The Bluest Eye

When I sat down yesterday to read Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye I didn’t know what to expect. I knew I’d probably like the book because I think Morrison is amazing and I read Beloved in my junior year of high school and fell in love with it. Despite all this, Morrison never fails to surprise me. She talks about growing up with such sheer force and pugnacity that it was all I could do to not stop reading and put down the book. But enough of that. The Bluest Eye examines several issues that affect women today, such as racism, body image, gender roles, and sexism, to list a few. Morrison’s command of language and ability to switch from voice to voice make this novel a particularly powerful read.

Morrison examines the concept of white privilege in The Bluest Eye by using the white baby doll as a metaphor. She shows us Claudia’s contempt for the doll in order to highlight the abundant racism that was embedded into society at that time. Morrison gives us insight into Claudia’s attitude toward the doll by giving us Claudia’s voice. She says, “I had only one desire: to dismember it. To see of what it was made, to discover the dearness, to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped me, but apparently only me. 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,” (pg.20).

We see this kind backwards racism many times throughout The Bluest Eye. I say “backwards” because Claudia’s parents gave her the white baby doll and saw it as the ideal toy for her, the most beautiful present a girl could get, when the doll in fact looks nothing like Claudia. Her family is outraged when she dismembers it, crying out “ ‘You-don’t-know-how-to-take-care-of-nothing. I-never-had-a-baby-doll-in-my-whole-life-and-used-to-cry-my-eyes-out-for-them,’ ” (pg.21) furthering the proof that they are not aware that they are perpetuating a type of self-hatred.

Morrison uses a few other examples to emphasize this standard of white beauty and power. Toward the end of the novel, Claudia and Frieda take a trip to Mrs. Breedlove’s workplace to talk to Pecola. Before they leave, Pecola knocks Mrs. Breedlove’s berry cobbler to the floor, which frightens the little white girl she watches over. Pecola and her friends are told to leave, and we are left watching the scene between Mrs. Breedlove and the little girl. Mrs. Breedlove shows her distaste for her family and her race in this scene when the little girl asks her who the three other girls were. “ ‘Who were they, Polly?’ ” she asks. “ ‘Don’t worry none, baby.’ ‘You gonna make another pie?’ ‘’Course I will.’ ‘Who were they, Polly?’ ‘Hush. Don’t worry none,’ ” (pg. 109). It is in this scene that we see the shame Mrs. Breedlove feels--presumably for being black—for her place in the white man’s society.

This idea of self-hatred is played up with Pecola and her desire for blue eyes. At the end of the novel she visits Soaphead Church to see if he can give her what she wants. Morrison shows us his internal response, which furthers the notion that having blue eyes and light skin is what it means to be beautiful: “Here was an ugly little girl asking for beauty,” (pg.174), he goes on, describing her as “A little black girl who wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes,” (pg. 174).

Morrison communicates the power of racism and it’s affects so clearly in The Bluest Eye that it’s hard not to be moved by it. Her storytelling abilities make this work tragic and powerful and empowering all in one go. It saddens me to think that “white beauty” is the only kind of beauty that our society tries to measure up to when there are so many beautiful people in the world. This book has opened my eyes up to white privilege in more ways than I ever expected because I saw first-hand how far it has spread and how much it affects our culture.

_Paige Losen_