at the house, she is wearing a dress with “yellows and oranges enough to throw back the light of the sun” (294). Maggie, on the other hand, is much like her mother in many ways. She never completed her formal education, she is unattractive and unintelligent, and she will most likely end up living her life in the same socioeconomic condition that the mother has led hers. These are crucial elements to the story as the daughter’s each play a very significant role in the mother’s struggle to cope with contemporary thought and the idea that her eldest daughter wants to move beyond the boundaries set before her by her family. The reader is made aware of these boundaries when the mother describes herself and her past. She never had an education. She is not a bright woman, nor is she very good-looking. In a figurative sense, she is much like Maggie in that “she stumbles along good-naturedly but can’t see well” (293). For the mother, Maggie symbolizes tradition. She is the type of daughter that the mother knows will never amount to much more than the mother herself did. Dee, on the other hand, is a representation of the desire to break with the past and to move up in the world. Dee wants to keep a firm hold of her family’s heritage, but she doesn’t want to be part of that heritage herself. Her rejection of her name demonstrates that she is not interested in family tradition. She would rather be her own person than simply the namesake of “the people who oppress [her]” (295), her ancestors. It is interesting to note that it is at this point in the story that the narration switches from present to past tense, symbolizing the mother’s realization that it is time to let her daughter go. Dee is only interested in her family’s past and traditions inasmuch as they comprise a part of her heritage. She seems almost ecstatic about sitting on the benc...
