| Quinn Morgendorffer | |
|---|---|
| First appearance | "Esteemsters" (1997) |
| Last appearance | Is It College Yet? (2002) |
| Created by | Glenn Eichler |
| Portrayed by | Wendy Hoopes (voice) |
| Information | |
| Aliases | N/A |
| Gender | Female |
| Occupation | Student at Lawndale High. |
| Family | Helen Morgendorffer (mother) Jake Morgendorffer (father) Daria Morgendorffer (sister) |
Quinn Morgendorffer is a fictional character on the MTV animated series Daria.
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Quinn is the younger sister of Daria and a freshman (later sophomore and junior) at Lawndale High School (previously Highland). At the age of 14½ years, Quinn was the chief nemesis for Daria for the bulk of the series. The polar opposite of Daria, Quinn was perky, popular, and attractive in the eyes of her fellow classmates, much to Daria's mostly-muted horror and disgust. Quinn goes on dates most every night, usually a different boy every day, but always has the same three desperate boys (Joey, Jeffy, and Jamie) follow her around at school, ready to wait on her hand and foot.
Quinn Morgendorffer is a stereotypical self-absorbed teenage girl who is concerned mainly with clothing, shopping, dating, and being popular. Her interest beyond such trivial things are minimal, save for getting into a "Party College" with her friends. However, in spite of this Quinn does have some depth, though it's hidden by a great deal of low self-esteem in terms of her value. As she confesses to Daria in the season two episode "Monster," Quinn feels that looking pretty and being popular are the only things she is good at, hence she focuses on them exclusively. Also she does feel some ambition towards doing better, though her efforts almost always end up getting her in trouble with her friends, who all deride the notion of intellectually bettering oneself. Still, despite Quinn's refusal to show her intelligence, she is shown to be as crafty and manipulative as her sister on rare occasions, particularly when she can get something out of it. She is also prudish when it comes to sexual matters.
The later seasons of the series have Quinn reconsidering her priorities and coming to value her intelligence and her family in her own way.
After getting a short glimpse into her past in "Boxing Daria", it seems that Quinn was rather starved for attention as child, because her parents attention was focused on Daria's social issues. This may be the deep-seated reason for her need to be popular and disdain of being associated with either her sister or being intelligent.
John J. O'Connor of The New York Times describes Quinn as "ever-so-cute and empty-headed" and states that she becomes "an instant star" at her school.[1] Quinn, described by John Allemang of The Globe and Mail as "silly" and "boy-crazy", pretends that she is not related to Daria.[2]
Quinn spent most of the series having a rather adversarial relationship with Daria; each is very dismissive of the other, and their differences regarding social standing and personalities drive a large amount of the conflict in the series. Each loves to antagonize the other (though Quinn is less open about admitting to do so) though in spite of these differences, there does exist a level of sibling love between the two, even if they refuse to openly admit it. When not openly annoying or insulting Daria, Quinn's dealings with her often involve laying out terms of requirements, expenses, exceptions, and final payment—in fairness, Daria also relates to Quinn on a similar, mercenary level. A recurring joke involved Quinn refusing to even admit to being Daria's sister, and telling her friends that Daria was her cousin or some other vague relation, leading to her friends referring to Daria as "that girl who lives with you." However, by the final episodes, their relationship warms considerably, to the point that she happily states that Daria is her sister. It's also revealed that Quinn's friends already knew Daria was her sister, but Tiffany and Stacy didn't say so in order to be polite to Quinn, while Sandi's failed plan was to use this knowledge to embarrass her frenemy.
On some rare occasions the two sisters have worked together to achieve some goal, usually to get out of trouble or to avoid it. Most often these instances are dealt with in a rather businesslike fashion, such as when Daria incites Quinn (in episode 205: "That Was Then, This Is Dumb)", with an offer of some form of payment or benefit, to gather scandalous blackmail information about their parents from the son of visiting family friends. Later, when Quinn begins to uncover some such stories, her response is "These have got to be worth at least 20 bucks [to Daria]."
Socially active, Quinn quickly became one of the most popular girls in Lawndale, much to the horror of her fellow members of the Lawndale Fashion Club, a clique of teenage girls that Quinn was friends with. Notably Sandi, the president of the club, feels a love/hate friendship with Quinn. While during early episodes Sandi and Quinn got along very well, as time progressed Sandi became more jealous of how much more popular and better liked Quinn was than her. After a while her jealousy turned to thinly veiled dislike as she regularly insults her, though Quinn will often parry these insults or take them as a compliment (interestingly, Sandi's mother is equally rude to Helen Morgendorffer, and Helen also deflects these insults with little overt reaction). Stacy, who suffered from severely low self-esteem, was the opposite of Sandi, showing immense fondness for Quinn, to the point that she wanted to even look like her at one point. Tiffany meanwhile, who lacks any sort of personal identity and follows the blind commands of anyone who speaks to her, generally went along with whatever either Sandi or Quinn said at any given moment.
While she had many boyfriends (even going as far as to come up with a ranking system for the boys she dated), her only consistent interest lay with three teenage "jocks" from her grade level: Joey, Jeffy, and Jamie, three of her classmates who constantly followed her around and who were constantly being manipulated by Quinn for her own selfish purposes.
Quinn is shown with red hair, a light pink midriff shirt with a yellow smiley face and a halo on top (later a less revealing dark pink shirt with a yellow butterfly on it), flared jeans and wears brown shoes. As the series begins to come to a close, Quinn's shirt begins to show less and less of her midriff as she comes into her intellectual own. This is shown at the final party in Is It College Yet? when she is with the other members of the Fashion Club all wearing revealing clothing, especially Sandi, while Quinn wears a tasteful outfit while not exposing her stomach like the others.
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