The Bluest Eye

by

Toni Morrison

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on The Bluest Eye makes teaching easy.
A "high yellow dream child", as Claudia calls her, Maureen is a mulatto girl from a wealthy family. She moves to Lorain in the winter, interrupting the tedium of the long winter months. She wears nice clothing and brings large, healthy lunches to school. She is treated with special kindness and respect by her peers, and feels she is superior to others. She is capable of both kindness and cruelty.

Maureen Peal Quotes in The Bluest Eye

The The Bluest Eye quotes below are all either spoken by Maureen Peal or refer to Maureen Peal. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Beauty vs. Ugliness Theme Icon
).
Chapter 10 Quotes

I thought of the baby that everybody wanted dead, and saw it very clearly. It was in a dark, wet place, its head covered with great O's of wool, the black face holding, like nickels, two clean black eyes…no synthetic yellow bangs suspended over marble-blue eyes, no pinched nose and bowline mouth. More strongly than my fondness for Pecola, I felt a need for someone to want the black baby to live—just to counteract the universal love of baby dolls, Shirley Temples, and Maureen Peals.

Related Characters: Claudia MacTeer (speaker), Pecola Breedlove, Maureen Peal
Related Symbols: Blue Eyes
Page Number: 188
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Bluest Eye LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Bluest Eye PDF

Maureen Peal Quotes in The Bluest Eye

The The Bluest Eye quotes below are all either spoken by Maureen Peal or refer to Maureen Peal. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Beauty vs. Ugliness Theme Icon
).
Chapter 10 Quotes

I thought of the baby that everybody wanted dead, and saw it very clearly. It was in a dark, wet place, its head covered with great O's of wool, the black face holding, like nickels, two clean black eyes…no synthetic yellow bangs suspended over marble-blue eyes, no pinched nose and bowline mouth. More strongly than my fondness for Pecola, I felt a need for someone to want the black baby to live—just to counteract the universal love of baby dolls, Shirley Temples, and Maureen Peals.

Related Characters: Claudia MacTeer (speaker), Pecola Breedlove, Maureen Peal
Related Symbols: Blue Eyes
Page Number: 188
Explanation and Analysis: