Essay on Self-Hate in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

Throughout Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye, she captures, with vivid insight, the plight of a young African American girl and what she would be subjected to in a media contrived society that places its ideal of beauty on the e quintessential blue-eyed, blonde woman. The idea of what is beautiful has been stereotyped in the mass media since the beginning and creates a mental and emotional damage to self and soul. This oppression to the soul creates a socio-economic displacement causing a cycle of dysfunction and abuses. Morrison takes us through the agonizing story of just such a young girl, Pecola Breedlove, and her aching desire to have what is considered beautiful - blue eyes. Racial stereotypes of beauty contrived and nourished by

Throughout all of history there has been an ideal beauty that most have tried to obtain. But what if that beauty was impossible to grasp because something was holding one back. There was nothing one could do to be ‘beautiful’. Growing up and being convinced that one was ugly, useless, and dirty. For Pecola Breedlove, this state of longing was reality. Blue eyes, blonde hair, and pale white skin was the definition of beauty. Pecola was a black girl with the dream to be beautiful. Toni Morrison takes the reader into the life of a young girl through Morrison’s exceptional novel, The Bluest Eye. The novel displays the battles that Pecola struggles with each and every day. Morrison takes the reader through the themes of whiteness and beauty,

The desire to feel beautiful has never been more in demand, yet so impossible to achieve. In the book “The Bluest Eye”, the author, Toni Morrison, tells the story of two black families that live during the mid-1900’s. Even though slavery is a thing of the past, discrimination and racism are still a big issue at this time. Through the whole book, characters struggle to feel beautiful and battle the curse of being ugly because of their skin color. Throughout the book Pecola feels ugly and does not like who she is because of her back skin. She believes the only thing that can ever make her beautiful is if she got blue eyes. Frieda, Pecola, Claudia, and other black characters have been taught that the key to being beautiful is by having white skin. So by being black, this makes them automatically ugly. In the final chapter of the book, the need to feel beautiful drives Pecola so crazy that she imagines that she has blue eyes. She thinks that people don’t want to look at her because they are jealous of her beauty, but the truth is they don’t look at her because she is pregnant. From the time these black girls are little, the belief that beauty comes from the color of their skin has been hammered into their mind. Mrs. Breedlove and Geraldine are also affected by the standards of beauty and the impossible goal to look and be accepted by white people. Throughout “The Bluest Eye” Toni Morrison uses the motif of beauty to portray its negative effect on characters.

Race often plays an important role in how an individual is viewed based on societal standards and quality of life. A vast majority of the characters in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye attribute the difficulties they face and the outcome of their lives to being African American in an era when people with dark pigmentations of skin were viewed as second class citizens. Morrison’s novel focuses on the different spectives of African Americans, both male and female, who differ in the standard by which they live their lives based on their experiences with racism following the depression era of the twentieth century. The issue of race and class is essential in understanding the mindset and actions of characters such as those in The Bluest Eye, the lengths the characters were willing to go to in order to conform to society, and how consequential decisions they made in order to endure and to survive had a lasting impact on the quality of their lives. Race and class defined how characters throughout the novel dealt with elements such as beauty, self awareness, ethnic identity, morality and the idea of society’s opinions.

In this novel, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, the author depicts a culture in which white people and white lifestyles are idealized and the standards for beauty are very generalized around whites. In this novel, the author questions the truths by which white standards of beauty are held and depicts the impact and growth it has on her characters and the long-term effects of these “beauty standards”. Claudia was much better able to handle rejecting the white, middle class America’s standards of beauty. Claudia and Pecola are similar in the sense that they both suffered from racist beauty standards and abuse growing up. However, Claudia was always the stronger of the two and did not feed into the standards of beauty set in her society.

Society, especially western, conceptualizes beauty through the use of publicity and cinema. We are under constant bombardment from consumer related magazine ads, billboards, television commercials, and movies about what “beautiful” people look like and how we should imitate them. This standard is overwhelmingly portrayed as white beauty. Starting from a young age this standard of beauty is forged in our minds; we want to look like these actors and models; we want to be thin, fit, youthful looking, have a symmetrical face and possibly even posses a particular race. We accept this beauty standard; we notice our various faults among ourselves and self-critique. We try to emulate the models as best we can and we fail to realize that these

In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, fantasies are the result of a desire to escape poverty and limiting circumstances of the characters social conditions. Elaborate fantasies consume characters and take them away from their struggles, but the standards they attempt to meet set by society are unattainable. Although this common feeling among the characters in the novel is alleviating at first, it is ultimately, in the long run unhealthy. Characters in The Bluest Eye fall victim to the master narratives, forcing them to try and fit these impossible social norms. In the long term, this strive for an artificial life is the downfall of these characters because the standards of beauty, family, and love pushed, are far from real life reflections. More

In the test they were required to identify the race of two dolls, and then they were asked which doll they preferred, the doll of Caucasian descent or the doll African American descent, all chose the doll of Caucasian descent. The children were able to distinguish at an early age that the Caucasian doll was associated with better treatment in society, better jobs, and happiness. If children can acknowledge these things subconsciously, it is no shock that children with these views would turn into adults with similar views, subconscious or conscious. Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye explores the psyche of a young girls that desires to have blue eyes and blonde hair like Shirley Temple so she too can be loved and have all the happiness young white girls have. This expands the notion that the effect of colorism begins at a young age and it is strengthened by media coverage of happy go-lucky Caucasian girl. Sharmila Devi’s research about the history of the desire for light skin reveals that,

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison narrates the lives of two families, the MacTeer family and the Breedlove family. The novel digs into the themes of love, envy, and weakness, while maintaining a thick and interesting plotline. These themes are conveyed thoroughly through Morrison’s literary style. Toni Morrison’s powerful writing and structural techniques add depth to the novel, enhancing certain emotions while developing a riveting plot.

The Bluest Eye provides an extended depiction of the ways in which internalized white beauty standards deform the lives of black girls and women. Implicit messages that whiteness is superior are everywhere, including the white baby doll, the idealization of Shirley Temple, given to Claudia. The consensus that light skinned Maureen is cuter than the other black girls. The idealization of white beauty in the movies, and Pauline Breedlove’s preference for the little while girl she works for over her own daughter. Adult women, having learned to hate the blackness of their own bodies, take this hatred out on their children—Mrs. Breedlove shares the conviction that

In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, the struggle begins in childhood. Two young black girls -- Claudia and Pecola -- illuminate the combined power of externally imposed gender and racial definitions where the black female must not only deal with the black male's female but must contend with the white male's and the white female's black female, a double gender and racial bind. All the male definitions that applied to the white male's female apply, in intensified form, to the black male's, white male's and white female's black female. In addition, where the white male and female are represented as beautiful, the black female is the inverse -- ugly.

Morrison's story asserts that children, by nature of their diminutive size and inability to contribute economically to the family, are society's weakest members. Children play a prominent role in The Bluest Eye because they are the vulnerable recipients of their parent's psychological manifestations. At some point in early life, every child feels weak and unimportant; ignored, even. But there are gradations of neglect, and these variations are explored in the novel.

The Bluest Eye is crafted in a unique way from most other novels. The plot encompasses different points of view from many characters, as well as a collection of various stories. These stories are essential to the overall message of the novel and each one portrays a strong purpose. Morrison uses the stories to express some real world problems that can be extremely destructive, like racism and the stereotype of beauty. These issues can be held accountable for many of the devastating events of the novel. Another point Morrison makes within the novel, is when awful things happen or when people make appalling decisions, there is almost always a cause or reason. The myriad of stories found throughout the novel The Bluest Eye, illustrate stringent racial tensions, society’s standards of beauty, and the idea that actions most often occur in a context.

The middle class black society and the lower class black society, for example, are quite different from each other and are constantly conflicting. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison distinguishes these divisions and their tensions through characters like Geraldine, Junior, and Maureen Peal, who represent the privileged division of black culture. On the contrary, the less privileged division is represented by the MacTeer family and the “relentlessly and aggressively ugly” Breedlove family (The Bluest Eye 38). Tension between the divided African American society is clearly represented by such characterizations throughout Morrison’s novel.

     The Bluest Eye opens with a Dick and Jane paragraph, a white American Myth far removed from the realities illustrated in the novel. Thereafter, the black narrator Claudia MacTeer relates much of the story, and the reminder, which concerns events that Claudia could not have witnessed, is narrated mostly by an unidentified voice. Claudia’s narrative reveals the guilt that for a long time plagued her and her sister in connection with another girl’s miscarriage. The girl, Pecola Breedlove, was pregnant with her own father’s child