What...wait....
Mar. 2nd, 2010 04:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grindmonkehyou're still awake?
The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, is a tragic story of an African-American community during the pre-civil rights era in the American Midwest. This segregated society idealizes a dominant caucasian culture that is both inescapable and unachievable to the central characters of the story and most African-Americans like them. The Breedlove family, their neighbors, and their entire social caste hopelessly measure themselves by these expectations and are adversely affected by the outcome, like bastard children trying to please the father who will never care for them.
The protagonist of Morrison’s story, Pecola Breedlove, and her friends, Claudia and Frieda, are poor African-American girls who believe they are ugly because of the pop-culture personalities of white culture that they are often compared to or compare themselves to. Early in the novel, an adult male calls Claudia and Frieda the names of the white actresses Greta Garbo and Ginger Rogers as an endearing complement. This is the first example of the influence of pop-culture in The Bluest Eye, and the young girls have varied reactions to the contrast between themselves and the icons of white culture. While Pecola and Frieda have great fondness for the child-actress Shirley Temple, Claudia despises her because Shirley dances with Bo Jangles and is seemingly a thief of the affection of Claudia's male role model who according to her was, "my friend, my uncle, my daddy, and who ought to have been soft-shoeing it and chuckling with me" (19). She maintains similar hate for the dolls that echo the same cultural rift as she tries to understand what is desirable about them, and wishes to simply dismember them while the rest of the world "had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured" (20). Ultimately, her contempt becomes a horrifying transference of the desire to similarly wanting to dismember little white girls with complete indifference. Claudia learns to adjust. She realizes the repulsiveness of the violence, and converts it to "fraudulent love" before eventually learning to worship Shirley Temple. She understands "that the change was adjustment without improvement" by conforming to to dominant cultural ideals (23).
Pecola Breedlove’s wish is that her own eyes will disappear and that she might someday have the bluest eyes in the world to take their place. Pecola is enamored by a Shirley Temple drinking cup, and Claudia accounts that, “We knew that she was fond of the Shirley Temple cup and took every opportunity to drink milk out of it just to handle and see sweet Shirley’s face” (22). Her affection for the cup is taken as prescribed by white culture as the cumulative standard for beauty. Pecola finds similar solace in Mary Jane candy and the blue-eyed white girl on the wrapper. After being ashamed by her encounter with a white shop-keeper while purchasing the candy, she performs a naive communion in “eating the eyes, eating Mary Jane, and becoming Mary Jane” (50). Pecola believes that she will have the perfect life if she looked like the blue-eyed white girls of the period’s pop-culture reflected by the images of Mary Jane on the candy wrapper and Shirley Temple on the cup . Pecola is tragically raped by her own father, and her ensuing madness leads her to believe that she actually possesses blue eyes. However, the thought plagues her that perhaps she doesn’t have the bluest eyes of everyone, and thus she will never be the prettiest. She has been conditioned by white culture to ultimately and perpetually desire the unattainable. Claudia summarizes Pecola’s tragedy with, “A little black girl yearns for the blue eyes of a little white girl, and the horror at the heart of her yearning is exceeded only by the evil of fulfillment” (204).
Maureen Peel is a young light-skinned African-American character in the novel that conforms closer to the white beauty ideal. Maureen's role in the story defines the inter-racial hierarchy in which African-Americans have fallen into in conforming to the dominant white culture. Claudia and Frieda are envious of Maureen due to her "lynch rope" braids, her lighter skin, and her parents' economic disposition which provided her with the nicest of clothes that were comparable to those of the richest white girls. From their perspective the entire African-American community is enchanted by her and the girls quickly grow to envy Maureen. They recognize that Maureen Peel is not the enemy, but "the thing to fear was the thing that made her beautiful, and not us" (74).
Pauline Breedlove, Pecola's mother, succumbs to pop-culture in a context that conclusively precedents the behavior of her children. Upon moving from the American South to the American Midwest with her new husband Cholly, Pauline quickly becomes lonely as she finds that she cannot relate to the "Dicty-like" northern black people. She is totally dependent on Cholly for companionship, and he in turn becomes more despondant to her and increasingly eager to spend time with others. Pauline learns to rely on consumerism in attempt to gain other people's approval of her clothes and material things, as well as escapism through fantasy in the movies at the cinema. Pauline discerns from these works of fiction an unrealistic standard of romantic love and physical beauty as she lives vicariously through passive consumerism. She becomes particularly infatuated with Gene Harlow and strives to mimic her appearance with a similar hairstyle until she loses her front tooth, at which point she gives up and “let her hair go back, plaited it up, and settled down to just being ugly” (123). Furthermore, when Pauline becomes pregnant with Pecola she has an idea of what her baby will look like, perhaps based on fantasy propogated by her method of escapism. When she has her daughter, she states of Pecola that she has a “head full of pretty hair, but Lord she was ugly” (126). She finds her ultimate satisfaction in working for the Fishers. She has been completely dissillusioned by pop-culture to the extent that the Fishers' white daughter gains more affection from Pauline than her own offspring, and it appears that this is Pauline's desolate attempt at being white.
Pecola, Pauline, Claudia, and Frieda are ugly through their own conviction, as the period’s pop-culture has internalized an acceptance of this disposition. This social commentary can easily be applied in a modern context as well. The marketing and entertainment of present day endorse only the images of the thinnest and most impossibly idealistic people that the public not only compares itself to, but develops unrealistic expectations by which to compare others to as well. Toni Morrison’s ultimate metaphor is that individuals of any race will never be able to attain beauty as defined by others in any context relative to any culture, but rather by defining beauty for themselves and discovering beauty within themselves.
The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, is a tragic story of an African-American community during the pre-civil rights era in the American Midwest. This segregated society idealizes a dominant caucasian culture that is both inescapable and unachievable to the central characters of the story and most African-Americans like them. The Breedlove family, their neighbors, and their entire social caste hopelessly measure themselves by these expectations and are adversely affected by the outcome, like bastard children trying to please the father who will never care for them.
The protagonist of Morrison’s story, Pecola Breedlove, and her friends, Claudia and Frieda, are poor African-American girls who believe they are ugly because of the pop-culture personalities of white culture that they are often compared to or compare themselves to. Early in the novel, an adult male calls Claudia and Frieda the names of the white actresses Greta Garbo and Ginger Rogers as an endearing complement. This is the first example of the influence of pop-culture in The Bluest Eye, and the young girls have varied reactions to the contrast between themselves and the icons of white culture. While Pecola and Frieda have great fondness for the child-actress Shirley Temple, Claudia despises her because Shirley dances with Bo Jangles and is seemingly a thief of the affection of Claudia's male role model who according to her was, "my friend, my uncle, my daddy, and who ought to have been soft-shoeing it and chuckling with me" (19). She maintains similar hate for the dolls that echo the same cultural rift as she tries to understand what is desirable about them, and wishes to simply dismember them while the rest of the world "had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured" (20). Ultimately, her contempt becomes a horrifying transference of the desire to similarly wanting to dismember little white girls with complete indifference. Claudia learns to adjust. She realizes the repulsiveness of the violence, and converts it to "fraudulent love" before eventually learning to worship Shirley Temple. She understands "that the change was adjustment without improvement" by conforming to to dominant cultural ideals (23).
Pecola Breedlove’s wish is that her own eyes will disappear and that she might someday have the bluest eyes in the world to take their place. Pecola is enamored by a Shirley Temple drinking cup, and Claudia accounts that, “We knew that she was fond of the Shirley Temple cup and took every opportunity to drink milk out of it just to handle and see sweet Shirley’s face” (22). Her affection for the cup is taken as prescribed by white culture as the cumulative standard for beauty. Pecola finds similar solace in Mary Jane candy and the blue-eyed white girl on the wrapper. After being ashamed by her encounter with a white shop-keeper while purchasing the candy, she performs a naive communion in “eating the eyes, eating Mary Jane, and becoming Mary Jane” (50). Pecola believes that she will have the perfect life if she looked like the blue-eyed white girls of the period’s pop-culture reflected by the images of Mary Jane on the candy wrapper and Shirley Temple on the cup . Pecola is tragically raped by her own father, and her ensuing madness leads her to believe that she actually possesses blue eyes. However, the thought plagues her that perhaps she doesn’t have the bluest eyes of everyone, and thus she will never be the prettiest. She has been conditioned by white culture to ultimately and perpetually desire the unattainable. Claudia summarizes Pecola’s tragedy with, “A little black girl yearns for the blue eyes of a little white girl, and the horror at the heart of her yearning is exceeded only by the evil of fulfillment” (204).
Maureen Peel is a young light-skinned African-American character in the novel that conforms closer to the white beauty ideal. Maureen's role in the story defines the inter-racial hierarchy in which African-Americans have fallen into in conforming to the dominant white culture. Claudia and Frieda are envious of Maureen due to her "lynch rope" braids, her lighter skin, and her parents' economic disposition which provided her with the nicest of clothes that were comparable to those of the richest white girls. From their perspective the entire African-American community is enchanted by her and the girls quickly grow to envy Maureen. They recognize that Maureen Peel is not the enemy, but "the thing to fear was the thing that made her beautiful, and not us" (74).
Pauline Breedlove, Pecola's mother, succumbs to pop-culture in a context that conclusively precedents the behavior of her children. Upon moving from the American South to the American Midwest with her new husband Cholly, Pauline quickly becomes lonely as she finds that she cannot relate to the "Dicty-like" northern black people. She is totally dependent on Cholly for companionship, and he in turn becomes more despondant to her and increasingly eager to spend time with others. Pauline learns to rely on consumerism in attempt to gain other people's approval of her clothes and material things, as well as escapism through fantasy in the movies at the cinema. Pauline discerns from these works of fiction an unrealistic standard of romantic love and physical beauty as she lives vicariously through passive consumerism. She becomes particularly infatuated with Gene Harlow and strives to mimic her appearance with a similar hairstyle until she loses her front tooth, at which point she gives up and “let her hair go back, plaited it up, and settled down to just being ugly” (123). Furthermore, when Pauline becomes pregnant with Pecola she has an idea of what her baby will look like, perhaps based on fantasy propogated by her method of escapism. When she has her daughter, she states of Pecola that she has a “head full of pretty hair, but Lord she was ugly” (126). She finds her ultimate satisfaction in working for the Fishers. She has been completely dissillusioned by pop-culture to the extent that the Fishers' white daughter gains more affection from Pauline than her own offspring, and it appears that this is Pauline's desolate attempt at being white.
Pecola, Pauline, Claudia, and Frieda are ugly through their own conviction, as the period’s pop-culture has internalized an acceptance of this disposition. This social commentary can easily be applied in a modern context as well. The marketing and entertainment of present day endorse only the images of the thinnest and most impossibly idealistic people that the public not only compares itself to, but develops unrealistic expectations by which to compare others to as well. Toni Morrison’s ultimate metaphor is that individuals of any race will never be able to attain beauty as defined by others in any context relative to any culture, but rather by defining beauty for themselves and discovering beauty within themselves.