Beauty In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

The world is filled with labels, some negative and some positive. When it comes to negative labeling, a person’s sense of beauty in themselves and in the world is impacted. In The Bluest Eye, author Toni Morrison uses her characters such as Pecola to illustrate how another’s labeling can alter the way one internalizes his or her own beauty; Morrison poses an overall negative storyline filled with labels and discrimination that in turn allows the reader to identify the highlighted and deeper beauty that is not always visible to the naked eye.

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison takes place in Ohio in the 1940s. The novel is written from the perspective of African Americans and how they view themselves . Focusing on identity, Morrison uses rhetorical devices such as imagery, dictation, and symbolism to help stress her point of view on identity. In the novel Morrison argues that society influences an individual 's perceptions on beauty, which she supports through characters like Pecola and Mrs. Breedlove. Furthermore, Morrison illustrates how society shapes an individual 's character by instilling beauty expectations. Morrison is effective in relaying her message about the various impacts that society has on an individual 's identity through imagery, diction, and symbolism by showing

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison takes place in Ohio in the 1940s. The novel is written from the perspective of African Americans and how they view themselves. Focusing on identity, Morrison uses rhetorical devices such as imagery, dictation, and symbolism to help stress her point of view on identity. In the novel the author argues that society influences an individual 's perception on beauty, which she supports through characters like Pecola and Mrs. Breedlove. Furthermore, the novel explains how society shapes an individual 's character by instilling beauty expectations. Morrison is effective in relaying her message about the various impacts that society has on an individual 's character through imagery, diction,

Don’t Touch My Hair” By solange is the ninth track on her album A Seat at the Table. To understand the truth of this song for Pecola, one must first understand the tone of the song that is set by simply reading the title of the album. Politically speaking, giving someone a seat at the table, is like the highest level of respect, essentially saying that they have enough power to influence change and that their opinion is valued and important. In an interview Solange reveal’s to DIY Mag that for her, a seat at the table is an invitation that allows people to pull up a chair and share their hard uncomfortable truths.Specifically African-Americans who for the most part don’t really get this type of respect. Solange is saying that she has set her own table and that the African-American community is welcome to sit with her and share their truth’s.

Later in the book, Toni Morrison uses Pecola’s own conviction of being “ugly” to show that she truly believes that if she changed her physical appearance to match those at the top of the race and beauty hierarchies, her perception of her reality would be ameliorated. Back at home after her parents’ fight, Pecola ponders the unfair way she is treated by teachers compared to her Caucasian classmates at school. When the narrator says, “It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights—if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different. Maybe they’d say, ‘Why, look at pretty-eyed Pecola. We mustn’t do bad things in front of those pretty eyes’” (46), Morrison suggests that Pecola believes that her identity is based on her eyes and that attaining beauty would be the solution for gaining acceptance from others. The “pictures” and the “sights” the narrator refers to are her memories or experiences. “Those eyes” are what allow people to see the world and are often referred to as symbols of truth and “the windows to the soul.” Pecola’s desire to change her eyes means that she wants to alter the truth: her race, her self-imposed “ugliness,” her experiences, her identity—everything that makes her who she is. In this quote, Pecola believes that the word “different” means to be “beautiful.” When Pecola believes that “if those eyes of her” were “different,” she believes that altering

Celie and Pecola are both victims of their father’s sexual abuse as young girls. These recurring events of their childhoods are catalysts that push them into emotional solitude. Pecola’s relationship with her dad is already somewhat unusual; there is no real connection between father and daughter due to Cholly’s selfish tendencies and complete lack of parenting skills. In a drunken stupor one Saturday afternoon, Cholly comes home to find Pecola washing dishes and then proceeds to “tenderly” rape his own daughter. This disgusting act of “love” in the eyes of Cholly is his personal attempt to fix Pecola’s “young, helpless, hopeless presence” (Morrison 161). Sadly, Pecola’s first and only child is a result of incest. In the words of Debra Werrlein,

What is the most pressing issue facing society today? In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison argues that it is beauty standards, even calling physical beauty “the most destructive idea[] in the history of human thought” (122). While this may seem outrageous in a world of terrorism, global warming, homelessness, and hunger, beauty standards and the feelings of inferiority that stem from them affect everybody. In severe cases, these feelings can even manifest themselves deeply inside of a person and lead to eating disorders, depression, anxiety, self-hatred, and even suicide. In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison uses the insecurities of the female characters to demonstrate that beauty standards are a danger to society, as they perpetuate racism and self-hatred.

In The Bluest Eye the majority of it is taken place in Lorain Ohio in the year of 1941, before there were any MLK movements so racism and oppression were still at large. More specifically they lived in a suburban town made of mostly black communities with few white people. The main characters all have pretty bad living conditions. This is due to the cycle of oppression, they started off in a bad place and kept giving and receiving comments that made them seem insignificant. For example Pecola got harassed by school boys, “Black e mo. Black e mo. Yadaddsleepsnekked. Black e mo black e mo ya dadd sleeps nekked. Black e mo…”(Morrison 65) This forced her to become angry and since she has no one to shout at without being shouted back at, she ends the cycle being at the lowest of the low. So she starts to believe everything that she is told is true. All of this harassment from everyone in her life pushes her emotional and mental capacity to the breaking point until she drowns in the pursuit of trying to fix everything that she has ever been picked on for. She becomes insane and disconnected from reality, living in her own bubble of a world. Gaines uses a similar setting in A Gathering of old men to produce the same thematic conclusion. He placed his story in deep Luisiana in a rural farming community with a predominantly black population during the 1970s. Everybody knows each other in this community which

Toni Morrison´s The Bluest Eye (1970) conveys the Marxist idealism that social and economic realities are the factors that determine the culture and consciousness of a particular group. The struggle within the context of the Civil Rights Movement, as well as the rejection of African American people is displayed in Morrison´s work, showing the author´s consciousness. Thus, in this paper I will try to show the author´s belief that human self-realisation is determined and delimited by the dominant class at every level. For this purpose I will focus on the relation between wealth and social class, on how the dominant class, in this case the white one, imposes its values over the black community, reducing its personality and leading its members to lose their identity. I will also try to show how the victims of the capitalist system see themselves trapped in an order from which it is very difficult to escape, and find themselves forced to give up and accept their current condition. In order to do so, I will use quotations extracted from Morrison´s work and other secondary resources, and I will focus on the main characters of the novel that stand as representations of their social dimension.

It is the mother’s vulnerability to the racial standards of beauty that is transmitted to the daughter and ultimately leads to her victimization. In fact, the reason of Pauline’s vulnerability to the racially prejudiced notions of beauty lies in her relationship with her own mother. The relationship between Pecola Breedlove, the protagonist, and her mother, Pauline Breedlove, is ironically characterized by lack of love, and emotional attachment, indifference, frustration and cruelty. Set in a small town in Ohio, during the Depression, The Bluest Eye is the story of eleven year old Pecola Breedlove, who, victimized by the racist society, yearns for blue eyes, which, she believes, will make her worthy of love, happiness and acceptance in the

The Bluest Eyes open with an anecdote of Dick and Jane to show how racism destroys the mental stability of black people. It equates whites with success and happiness while blacks with poverty and unhappiness. This traumatises the minds of Blacks and they begin to dislike their own heritage and skin colour in the white world of Dick and Jane.

The social standards of beauty and the idea of the American Dream in The Bluest Eye leads Mrs. Breedlove to feelings of shame that she later passes on to Pecola. The Breedloves are surrounded by the idea of perfection, and their absence of it makes them misfits. Mrs. Breedlove works for a white family, the Fishers. She enjoys the luxury of her work life and inevitably favors her work over her family. This leads Pecola to struggle to find her identity, in a time where perception is everything. Pecola is challenged by the idea that her mother prefers her work life, that they have an outdated house, and that she does not look like the Shirley Temple doll with blue eyes.

Morrison 's first novel, The Bluest Eye, examines the tragic effects of imposing white, middle-class American ideals of beauty on the developing female identity of a young African American girl during the early 1940s. Inspired by a conversation Morrison once had with an elementary school classmate who wished for blue eyes, the novel poignantly shows the psychological devastation of a young black girl, Pecola Breedlove, who searches for love and acceptance in a world that denies and devalues people of her own race. As her mental state slowly unravels, Pecola hopelessly longs to possess the conventional American standards of feminine beauty—namely, white skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes—as presented to her by the popular icons and traditions of white culture. Written as a fragmented narrative from multiple perspectives and with significant typographical deviations, The Bluest Eye juxtaposes passages from the Dick-and-Jane grammar school primer with memories and stories of Pecola 's life alternately told in retrospect by one of Pecola 's now-grown childhood friends and by an omniscient narrator. Published in the midst of the Black Arts movement that flourished during the late 1960s and early 1970s, The Bluest Eye has attracted

1) Society has change the way Pecola perceives herself and she has the idea in her mind that her life would be less miserable if she has blue eyes. She is always thinking that “if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different” (Morrison 46). Pecola has gotten the impression of her life being complete if only she has blue eyes. She would see the eyes of others and become envious of their blue eyes. The boys at school would always pick on her and call her an ugly black girl. However, they would leave Pecola alone when they see her with Maureen Peal, described with “springtime eyes so wide with interest” (Morrison 66-67). 2) African Americans perceive that white Americans have a better lifestyle. According to the African American’s schema, “a white American ideal of the family unit [is] cohesive, happy, with love enough to spare to pets…it is desirable, but for man, particularly the black man, it is unattainable” (Ogunyemi 354). Pecola feels that if she had blue eyes, she could see the world the way white Americans do. Society has made her feel insecure and unacceptable because she has dark skin and brown eyes. She later becomes so desperate to get blue eyes that she “makes one final attempt to get blue eyes from a local interpreter of dreams, Soaphead Church” (“Overview: The Bluest Eye”). Pecola sees one of Soaphead’s advertisements, “If you are unhappy, discouraged, or in distress, I can help you…Satisfaction guaranteed” (Morrison 173), thinking he could help her with her misery of ugliness. He tells her he is unable to help her and only god could grant her the wish. The people around Pecola has made her feel self-conscious about herself and causing her to have a desire for blue eyes. Nonetheless, Pecola feel uncertain about herself as people bully her for being who she

The novel shows black people who are aware of the danger of conforming to Western standards of beauty. In the beginning of the novel, Claudia describes herself as indifferent; She realizes that she does not really hate Maureen but instead hated “the thing that made her beautiful” (Morrison, page 58). Claudia always asked herself “What was the secret? ...Why was it important? And so what?” (Morrison, page 57) It was the ideology of whiteness that made Maureen Paul beautiful. When Claudia and Frieda were younger, they were happy with their blackness. “We felt comfortable in our skins, enjoyed the news that our senses released to us, admired our dirt, cultivated our scars, and could not comprehend this unworthiness” (Morrison, page 57). This may suggest that Claudia resists the pressure to conform to Western standards of beauty. Claudia recognizes that if we conform to the Western standard of beauty, we may gain beauty but only at the expense of others. However, Claudia learns to love Shirley Temple; Claudia “learned much later to worship her” (Morrison, page 16) This suggests that the idea of beauty is something that is learned and not natural or