“I was happy for other things too: that I’d be doing something I’d never done before, that my days would be spent in a world that was so different to me that I could feel a sheen of anticipation on my skin.”

Mary Jane is anticipating her summer job as a nanny. When she makes this statement, she doesn’t yet have a clear picture of how radically different the Cone household is from her own. Her innocence in the face of the family’s eccentricities is touching in hindsight. At the same time, she is signaling the attraction that such differences will hold for her.

“Mom would say, ‘We’re obliged to live up to the painting, Mary Jane. We can’t let that painting be fiction!’”

The Dillards have had a picture painted of the exterior of their home. It quite literally looks picture perfect. Mrs. Willard’s comment reveals everything about her values and priorities. She is willing to work very hard to maintain a perfect façade. The emotional desiccation inside the house is immaterial as long as the lawn looks immaculate. She lives to match a fabricated ideal image that can never exist in real life.

“I’d wear the rainbow flip-flops my mother had agreed to buy me after she’d seen the other girls at Elkridge pool wearing them. She didn’t like me to be out of sync almost as much as she didn’t like me to appear dirty or unladylike.”

Again, in this quote, we are given some insight into Mrs. Dillard’s values. While she might personally deplore flip-flops, she will allow her daughter to wear them so that Mary Jane will fit into her peer group. Her daughter is expected to be picture perfect in much the same way that her house is. However, perfection also implies social acceptance by the in-crowd.