Pecola's View Of Herself
Toni Morrison uses stereotyping in "The Bluest Eye" to represent control of the black community, and to indicate how the black community often views itself. Pecola's wish for blue eyes is the deepest form of stereotyping, because she believes blue eyes (which white people have) will make her beautiful, and that without them, she is ugly. She believes people will like her if she has blue eyes, as well. She cannot see the beauty inside herself with her own eyes; she believes she needs the eyes of others in order to appear beautiful. Ultimately, Morrison is saying that Pecola believes while is beautiful and black is not because of white American stereotypes about beauty, looks, and the color of skin.
The beautiful white doll with blonde hair and blue eyes that Claudia destroys is also stereotypical of white American beauty standards. These stereotypes do not fit black children, and so, they begin to hate themselves because they can never measure up to these white stereotypes. The author uses this stereotyping to show how harmful it can be - black or white, or any other color for that matter. She shows that any stereotype is just a generalization and is not the truth, but people take stereotypes to be the truth, which gives the stereotype control over them. Pecola's idea that having blue eyes will make her beautiful eventually consumes her and ruins her life. Morrison writes of Pecola's mother, who instill the stereotypes of white American beauty in her daughter, "She was never able, after her education in the movies, to look at a face and not assign it some category in the scale of absolute beauty, and the scale was one she absorbed in full from the silver screen" (Morrison 95). Morrison seems to be saying that "buying in" to any stereotype and giving it control can ruin a life, and create discontent and unhappiness.
References
Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye, Beloved, Jazz. New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1998.
It is possibly or probably Morrison speaking from her own personal heart, maybe remembering her own childhood as a black girl in a time when black children were not very often used as characters in books; meanwhile, author Morrison has Claudia saying (62) "What was the secret?" Of Maureen's magical whiteness and social power. "What did we lack? Why was it important? And so what?" Morrison also offers readers a little
On the evening of her first menstruation, for example, she asks, 'How do you do that? I mean, how do you get somebody to love you.' And, after a visit to Marie, Poland, and China, Pecola ponders, 'What did love feel like?... How do grownups act when they love each other? Eat fish together?' " (Bloom, 26) The question of how to get somebody to love you is significant for
That shows the same thing, that Morrison is showing racism even exists in the black community. This book shows that white society controls everything, from how people feel about each other to how they see themselves and what they think is beautiful. Pecola is black, but she wants to be white, and that means she does not understand who she really is and why it is not bad to
Long hours she sat looking in the mirror, trying to discover the secret of the ugliness, the ugliness that made her ignored or despised at school, by teachers and classmates alike." pg. 45 Morrison does not explain what beauty should be associated with, but she clearly illustrates what it cannot be linked with. She wants readers to understand how psychologically damaging it can be for a person to be told repeatedly
William Faulkner on Toni Morrison Great writers always bring their own flair and style to their genre, but even the best in literature do not work in a vacuum. Writers are often influenced by their predecessors, and Toni Morrison is no different. The type of work first immortalized by William Faulkner is clearly evident in her novels, and she not only uses some of the same techniques but takes them
Racist Beauty Ideals and Racial Self-Hatred This paper examines Toni Morrison's novel the Bluest Eye from the perspective of three different interest groups: Those who would interrogate the paper on the basis of issues related to gender, or of the feminist movement; Those whose interests lie in the book's treatment of children's issues or advocacy, and Those engaging in a dialogue centering around issues of race. It should also be understood that these topics
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