The Bluest Eye
By Toni Morrison
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, and ethnicity. Through detailed descriptions of each female character, she utilizes this novel to show that the idealized depictions of the perfect woman are forced onto girls at a young age which inevitably lead them to distrust their own beauty, culture, identity, and self-worth. Morrison suggests that the self-deprecation amongst women, particularly African American women, starts at a young age due to the constant desire to mirror their white counterparts because of society's emphasis on white girls. With this said, however, Morrison is careful to not solely blame this situation on individuals in the white community. In fact, because of her profuse use of black protagonists, it is evident that Morrison's novels aims to criticize African American men and women who advocate these standards through their propoganda techniques and calls for individuals to be cognizant of their choices. More specifically, in her novel, The Bluest Eye, Morrison explains that the need to be beautiful in the eye of others forces young females into a cyle of dissatisfaction, self-delusion, and self-hatred through the characters: Pecola and Pauline Breedlove, Claudia and Frieda MacTeer, Maureen Peal, and Darlene while also demonstrating that the African American community, itself, creates and idealizes the white standard of beauty.
Beauty in the early 1900s
As a twentieth century writer, Morrison was born at a time in which beauty was centralized in the United States due to the increasing rights acquired by women. Especially after the Roaring Twenties had come to an end, white American women who had blue eyes, blonde hair, and wore red lipstick were portrayed as the ideal, perfect woman. The lucky woman who managed to encompass all these characteristics were desired by men and envied by women; in addition to this, almost every movie, piece of work, and advertisement depicted the ideal woman and housewife as white, slender female. Even by the end of the twentieth century, it was rare for woman of color to be romanticized on any screen in the pre-dominantly white American society. However, it is important to note that grown women and mothers were not the sole targets of this thinking; in fact, young girls were often confronted with the pressure of beauty through the perpetual efforts of the media to ingrain the perfect woman into the young minds of America. Thus, it was no surprise when girls such as Shirley Temple became celebrities and gained enormous popularity through the exploitation of their features. Thus, when Morrison started working on her novel after she divorced her husband and while she was still pregnant with their second son in the late 1960s. While her reasons for beginning the novel are unclear, Morrison's disgust with the continous cycle of self-destruction and self-loathing were key motivators in writing the character, Pecola Breedlove.
Figure 9
Harlem Renaissance
It was around this time that The Harlem Renaissance began which "was an era of African American art" (Duvall 237) in which African Americans individuals encouraged each other to appreciate their own talents, culture, and history. The movement was primarily located in New York City; however, there were writers that joined the Harlem Renaissance throughout the country. Although Morrison is not considered one of the prominent writers of this movement since she was born several years later, the ideas and values of this movement encouraged her and her parents to understand the timelessness of black culture. With this said, however, the Harlem Renaissance was primarily comprised of men; thus, women who wrote about the struggles of African American women rather than the struggles of blacks, themselves, were criticized by several writers. Zora Neale Hurston, whom Toni Morrison was greatly influenced by, was one of the women writers who was misunderstood and continously ridiculed for her themes of sexism and emphasis on gender roles. However, Morrison, herself, when she started writing refused to limit herself to explaining the sorrows of the black individual. In actuality, Morrison wanted "to write from within" (Duvall 237) in order to truly highlight the inherent problems that arose from racial discrimination, sexism, and black oppression. That is, Morrison wanted to not only show the white Americans the detrimental effects of their discrimination but also show her black counterparts their role in discriminating within their own community.
The Bluest Eye
When Morrison wrote The Bluest Eye, she wanted to explore the standards of beauty within the African American community in order to highlight the idea that black people perpetuate the white standards of beauty. However, in order to truly demonstrate the negative effects of such standards, Morrison begins the novel with the perspective of a child- Claudia MacTeer. Now, it is important to note that Claudia is not the main protagonist in the story but rather Pecola Breedlove, a young, mentally and sexually abused African American girl is. Morrison tells the story of Pecola through the eyes of Claudia to indicate the inherent need to change oneself that is embedded in society while also demonstrating the cyclical tendencies to disregard each other in black communities.
Morrison begins the novel by addressing Claudia's disdain for her white neighbor, Rosemary Villanucci by showing the violent attitude Claudia has towards the girl. Although Morrison does not actually describe the physical characteristics of this girl, Claudia's own insecurities are shown when she says, "wanting to poke the arrogance out of her eyes and smash the pride of ownership that curls her chewing mouth" (Morrison, 1). That is, because Claudia specifies that she wants to rip out Rosemary's eyes, one can assume that she is jealous of not only the way she looks but also the superiority and power that arises from looking white. The same thing is seen when Claudia admits that she rips the head off the blue-eyed dolls she would recieve because "all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured" (Morrison 20). Claudia's refusal to submit to the predicate set however does not necessarily indicate that she is free from the standards of beauty that surround her. In fact, Claudia's actions express the self-hatred he feels because she is unable to look like these dolls that are valued by her own parents.
Morrison delves deeper into this idea with the introduction of Pecola Breedlove. Pecola symbolizes the ultimate tragedy that arises from insecurity, self-hatred, and self-loathing. However, rather than illustrate Pecola as a character who is bound by the shackles of other white children, Morrison demonstrates that Pecola's own father and mother contributed to her mental instability. For example, when Claudia describes the Breedloves she says, "they lived there because they were poor and black, and they stayed there because they believed they were ugly" (Morrison 38). Here, Morrison distinguishes between being black and being ugly to reveal the underlying beliefs of each character. In other words, Pauline, Pecola's mother,abhors her own daughter because of the internalized racism that she experiences due to the isolation inflicted upon her by the African American community. This is seen most when Pauline violently smacked her own daughter around simply because she dropped the filling for a piece of pie while comforting the little, Caucasian girl she was asked to look after (Morrison 109). Morrison tries to explain this behavior by relaying the horrid life of Pauline and her desire to be considered beautiful especially when the narrator states that Pauline "wanted other women to cast favorable glances her way" (Morrison 119). Through the character of Pauline, Morrison emphasizes that the African American community inadvertenly encourages this white standard of beauty by showing the mental processes of Pecola. That is, after her father rapes her, she is more concerned with having blue eyes in order to be percieved as beautiful. Ultimately, Morrison's novel suggests that individuals should be aware of their power to perpetuate an idealized standard of beauty.
