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Alienated Self-Hatred In The Bluest Eye And Sula

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Swine &Das observe in “The Alienated Self; Searching for Space in Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Sula” anthologized in Modern American Literature that ”This novel probes deeper into the black woman’s psychic dilemmas, oppressions and tribulations as symbolized by the tragic life of Pecola literally affected by the dominant culture’s beauty standards(Swain and Das89). Pecola, like her mother, equated and standardized beauty with white. Both are haunted by this inferiority complex and self-hatred. Cultural hegemony distorts the true nature of values so that it dominates the subordinate class to believe that they are inferior and the dominating class is the superior; as such, here white is believed to symbolize beauty and black is to symbolize ugliness. Pecola stands for binary opposition ugliness, unworthiness, invisibility and lack of self-esteem. In fact Pecola prays to have blue eyes so that she could be considered beautiful. Since being white is associated with aesthetics, moral superiority, and power, …show more content…

Pecola menstruated in the garden while playing with Frieda and Claudia. Whist Pecola had no idea of what happened to her and she thought that she would die. Frieda explained that she was now capable of having a baby. While the sisters tried to help and clean Pecola-they were confronted with the nosey neighbor Rosemary who threatened to tell their mother that the girls were “playing nasty” (Morrison 22). Claudia the rebel reached out and scratched Rosemary’s nose. Mrs. MacTeer broke off a branch from the bush and started hitting Frieda on the leg, and at one stage said she would have preferred pigs to her because at least she could slaughter the pigs. Being abused, “Frieda was destroyed. Whippings wounded and insulted her” (22). As the girls slept that night Pecola asks if she could have a baby now and Frieda answers ironically “Somebody has to love you”

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