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Child Sexual Abuse In The Bluest Eye By Toni Morrison

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Child sexual abuse before the 1970s was secretive and socially unspeakable. It was only after 1970s that it became legally punishable. Toni Morrison raised this issue in her novel "The Bluest Eye" speaking about the unspeakable. Second wave feminism brought sexual abuse and violence against women to the forefront making them public and political issues.
Child abuse is a complex phenomenon with multiple causes and occurs in a range of situations and circumstances. Children are abused by people in a position of power above them. Child abuse is nothing but the oppression of the weak by the powerful. Children are weaker physically than their oppressors and so can be overpowered easily. If they are bold enough to raise their voice they are subjugated …show more content…

Children are granted no voice, no bodily integrity, and no inherent world by the adults who are their caretakers. If they are lucky like Claudia and Frieda Mac Teer, they learn resistance strategies. If they are unlucky like Pecola Breedlove they learn various kinds of disempowered responses. They internalize their oppression than identify with their oppressors and they begin to believe that their oppression is just and proper.
Emotional abuse results in psychological and social defects in the growth of a child and results in behaviour which is coarse and rude. Cholly behaves exactly in this manner.
It is easy to oppress a child because he or she is unable to resist, oppress or combat his oppression. In an oppressive environment a child reacts to the injustices against him with disempowered responses like silence, self abuse, depression, rage etc. The child knows that he has no power over his oppressors and cannot harm him, so the child finds out ways to escape from this oppression by changing himself, or accepting his oppression. Toni Morrison has assigned reasons to all child oppressors in the novel. She writes that Cholly, and Pauline had been abused during childhood. Earlier it was believed that when a child grows up in an oppressive system, his or her own position changes and he or she assumes the role of the oppressor, but studies have now proved that even those who have not faced …show more content…

The terror of the beginning of her first menstruation is symptomatic of the traumatic experience she has in life. When Pecola has her first periods she is alarmed and screams. Suddenly Pecola bolted straight up, her eyes wide with terror. A whinnying sound came from her mouth. "What's the matter with you?" Frieda stood up too. Then we both looked where Pecola was staring. Blood was running down her legs. Soon drops were on the steps. I leaped up. "Hey, you cut yourself? Look. It's all over your dress". A brownish red stain discolored the back of her dress. She kept whinnying standing with her legs far apart. Frieda said, "Oh Lordy! I know. What that is!".

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