate heritage, and his ideas and behavior seem grounded more in abstract theory than reality. For instance, when Mrs. Johnson asks whether he “belong[s] to those beef-cattle people down the road” (Paragraph 43), Hakim-a-barber replies, “I accept some of their doctrines, but farming and raising cattle is not my style” (Paragraph 44). This preference for “doctrines” and intellectualism over manual labor stands in contrast to Mrs. Johnson’s physicality and practicality, which Walker depicts favorably.
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