Bluest Eye Gender

645 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: How did toni morrison explore race and beauty in the bluest eye

Toni Morrison’s Bluest Eye follows the narrative of Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl who wishes for beauty. “Mocked by others for the dark skin, brown eyes that set her apart, she yearns for blonde hair and blue eyes that she believes will finally let her fit in”(Morrison, Forward). Through the narrative her dream grows more severe her life changes and she slowly dwells in to madness. Which brings up powerful questions such as How is beauty constructed by society? Is it the same for all genders. Toni Morrison changes the perspective of the reader on how beauty is constructed by society using the narrative of the bluest eye. Throughout the narrative of the bluest eye, the use of dolls and role models is used to emphasize …show more content…

Beauty is constructed by society through the majority.For example in pocalas universe white is the the most dominant skin tone and majority celebrates whiteness,blonde hair and bright blue eyes, in many ways this is all true in many other society where the majority governs the societal norms.”Frieda and she had a long conversation on how cute shirley temple was, i couldn't join them in their adoration because i hated shirley”(Morrison 35) (All the world had agreed Blue eyes, yellow hair and bright pink skin was what every girl treasured )in another world Pecola's dark skin, curly hair and brown eyes is appreciated and is considered the social norm for prettiness. Toni morrison tries to change are perspective by giving us background story of each character that does wrong to pecola. One such character Cholly Breedlove is Humiliated by white men which leads to his down spiral of hatred against women, neglection of his children, alcoholism and his death. His rape of Pecola can't be justified, but his background is a reflection of racist america which instilled in him worthlessness “ The Breedloves did not live in a storefront because they were having temporary difficulty adjusting to the

Show More
Related

  • Anotated Bibliographies for The Bluest Eye

    1994 Words  | 4 Pages

    Toni Morrison's novel "The Bluest Eye", is a very important novel in literature, because of the many boundaries that were crosses and the painful, serious topics that were brought into light, including racism, gender issues, Black female Subjectivity, and child abuse of many forms. This set of annotated bibliographies are scholarly works of literature that centre around the hot topic of racism in the novel, "The Bluest Eye", and the low self-esteem faced by young African American women, due to white culture. My research was guided by these ideas of racism and loss of self, suffered in the novel, by the main character Pecola Breedlove. This text generates many racial and social-cultural problems, dealing with the lost identity of a young African American women, due to her obsession with the white way of life, and her wish to have blue eyes, leading to her complete transgression into insanity.

    Read More

  • Morrison's Bluest Eye Essay: Self-Definition

    2534 Words  | 6 Pages

    In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, the struggle begins in childhood. Two young black girls -- Claudia and Pecola -- illuminate the combined power of externally imposed gender and racial definitions where the black female must not only deal with the black male's female but must contend with the white male's and the white female's black female, a double gender and racial bind. All the male definitions that applied to the white male's female apply, in intensified form, to the black male's, white male's and white female's black female. In addition, where the white male and female are represented as beautiful, the black female is the inverse -- ugly.

    Read More

  • Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

    2708 Words  | 6 Pages

    Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye provides social commentary on a lesser known portion of black society in America. The protagonist Pecola is a young black girl who desperately wants to feel beautiful and gain the “bluest eyes” as the title references. The book seeks to define beauty and love in this twisted perverse society, dragging the reader through Morrison’s emotional manipulations. Her father Cholly Breedlove steals the reader’s emotional attention from Pecola as he enters the story. In fact, Toni Morrison’s depiction of Cholly wrongfully evokes sympathy from the reader.

    Read More

  • Beauty and The Bluest Eye

    416 Words  | 1 Pages

    The characters in this book as well as the time period mark a time in American history that played an important role in the ideas of equality and freedom. All of the elements on which this country were founded upon were twisted so they no longer applied to blacks and other minorities in this country. The life led by Pecola as well as others like her good or bad is a part of history that was experienced by many Americans in all parts of the country. While it is questionable whether total equality has been reached in this country, many ideas have changed for the better. This book is significant because it shows a different side to American literature as well as life. Morrison points out what has changed and what has stayed the same. While people are generally equal, there are still prejudices in the idea of what is beautiful and who is worthy.

    Read More

  • Racial Self-Loathing And Discrimination In The Bluest Eyes By Toni Morrison

    1509 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the novel “The Bluest Eyes”, by Toni Morrison, Racial self-loathing and hatred is a major theme through the text, and is even evident in the title. Instead of making the plot center around events over racism, the book shows a deeper portrayal of racism, emphasizing on the way racial self-hatred and loathing plagues the black characters. The novel shows an extended depiction of the ways in which internalized white beauty standards distort the lives of the black characters. The author shows this by having African Americans who have lighter features, Maureen Peal, Geraldine and Soaphead Church, and characters with darker features, Pecola and her Parents Cholly, and Pauline Breedlove. Through them we are able to see racial self-loathing, there

    Read More

  • Self-Hatred and the Aesthetics of Beauty in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

    1283 Words  | 3 Pages

    Topic: Discuss the issues of self-hatred and the aesthetics of beauty in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. What role do they play in the novel and how do they relate to its theme?

    Read More

  • Self-Hate in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

    2420 Words  | 5 Pages

    beauty in her culture, Pecola must do the impossible: find white beauty. Toni Morrison shows

    Read More

  • Blond Hair, Blue Eyed Beauty

    2310 Words  | 5 Pages

    Blond hair, blue eyes. In America these are the ideals of a woman’s beauty. This image is drilled into our minds across the lifespan in the media and it conditions people's standards of beauty. We see Black women wish that their skin was lighter. In an episode of "The Tyra Banks Show", a Black girl as young as 6 talks about how she doesn't like her hair and wishes that it was long and straight like a white woman's. Some minorities get surgery to change their facial features, or only date white men. Having been taught to think that white people are more attractive than people of their own ethnicity. In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, the character of Pecola exemplifies the inferiority felt throughout the black community due to the ideology that white qualities propel you in social status. Pecola’s mother, Pauline Breedlove, said it best when she was introduced to beauty it being the most destructive ideas in the history of human though. From which the envy, insecurity and disillusion have been derived by the ideas of beauty and physical appearance. Pecola’s story is about the consequences of a little black girl growing up in a society dominated by white supremacy. We must not look at beauty as a value rather an oppressive discourse that has taken over our society. Pecola truly believes that if her eyes were blue she would be pretty, virtuous, and loved by everyone around her. Friends would play with her, teachers would treat her better and even her parents might stop their constant fights because, in her heart of hearts, no one would want to “do bad things in front of those pretty eyes.”

    Read More

  • Racial Beauty Standards In The Bluest Eye

    1353 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, the character Claudia struggles with a beauty standard that harms her sense of self-esteem. Claudia tries to make sense of why the beauty standard does not include black girls. The beauty standard determines that blonde-haired blue-eyed white girls are the image of beauty and therefore they are worthy of not only attention, but are considered valuable to American culture of the 1940s. Thus, learning she has no value or beauty as a black girl, Claudia destroys her white doll in an attempt to understand why white girls are beautiful and subsequently worthy, socially superior members of society. In destroying the doll, Claudia attempts to destroy the beauty standard that works to make her feel socially inferior and ugly because of her skin color. Consequently, Claudia's destruction of the doll works to show how the beauty standard was created to keep black females from feeling valuable by producing a sense of self-hate in black females. The racial loathing created within black women keeps them as passive objects and, ultimately, leads black women, specifically Pecola, to destroy themselves because they cannot attain the blue eyes of the white beauty standard.

    Read More

  • Racism and Sexism in the Bluest Eye

    1790 Words  | 4 Pages

    Toni Morrison, the author of The Bluest Eye, centers her novel around two things: beauty and wealth in their relation to race and the brutal rape of a young girl by her father. Morrison explores and exposes these themes in relation to the underlying factors of black society: racism and sexism. Every character has a problem to deal with, and it involves racism and/or sexism. Whether the characters are the victim or the aggressor, they can do nothing about their problem or condition, especially when it concerns gender and race. Morrison's characters are clearly at the mercy of preconceived notions maintained by society.

    Read More

  • Quest for Personal Identity in The Bluest Eye

    2750 Words  | 6 Pages

    Quest for Personal Identity in The Bluest Eye A main theme in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye is the quest for individual identity and the influence of the family and community on that quest. This theme is present throughout the novel and evident in many of the characters. Pecola Breedlove, Cholly Breedlove, and Pauline Breedlove are all embodiments of this quest for identity, as well as symbols of the quest of many of the many Black people that were moving to the north in search of greater opportunities.

    Read More

  • The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

    1122 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the 1940's as well as present day, the media pushed on society an image of perfection and beauty. This image is many times fake, but the naive cannot deceive, and it can become an icon of beauty. If you do not fall within the image then you are ugly. In the book "The Bluest Eye," we witness the power that the media has on specific characters: Pecola Breedlove, Claudia and Frieda MacTeer. The icon of beauty at that point in time is Shirley Temple, a white girl with blond hair and blue eyes. She is also the first reference to beauty in the book. Claudia explains her feelings towards Shirley Temple by saying, "...I had felt a stranger, more frightening thing than hatred for all the Shirley Temples of the world" (19). Claudia is relating the hatred that she felt towards Shirley Temple to the envy she has towards girls who are beautiful like Shirley. Claudia herself knows that the media is trying to imply this image she says, "Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs—all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured" (20). This idea is repeated repetitively throughout the story, the idea that blue-eyed is beautiful. Frieda and Pecola love Shirley Temple while Claudia despises her with envy. Pecola once goes to purchase some candies called Mary Janes, she is very intrigued by the blue-eyed, blond girl in the wrapper. The narrator tells us that Pecola feels Mary Jane's eyes are pretty and that by eating the candy she feels the love that she has for the girl on the wrapper and she finds herself closer to her (50). The idea pushed by the media that blue eyes are beautiful builds up a strong destructive desire in Pecola.

    Read More

  • The Bluest Eye

    1323 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout Toni Morrison’s controversial debut The Bluest Eye, several characters are entangled in the extremes of human cruelty and desire. A once innocent Pecola arguably receives the most appalling treatment, as not only is she exposed to unrelenting racism and severe domestic abuse, she is also raped and impregnated by her own father, Cholly. By all accounts, Cholly is detestable and unworthy of any kind of sympathy. However, over the course of the novel, as Cholly’s character and life are slowly brought into the light and out of the self-hatred veil, the reader comes to partially understand why Cholly did what he did and what really drives him. By painting this severely flawed yet completely human picture of Cholly, Morrison draws comparison with how Pecola was treated by both of her undesirable parents.

    Read More

  • Race And Beauty in Toni Morrison's Novel The Bluest Eye

    1401 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye, she captures, with vivid insight, the plight of a young African American girl and what she would be subjected to in a media contrived society that places its ideal of beauty on the e quintessential blue-eyed, blonde woman. The idea of what is beautiful has been stereotyped in the mass media since the beginning and creates a mental and emotional damage to self and soul. This oppression to the soul creates a socio-economic displacement causing a cycle of dysfunction and abuses. Morrison takes us through the agonizing story of just such a young girl, Pecola Breedlove, and her aching desire to have what is considered beautiful - blue eyes. Racial stereotypes of beauty contrived and nourished by the mass media contribute to the status at which young African American girls find themselves early on and throughout their lives.

    Read More

  • The Bluest Eye Marxism Analysis

    1649 Words  | 4 Pages

    “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”: A Marxist reading of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye

    Read More

More about Bluest Eye Gender

Open Document