The Gaze Character Analysis

It is not surprising that mirrors in Morrison’s novel carry multiple meanings whether as physical or metaphorical mirrors. For Morrison’s implication of the second type, we are exposed to women wearing sunglasses as Gigi and Connie. However, the effects of Gigi’s use of the sunglasses are different from Connie’s one in that it is limited only to beauty needs. Connie’s utilization of the sunglasses takes another dimension since it holds more than it denotes. Connie at the age of nine years old finds herself lost “In the street garbage” (223). Then suddenly she is picked up by a nun called, Mary Magna, who provides her with the deepest emotions of maternal love and care. As Morrison describes it, “She fallen in love with Consolata” (223). As grown-up woman, Connie, or Consolata, comes to grasp life with its delightfulness and warmth. She is described as the woman who has never removed her sunglasses and

When we speak about “the eyes, the windows;” “watching and seeing,” our attention is directly drawn to “The Gaze.” In Paradise, this concept is considered to be a complicated one since it does not belong to one social group; it rather depends on the one who owns power. Generally, in the patriarchal societies, it ismen who determine the use of such concepts of power relation. In this context, Bell Hooks urges the necessity for the black women to “Develop looking relations...that constructs our presence...that denies the “body” of the black female” (127). She sees that under male gaze, the black women are perceived as bodies, that is to say, women lose control to determine who they really are. Similarly, in her book, The Second Sex, the French feminist and theorist Simone de Beauvoir reinforces the above idea about males’ domination over females’ fate and lives by asserting that “Humanity is male, and man defines woman, not in herself, but in relation to himself; she is not considered as an autonomous being”