Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

       
   Then they had grown. Edging into life from the back door. Becoming. Everybody in the world was in a position to give them orders. White women said, “Do this.” White children said, “Give me that.” White men said, “Come here.” Black men said, “Lay down.” The only people they need not take orders from were black children and each other.

Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye is the Nobel laureate’s first novel, published in 1970. The reader can find later characteristics of her future novels in The Bluest Eye, such as multiple points of view/narration, experimental writing, and the extensive backstories of characters in the novel to bring to the fore the role of history in preserving or fostering forms of oppression, usually racial and sexual. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison highlights the importance of recognizing the dehumanization and objectification of children, specifically black girls, who are often most vulnerable to problems in society due to poverty, gender, and racial identity. Pecola Breedlove, a paradoxical surname due to her parents’ inability to breed love for themselves and their own children, is the victim of all of society’s callous treatment of the poor, the black, the female, and the youth. Blacks, whites, children, and adults, in addition to her parents, reinforce her own negative self-perception by valorizing whiteness and the beauty it entails. The only exceptions are three prostitutes in Lorain, Ohio who live above her apartment, and the part-time narrator Claudia and her sister, Freida.

Due to her dark-skin, nappy hair, and low-class background, nearly everyone in Lorain perceives Pecola as inferior and ugly. Though she is more like a dandelion, which called a weed by society, she is actually beautiful but cannot realize it. Indeed, everyone, including a European immigrant store owner, initially cannot see her and endeavors to take her money in exchange for candy without touching her black hand (Morrison 49). Furthermore, she is urged to loathe herself by upper-class blacks, like Maureen Peals and Louis’s mother, who mock her for her dark skin and poor family background. Maureen, wealthy by black standards, and light-skinned enough to win the appreciation, popularity, and acceptance by nearly all white and black students, save Claudia and Freida, insults Pecola for her ugly blackness. Louis’s mother likewise encourages Pecola’s self-loathing by only seeing her blackness and poverty after Louis taunts and abuses her because of the color prejudice he initially picks up from his mother. In addition, black boys at Pecola’s school insult her, calling her “black e mo” after school and insulting her for seeing her father’s nakedness, which is an obvious reference to the curse of Ham (67). Intriguingly, the curse of Ham was utilized by Christian defenders of slavery, who argued Ham and his progeny were darkened as part of the curse for seeing Noah’s nakedness, and destined to serve the children of Noah’s other sons, the white race. Due to black boys embracing and reinforcing their own self-loathing because of their mutual blackness and the fact that they also had all seen their fathers nude at some point, illustrates how one oppressed group internalizes and expresses their own self-contempt by oppressing more vulnerable members of society, such as women. Indeed, black feminists often stress this point, pointing to the numerous ways black men, emasculated by white racism, endeavor to demonstrate their masculinity by abusing and objectifying black women, who are vulnerable to intersectional systems of oppression. 

Indeed, Pecola’s father exemplifies this because of his own humiliating emasculation after being discovered by two white men while in the act of coitus with young girl during his teen years. At the threat of gunpoint, Cholly Breedlove is forced to finish intercourse for the first time, to entertain racist whites (147). Due to his inability to challenge white male hegemony outright, Cholly begins to hate his young lover and all women in general, for leading to the situation in which he was so thoroughly emasculated by whites. This leads into his valorization of freedom in the black male sense, or freedom from obligation and respect for black women, in other words, misogynistic relations. For Pecola, her father’s inability to respect and love himself and others black like himself, he molests his young daughter in the kitchen due to both pity and hatred of himself for not being able to help his suffering daughter. Similarly, her mother, Pauline, referred to only as Mrs. Breedlove by her own children because of her inability to show affection towards her children, rejects her blackness and everything it entails to become the ideal servant for the white Fisher family, which has everything her family lacks: money, a nice, clean home, and a blonde-haired white girl for her to lather with love and attention. In fact, Pauline loves her servant role and the closeness it brings to her to whiteness so much she savagely beats her daughter when Claudia, Pecola, and Freida come into the Fishers’ home while she’s working. Thus, the very surroundings of Pecola’s life ensured that she would succumb to low self-esteem and desire blue eyes to escape the harsh realities of life as a young, black woman always told by her family, peers, whites, and adults that her blackness is inherently ugly and inferior.

Pecola, however, did have some positive relationships that encouraged her to embrace herself. Claudia and Freida, also dark and poor, suffered from the same oppression of women, children, blacks and the poor. However, they transcend racial self-loathing and a desire for whiteness, especially Claudia, who rejects a white baby doll given to her by her parents for Christmas. Throughout their friendship with Pecola, the two sisters defend her against the black boys and the high-yellow Maureen who insult her, and attempt to save the life of her baby through naïve prayer and faith (193). Unfortunately, the kindness of Claudia and Freida cannot defeat the overwhelming dehumanization of blackness and black femininity that Pecola descends into insanity to find solace in a white-ruled world. Moreover, Freida and Claudia increase the gap between themselves and Pecola by not acknowledging the positive benefits of her friendship with the three prostitutes who live above the Breedlove family apartment. Those three black women, demonized by the “good, Christian colored folk” are the only ones who respect and accept Pecola for being who she is, never encouraging her self-hatred and desire for blue eyes. Ironically, the only people who reject the preference for white beauty are women who sell their bodies, which they see as morally acceptable given to the fact that women who do not charge men after sex are being exploited and abused anyway. But the three prostitutes alone cannot overturn Pecola’s internalized racism, which becomes hopeless after her wish for blue eyes is fulfilled in her own mind by the false magician Soaphead Church, a light-skinned West Indian believer in white superiority.

In addition to racial oppression internalized by blacks, Pecola, Claudia and Freida are oppressed for being children. The novel begins by emphasizing that in the relationship between Claudia and her mother. Children are expected to obey, accept lies from adults, and unthinkingly receive the blows, curses and unthinkingly absorb the internalized oppressions their parents bear. Moreover, this novel demonstrates how the dehumanizing of children has violent and adverse consequences for the parents, whose abuse of their offspring only fuels their own delusional beliefs in white and male superiority. For example, the self-loathing Soapherd Church releases his frustration at his own blackness by sexually abusing young black girls, whose vulnerability and innocence attract him. For the children, the consequences take the form of physical and sexual violence, insanity, and inevitably, the preservation of racism and sexism. Therefore, Morrison asserts the importance of changing one’s relationship with children to reflect true compassion, understanding, and a relationship based in parity rather than authoritarian parenthood to escape white hegemony, which must begin in families and communities before pervading across society. Morrison also highlights the importance of changing adult-child relations with the aforementioned case of Claudia, whose own desires are not sought by her parents when she is given a white doll for Christmas. Claudia, who only wanted to listen to her grandfather play the violin, has her parents impose a Euro-American standard of beauty on her against her wishes. Children, though always under the influence of their parents’ moral values and standards, often find their own independent, and developing worldview restricted by their parents, which is detrimental to human progress because children often have better solutions to oppression because of their uncorrupted philosophy. Indeed, Jesus Christ asserted this when he urges men and women to be like children, soft and innocent, which is unsurprisingly adopted by Morrison, who often uses Biblical themes in her novels.

As she descends further and further into the delusion of attaining blue eyes after Soaphead Shepherd’s deceptive treatment, Pecola’s pregnancy earns her the avoidance of adults, her father flees, her mother never speaks to her, and children laugh at her. Claudia and Freida, seeing their prayer as failing to ensure the survival of Pecola’s baby, avoid her at all costs, thereby increasing Pecola’s alienation. Talking to herself, Pecola debates whether she has the bluest eyes of them all, even though nobody else sees her blue eyes. Her fantasy of attaining the symbol of white beauty, however, allows her to avoid the cruel reality of racism and her own life crumbling apart into mental and physical despair. No longer allowed to attend school, spending most of her time searching garbage while rambling aloud to herself, one must also agree with the assessment of Claudia and Freida: the soil of the land was inhospitable to the seed, black girls. The distressing end shows the importance of external forces in determining one’s identity, which are indubitably negative when almost everyone in one’s life reinforces white beauty and black ugliness.

In short, white supremacy and sexism will never be defeated until the parents learn how to become children again, ultimately paving the way for revolutionizing how everyone perceives the self. The child, fragile and more vulnerable to the legacies of racism and sexism, will often find their life opportunities severely limited or destroyed if the racist oppression internalized within families and communities continues unabated. Morrison’s message of self-love for black women is still relevant, regardless of the popularity of the Black is Beautiful era in the Civil Rights Movement and contemporary feminist circles. Black women continue to be portrayed as unattractive, uneducated, and their inherent value as human beings faces constant attacks from a Eurocentric ideal of beauty that doubly oppresses black men and women. The feminist critique of black men in this novel can also be found in later Morrison novels, and justifiably so since the patriarchal, misogynist definitions of black masculinity continue to serve white hegemony at the expense of embracing a universal aesthetic of inherent value and beauty in human life. Perhaps if society could become more like children, untouched by the forms of oppression adults persist in passing on to future generations, then maybe the relevancy of The Bluest Eye to contemporary gender and race relations will no longer matter.