The Bluest Eye By Toni Morrison

    The character of Pauline tries so desperately to fit into society's typecast of beauty that she loses the ability to love herself for who she is as well as her ability to appreciate what she does have. For example, when Pauline is made to feel inferior by other black women, Morrison  emphasizes, "Pauline felt uncomfortable with the few black women she met. They were amused by her because she didn't straighten her hair. When she tried to make up her face as they did, it came off rather badly. Their goading glances and private snickers at her way of talking... and dressing developed in her desire for new clothes" (Morrison 118). Pauline is aggravated because of her physical appearance. She feels ugly and wants to fit in with society's women. She tries fitting into what is thought by those around her to be the  ideal characterization of beauty instead of accepting herself for whom she is. Pauline Breedlove's insecurities only deepen as a result of her attempts to look a certain way. In addition, when Morrison explains how Pauline would rather be around nice things at work than at her own

No matter how ugly, mean, pitiful one can be, the family is always meant to support, raise, guide, nurture and be a means of inspiration in anyone’s life. In the novel, this isn’t the case for Pecola, which is why she gets mentally unstable as she couldn’t bear the torture of ugliness of not having blue eyes. Blue eyes are the one and only reason she could blame as per to her ability and thought process. In fact, she doesn’t get the real ugliness of how her father rapes her, the ugliness of how the mother choose the white girl over her, the ugliness of the fights between her parents is coming from their unpleasant past. After all, she doesn’t have that mentor in her life to explain what was happening. Everybody in her family is occupied with their own mindset. She is very young to understand and analyze on her own. The narrator Claudia even gets to compare between her and Pecola and starts accepting life and feel blessed for having a supportive family, which she doesn’t feel until Pecola enters in her life. So, this shows how young kids psychology is totally built upon the type of family environment she/he gets. There is a saying that young kids are like a raw clay ready to be shaped into the different form of objects by the potter. Undoubtedly, it stands so true. Indeed, kids shape themselves according to the type of environment they grow up with. By all means, Pecola’s family is the

Although written decades apart, Jacqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye both explore the trials and tribulations that young black girls must endure as they begin to step into womanhood. While the burdens that the protagonists in each of these texts differ in some key ways, one of the most interesting things that both Woodson and Morrison depicted was a sense of difficulty in coping with these changes, and rather than having any semblance of mastery over their circumstances, these young protagonists would instead project their emotions onto something else as they try to discover what causes their suffering.

In the novel, Morrison condemns the idea of living by one’s perception of one’s value rather than through the truth, which leads to negative implications. Pauline Breedlove creates an elaborate fantasy world, in which the household of her white employers becomes hers. Morrison indicates that Pauline “[looks] at their houses, [smells] their linens, [touches] their silk draperies, and [loves] all of it” (Morrison, 127), to suggest that Pauline has formed an attachment to what she believes is hers. The way she refers to “[her] floor...[her] floor...[her] floor” (107), after her daughter Pecola accidentally spills a tart at the Fishers’ house, implies that Pauline views that household as a parallel reality, with the white girl as her daughter, and the clean kitchen as her kitchen. Morrison depicts another illusion in which Pauline strives to become a paragon of virtue—by being “an active church woman, [not] drinking, smoking or carousing” (128). She believes she “[fulfills] a mother’s role conscientiously when she points out [the father’s] faults to keep [the children] from having them” (129). But in reality, Pauline fails to embody that role, often “neglecting her house, her children, her man” (127) and “fighting [her husband] with a darkly brutal formalism” (43). Morrison’s depiction of Pauline’s delusive mindset consequently leads to harmful effects, like the emotional abandonment of her family. Her

In the novel The Bluest Eye, author Toni Morrison uses the internalization of beauty standards and its effect on characters’ social interactions with the community to reveal society’s assumption that appearance is the decisive factor in determining one’s status and critique its detrimental effect on one’s personal identity.

A standard of beauty is established by the society in which a person lives and then supported by its members in the community. In the novel The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, we are given an extensive understanding of how whiteness is the standard of beauty through messages throughout the novel that whiteness is superior. Morrison emphasizes how this ideality distorts the minds and lives of African-American women and children. He emphasizes that in order for African-American women to survive in a white racist society, they must love their own race. The theme of race and that white skin is more beautiful is portrayed through the lives and stories told by the characters in the novel, especially the three girls Claudia, Pecola and Frieda. Through the struggles these characters have endured, Morrison shows us the destructive effect of this internalized idea of white beauty on the individual and on society.

Because of racism and her own personal background, Pauline neglects her family and allows Pecola to be victimized. One reason that Pauline turns out the way she does is that she always felt inadequate. Growing up Pauline blamed her foot for her constant source of humiliation. “The easiest thing to do would be to build a case out of her foot.” “That is what she herself did” (Morrison 110). In addition, once she moved to Ohio she had to contend with regional and social class barriers to norms of beauty that she had never imagined. For example, she couldn't keep up with latest fashion and this takes a big toll on her spirit.

In the novel The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison confirms the existence of racism within the African American community. Unbelievably, many African Americans suffer from what is termed internalized racism. Internalized racism produces the same effect as racial racism: feelings of worthlessness, inferiority, and unattractiveness. In addition, the effect can produce the opposite feelings: superiority, hatred, and feelings of self-worth. Pecola, an 11-year-old black girl, desires to have the physical characteristics of a white person, namely blue eyes. Polly, Pecola’s mother, prefers the white culture living rather than her own. The feelings that the black race experience stem from the programming of a racist society to think that the white race is better. As a result, African Americans long to be white or look white. This consumption of whiteness represents internalized racism.

The meaning of beauty is abused emotionally because the characters consider whiteness beautiful. It is associated with beauty and cleanliness. Blue eyes mean beauty, “It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes...were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different”(Morrison 46). Pecola dislikes herself because she doesn't have blue eyes. She wants people to view her differently and wants to view the world differently. Another instance of emotional abuse is when Pecola is framed for killing a cat . Junior frames Pecola for killing the cat because he feels that Geraldine his mother pays more attention to the cat rather than him, so he likes the cat to suffer .Geraldine says to Pecola, “Nasty little black bitch ”(Morrison 92). Pecola and Junior want people to love them but does not believe they do because of their actions and words towards them, which causes them to develop depression. Pecola's mother Mrs.Breedlove fails as a parent because she doesn’t believe in her daughter about being raped. “Regained consciousness, she was lying on the kitchen floor under a heavy quilt, trying to connect the pain between her legs with face of her mother looming over her ”(Morrison 163). Mrs. Breedlove fails to believe her daughter because she has gone through same circumstances of trauma as her. Someone one’s appearance, is taken

Finding a self-identity is often a sign of maturing and growing up. This becomes the main issue in Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eyes. Pecola Breedlove, Cholly Breedlove, and Pauline Breedlove are such characters that search for their identity through others that has influenced them and by the lifestyles that they have. First, Pecola Breedlove struggles to get accepted into society due to the beauty factor that the norm has. Cholly Breedlove, her father, is a drunk who has problems that he takes out of Pecola sexually and Pauline physically. Pauline is Cholly’s wife that is never there for her daughters.

Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye, presents the lives of several impoverished black families in the 1940’s in a rather unconventional and painful manner. Ms. Morrison leads the reader through the lives of select children and adults, describing a few powerful incidents, thoughts and experiences that lend insight into the motivation and. behavior of these characters. In a somewhat unconventional manner, the young lives of Pauline Williams Breedlove and Charles (Cholly) Breedlove are presented to the reader. Through these descriptions, the reader comes to understand how they become the kind of adults they are. Background information is given not necessarily to incur sympathy but to lend understanding.

Pauline Breedlove, like her husband Cholly, is-at first-portrayed as just another antagonist in the novel, helping push Pecola further and further to insanity. Morrison makes it a point to illustrate how Pauline arrives in her state as an antagonist; she does not just create empty monsters; she tries to make all of the antagonists sympathetic in some way to justify how they become so. After moving up north with Cholly to find work Pauline, quickly becomes isolated and depressed. Pauline tries to “fit in” by attempting to adapt to the northerners’ speech, fashion, and appearance that is modeled after the white beauty standard, unfortunately she could never perfect or change herself enough to be accepted which leads to her isolation. “Pauline felt uncomfortable with the few black women she met. They were amused by her because she did not straighten her hair. When she tried to make up her face as they did, it came off rather badly. Their goading glances and private snickers at her way of talking (saying “chil’ren”) and dressing developed in her a desire for new clothes.” (Pg. 116). It was through this isolation during her pregnancy that she began to take refuge at the movie theaters. In films, we are shown society’s current vision of what beauty is, what we should find aesthetically pleasing in people. Pauline begins to go to the movies on a nearly daily basis to escape the reality of her real life and it is here that she is introduced to what

Toni Morrison tells us why it’s important to stay with your family and not to leave and how a family can change one thing in life. Toni Morrison’s progress of the differences between the main characters’ families, houses, and attitudes toward society’s belief in a white standard of beauty reveals what allows Claudia to grow and survive and inhibits Pecola from doing the same. It is a novel of initiation concerning a victimized adolescent Black girl Pecola Breedlove, who is obsessed by the White standard of beauty and longing fora pair of blue eyes. Why does she long for blue eyes?

Pauline eventually meets Cholly, who is Pecola’s biological father, and they fall in love. "He seemed to relish her company and even to enjoy her country ways and lack of knowledge about city things. He talked with her about her foot and asked, when they walked through the town or in the fields, if she were tired. Instead of ignoring her infirmity, pretending it was not there, he made it seem like something special and endearing. For the first time Pauline felt that her bad foot was an asset. And he did touch her, firmly but gently, just as she had dreamed. But minus the gloom of setting suns and lonely river banks. She was secure and grateful; he was kind and lively. She had not known there was so much laughter in the world." (Morrison, p. 115)

The Bluest Eye concentrates on the key contemporary American issues: racial and sexual politics. More distinctly, the novel centres on the impact that socially constructed views of race have on gender relations within the black community. As Butler-Evans highlights, “race rather than gender had become the overriding sign for the oppression of black people” and Morrison’s novel responds to this political issue by focusing on this in correlation with the Eurocentric society setting of the novel. The racial oppression suffered by the black community shape ideas of black masculinity based on male feelings of inferiority and consequent sexual oppression of black females. Morrison systematically explores the relationship between the racial oppression of black males and sexual oppression of black females. The main focus of this essay will be an exploration of how racial oppression experienced by black males, specifically Cholly and Junior, relate to the sexual oppression they enforce on black females.