10. Winter

In the Winter chapter of the book, there is a new girl whose name is Maureen Peal in the school. Claudia describes her as “a high-yellow dream child with long brown hair”. This new girl was light black-skinned and also she was rich. All of these qualities were making her popular in school. The teachers were showing more attention to her, boys were not disturbing her.. All of these were making Claudia and Frieda derange. So they were bemused, irritated her. They were calling her as Six-finger-dog-tooth-meringue-pie.

One day, when boys were disturbing Pecola, Maureen came and rescued her. Four of them-Pecola, Maureen, Claudia and Frieda- walked home together. On the road they stopped at the ice-cream shop to buy some ice-cream. For Frieda and Claudia it was hard to say that they have no money, because they didn’t want to show themselves as poor to Maureen. When they were talking, Maureen started to mention about boys and naked men. This made the three of them feel uncomfortable because there was a stereotype which is saying that all black people sleep in a same room so the daughter can see her father when he is naked. This subject made them to argue. Finally Maureen called them ‘black’.

This calling ‘black’ made them feel angry. Because it didn’t mean their skin color, it meant the people who are dirty. Here the author mentions about racial self-hatred.

Also Claudia says "Dolls we could destroy, but we could not destroy the honey voices of parents and aunts, the obedience in the eyes of our peers, the slippery light in the eyes of our teachers when they encountered the Maureen Peals of the world" which means that the world has a an unchangeable view of Whites that they are beautiful and cute. Even we destroy all of them we can’t destroy the views about them.

This part is very important to see the reason of hating from white peoples for the black girls.