nary other if, indeed, her eyes are "the bluest." There is an interesting (and excerptable) scene in the novel when Pauline is in the hospital giving birth to Pecola. The doctors come by her bed as the attending physician says, "these here women you don't have any trouble with. They deliver right away and with no pain. Just like horses." Pauline counters by moaning "something awful" to teach the doctors that "[j]ust 'cause I wasn't hooping and hollering before didn't mean I wasn't feeling pain." While the doctors have their "story" about Pauline, she resists their version, retelling it, "talking back" to medicine and to readers. This section raises important questions about assumptions and the ways social factors such as race, class, and gender can get in the way of hearing stories and understanding patients' lives....
