"Jealousy we understood and thought natural--a desire to have what somebody else had; but envy was a strange, new feeling for us. And all the time we knew that Maureen Peal was not the Enemy and not worthy of such intense hatred. The Thing to fear was the Thing that made her beautiful, and not us." (Morrison 74)
The wording used by Morrison is critical. By her definition, jealousy would be a childish emotion where as envy might be considered an adult emotion. By explaining Claudia's and Frieda's new found emotion, she conveys that they are losing their childhood innocence. Before they would hate the item or girl that was considered beautiful, as Claudia did with her dolls, but on discovering envy they now begin to understand that Maureen is not the enemy but some other "Thing" is. The fact that they refer to the media/social induced concept of beauty as a "Thing," reveals that though they are losing their innocence they have not fully become aware of what exactly they envy and why. This moment seems like a turning point for the narrator as she begins to lose her innocence and discover reality, which I believe ties into a common motif or theme throughtout the piece on Innocence vs. Cynicism and the lose of the innocence.
For what purpose did Morrison talk about in depth the kind of woman Geraldine was?
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