The Bluest Eye
By Toni Morrison
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Female Characters in The Bluest Eye
​Each of Morrison's characters in The Bluest Eye demonstrate the struggle and difficulties that arise when individuals continue to perpetuate the standards of beauty set up by the white American society. In her novel, almost all of the characters are responsible for inflicting hatred upon themselves in an attempt to change the imperfections on their exterior body. In particular, each female character is guilty of either continuing the already detrimental ideas of beauty or coercing their female counterparts to feel insecure within their...
How does The Bluest Eye highlight the problems with the standards of beauty?
Morrison's The Bluest Eye describes a young, abused African American girl who is driven to mental instability due to her desire to be considered beautiful by attaining blue eyes.Toni Morrison points out the problems of the Western definitions of beauty by demonstrating the detrimental effects these standards have on not only African American girls but also young, developing girls regardless of class, race...
Morrison's Other Works
Beloved
Morrison's next novel, Beloved, was influenced by a published story about a slave, Margaret Garner, who tried to escape to Ohio with her children in order to escape slavery. When she realized that they were going to be returned, she tried to kill her children rather than return them to life of slavery. Morrison's Beloved was published in 1987 and was considered a bestseller. In 1988, it also won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Sula
Sula was Morrison's second novel which she published in 1973 while Morrison was working as an editor at Random House. The novel describes the relationship between two women; more specifically, it relates the story of a friendship between two African-American women that suffer some difficulties from childhood to adulthood.
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Toni Morrison
"The world back then didn't expect much from a little black girl, but my father and
mother certainly did."
- (McKay 423)
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