Analysis Of Toni Morrison's 'The Bluest Eye'

One who has experienced life must acknowledge "That world contains many things, and on the level of society, part of what it contains is the political reality of the time - power structures, relations among classes, issues of justice and rights, interactions between the sexes and among various racial and ethnic constituencies" (Foster 115). The reality of American society is the learned conformism to stereotype, ostracize, discriminate, and to be prejudice to one another based on the societal definitions of beauty, success, and normality. The African American female Literature Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison, explored America’s racial prejudice of the 1940s in her eye-opening novel The Bluest Eye. Through developing a parallel structure between
The author of that article, Tracey Owens Patton contextually explained the roots of African American female disparities with identity as “ ‘The Lily Complex’. This complex is defined as “altering, disguising, and covering up your physical self in order to assimilate, to be accepted as attractive (Patton 26). From the beginning of African American slavery, the division between women began. The more you resembles a white woman, lighter skin, slender shape, brighter hair, the more societally accepted you were. It is the natural human mechanism for people to desire to fit in, thus a dark skinned African American girl wanting to bleach her skin to look like the Mary Jane who had all the friends, was very common during early American history. Patton further analyzes “The desire to change her outer appearance to meet a Eurocentric ideal may lead her to loathe her own physical appearance and believe that “Black is not beautiful ... that she can only be lovely by impersonating someone else” (177)” (26). As media only presented White women as women of beauty, African American women began to see fault within them and desired to change who they were for societal
The narrator of the work, Claudia MacTeer, compares she and her sister’s view of Shirley Temple, “Frieda and she had a loving conversation about how cu-ute Shirley Temple was. I couldn’t join them in their adoration because I hated Shirley…hatred for all the Shirley Temples of the World” (Morrison 35). Shirley Temple, often remembered for her bubbly personality, amiable voice, and perfectly spiral-curled hair, was referred to as America’s sweet heart. Shirley Temple was a child around Claudia’s age, but had the presence, fame, and the adoration of an adult movie star. Shirley was all the media illustrated as a normal American girl, not another girl who looked like Claudia. Shirley Temple represented a symbol and signified all of the White girls across America who was publicly seen as pretty. Claudia could not admire Shirley Temple because Shirley Temple was a constant reminder of how society did not see the beauty in African American girls such as