The Bluest Eye Gender

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The Bluest Eye, written by Toni Morrison in 1970, seeks to critique and critically analyze African Americans perception of beauty throughout the 20th century. The story follows the tragic events that transform the life of elven year old Pecola Breedlove. Pecola’s interoperation of the world, and herself, is that if she could obtain or have blue eyes, then she would in fact be beautiful. Toni Morrsion confronts controversial social, racial and gender related issues throughout The Bluest Eyes concerning perception of true beauty. The stories protagonists, Pecola, grew up in post great depression Lorain, Ohio. Her parents, Cholly and Pauline, are far more concerned with proving for their family than distributing the love and attention …show more content…

Her upbringing and environment raised her to become incredibly envious of white people, particularly white girls her same age. Claudia does not even view this as the true horror, she states “But the dismemberment of the dolls was not the true horror. The truly horrifying this was the transference of the same impulses on to little white girls. The inference of which I could have axed them was shaken only by my desire to do so. To discover what eluded me: the secret of magic they weaved on to others. What made people look at them and say, “Awwwww”, but not for me? The eye slide of black women as they approached them on the street, and the positive gentleness of their touch as they handled them.”(Morrison) In my opinion this is as bad as race relations can get. Here is a pre-pubescent aged girl, attempting to find herself and love herself. Yet, she is plagued by racism throughout the world she views. Now she is trained to not only hate herself, but hate others that do not look like her due to pure envy. This feeling of resentment is almost taken verbatim from the real life social science test conducted by psychologist Kenneth Clack and his wife Mamie. The Clarck’s test consisted of “African American children's racial identification. In the most famous of these tests, the Clarks …show more content…

She truly believes that her life is horrible and tragic due to her natural appearances. Her brown eyes can only experience evil. Where as if she was born with blue eyes and look more like a white girl, she would only have great things happen to her. This is another example how Morrison masterfully captures the social prejudices that Pecola, along with numerous other black girls, experienced during this time period. Pecola only wishes she blue eyes, not lighter skin. To me this insinuates her desire to see the world differently and conversely the world will view her differently as well. She even attempts to purchase a pair of blue eyes at one point. Claudia, the novels narrorator, describes her desire as “Here was an ugly little girl asking for beauty. . . A little black girl who wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes. His outrage grew and felt like power. For the first time he honestly wished he could work miracles. (Morrison 180) This is demonstrated further throughout the Dick and Jane narrative that is presented at the beginning of the novel. The life of the presumably white Dick and Jane is clean cut and almost seamless. The story opens by stating “Here is the house. It is green and white. It is very pretty. Here is the family. Mother, Father, Dick, and Jane.” (Morrison 1)That narrative sets up the ideal world which a poor, depressed girl

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