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The Bluest Eye
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BetaWinterChapter Summaries & Analyses
“Winter,” Section 1 Summary
A hard winter came to Lorain, one that required a constant vigilance to keep the MacTeer family warm and fed until spring. The arrival of Maureen Peal, a "high-yellow dreamchild with long brown hair braided into two lynch ropes that hung down her back” (62) and the daughter of an affluent family, was a welcome distraction at first. Teachers and students alike fawned over Maureen. Both Frieda and Claudia "were bemused, irritated, and fascinated by her" (53). The girls finally got the chance to get to know Maureen better one day when she offered to walk part of the way home with them after school. As they were walking, the three girls interrupted three boys who were bullying Pecola by calling her "'[b]lack e mo'“ (65), a reference to her dark skin.
The girls were surprised when Maureen, after buying Pecola ice cream, remarked that another student told her that Pecola had seen her father naked. Pecola denied this accusation. The MacTeer girls grew angry and defended Pecola since they had also seen their father naked. Maureen ran away as the MacTeer girls shouted insults at her, but not before she shouted that the MacTeer girls were also "'black e mos'" and that she herself was "'cute'“ (73).
The adults around the girls looked on in disapproval, and Frieda said that it was time to head home. The girls walked in silence at first, brooding over the fact that Maureen's judgment about her own attractiveness and the idea that the MacTeer girls were lesser beings were ones with which most people seemed to agree. They were envious and realized that "[t]he Thing to fear was the Thing that made her beautiful, and not us” (74).
When the girls arrived home, Mr. Henry sent them out them out again with a quarter for candy after the girls interrupted him engaging in sexual play and flirtation with China and Miss Marie (whom the girls called "Maginot Line"). The girls knew from overhearing gossip from adults that these women, especially Maginot Line, were not respectable, so much so that Mrs. MacTeer claimed she wouldn't let them eat off of her plates.
When the girls returned, the women were gone. Mr. Henry lied and claimed the women were there for Bible study when questioned by Frieda. Frieda decides that not telling their mother is fine since it is clear that Maginot Line did not eat off of Mrs. MacTeer's plates, which are still on the table waiting for the night’s dinner of turnips. The girls agree to let the turnips burn in order to avoid having to eat them.
“Winter,” Section 2 Summary
The second section of "Winter" is preceded by lines from the Dick and Jane primer that reference a meowing cat who refuses to play with Jane. These lines are written in all capital letters without intervening punctuation or spaces.
The second section of this part of the novel opens with a third-person narrator's description of a type—the respectable African American woman. Such women are typically migrants from the South and fulfill every expectation of respectability by taking care of their physical appearance and property. They are excellent homemakers whose efforts and sternness are respected and feared by their husbands and children, but they are not prone to overt expressions of love. They do show affection to their pets, however.
Such women are squeamish in bed, wishing they could avoid the physical aspects of sex, but they do sometimes think of accidental orgasms caused by the friction of their sanitary belt napkins on them. Their central focus in life is "how to get rid of the funkiness of passion, […] nature, […][and] the wide range of human emotions" (83).
Geraldine is a woman just like this. She raises her son, Louis Junior, to know "the difference between colored people and niggers" (87),and she only allows him to play with white children. Junior liked to torment his mother's cat because he was jealous of it, and he enjoyed tormenting girls as well.
One day, Pecola attempted to walk across the playground of the schoolyard next to Junior's house, but he stopped her by claiming that she must have his permission first. Junior, who was home alone, invited Pecola to come into his house to see some kittens. Pecola entered the home and was impressed with how beautiful it was on the inside. When she reached the room where Junior claimed the kittens were, he threw Geraldine's cat in Pecola's face and trapped Pecola in the room with the angry cat by holding the door shut. Having received some scratches, Pecola cried, but she was soon soothed as the cat began to purr and rub against her ankles. Pecola was also fascinated by the cat's blue eyes.
Curious about why Pecola had stopped crying, Junior entered the room. He attempted to snatch the cat from Pecola, who was worried that Junior's rough handling of the cat would kill it. During the tussle, Junior threw the cat against the radiator, apparently killing it. Just then, Geraldine returned home. Junior lied by claiming that Pecola killed their cat. Geraldine had seen unkempt, shabbily-dressed black girls like Pecola all her life, girls in whose eyes were "the end of the world[…]and the beginning, and all the waste in between” (93). Such children "tak[e] up space from the nice, neat, colored children" (92). Geraldine called Pecola a "'nasty little black bitch'“ (93) and threw her out into the snowy weather.
“Winter” Analysis
In this relatively brief section, Morrison represents several of the cultural and institutional forces that shape the experiences of African American girls and women. Morrison also critiques the idea of black respectability as one of the means by which African Americans can live out the myth of the perfect family in the Dick and Jane primers.
The MacTeer girls, despite being so young, are already struggling to deal with the unwieldy impact of beauty standards on their self-esteem. The boys' bullying of Pecola, the fawning adoration of Maureen Peal by adults and her peers, and Maureen's judgment that the MacTeer girls are lesser beings because they do not approximate whiteness as closely as she does force Claudia to reflect on "the Thing"—a combination of gendered expectations, internalized racism, and white supremacy—"that made [Maureen] beautiful, and not us” (74). The initial chapters in the novel make it clear that the adult Claudia eventually succumbed in part to the notion that black girls and women are of less value as human beings.
While Eurocentric ideas about beauty have an impact on the self-esteem of the female characters, class is also decisive in shaping the experience of African American women and girls, and this is nowhere truer than in the life of Geraldine. Morrison presents Geraldine as an archetype of the striving black women who propelled African Americans into the middleclass through their "careful development of thrift, patience, high morals, and good manners" (83). Geraldine's cruel treatment of Pecola shows that her respectable black femininity is one that fails to make her a truly moral, compassionate woman, however.
The hollow morality at the center of Geraldine's femininity shapes her family's life as well. Geraldine's family is still the one that comes closest to emulating the family life portrayed by the primers. Even here, however, approximating this idealized family comes at the cost of self-hatred. Geraldine teaches her son that poor African Americans are to be avoided and despised; Junior is not permitted to play with other African American children, especially poor ones whom Geraldine sees as "taking up space from the nice, neat, colored children" (92) in church pews. For Geraldine, there can be no relationship between respectable black people like her and poor African Americans that she labels as "niggers" (87).
Morrison critiques the black, respectable family by remixing a scene from the idealized white family in the Dick and Jane primers. She introduces this chapter with a selection from the primer in which Jane asks the cat to play with her, but the cat refuses. Morrison's recasting of this call for play as a near-death experience for the cat as Pecola and Junior struggle over it shows the there is no place for Pecola in this black, middle-class home. When Pecola enters Geraldine's home, it is as a poor, black interloper—the despised other—that Junior can abuse for his own amusement.
Behind the facade of the Dick-and-Jane family written in black is a sense of menace and violence—especially for Pecola—symbolized by the transformation of the cat's blue eyes to "blue streaks of horror" (91) as Junior swings the cat above his head. Junior is a sadist who abuses cats and poor black girls alike, outcomes that are the natural consequences of his mother's values. Geraldine's cursing of Pecola and ejection of her from her home (into the snow, no less) is simply another expression of the violence in this seemingly beautiful home.
Beneath her beautiful exterior, Maureen Pealis an ugly person who taunts the MacTeer girls and Pecola, while Geraldine's beautiful, middle-class house breeds self-hatred and sadism. The distinction between the appearance of beauty and the reality of internalized racism and classism in this section underscores Morrison's critique of widely accepted notions of femininity and family.
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