Seeing Through a Different Eye

This week our assignment was to read The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. It is the story of a young black girl in Loraine, Ohio towards the end of the Great Depression. It is told through the perspective of many people, most notably, her younger friend Claudia who has yet to be affected in the way older children and adults have regarding beauty and race. This novel contains many themes regarding race, beauty, and love.

One of the main themes that guide the progression of this novel, as well as it guides us in society, is that white skin is the standard of beauty. To discuss this warped ideal Morrison writes, “It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights—if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different” (46). This is the first time that we learn Pecola desperately wishes for blue eyes. It is not that she wants to beautiful by white standards, however. She also wants to see “new pictures, new faces” and believes that if she had blue eyes, people wouldn’t want her to witness all the painful things that she does now (45). This is also reinforced when boys who are teasing Pecola choose to cease their malice after a lighter-skinned Maureen Peal happens by. They no longer want to commit crimes in front of the beautiful eyes of Maureen Peal. Although Pecola never wishes for white skin, her desire for blue eyes emphasizes how features of white women, even if they would be ridiculous on a black girl, are more “beautiful”. These same ideas are seconded as Abra Fortune Chernik writes in her essay The Body Politic, “Hatred of my body generalized to hatred of myself as a person, and self-referential labels such as ‘pig,’ ‘failure’ and ‘glutton’ allowed me to believe that I deserved punishment” (104). Although she suffers from hate of her body size rather than color, Chernik too believes that she is defective. If she were skinnier, she needn’t be punished; if Pecola had blue eyes, she needn’t witness bad things. White skin as the beauty ideal is also noted when Morrison writes from the perspective of nine-year-old Claudia. Claudia explains her disdain for Shirley Temple when she says, “…I had felt a stranger, more frightening thing than hatred for all the Shirley Temples of the world. It had begun with Christmas and the gift of dolls. The big, the special, the loving gift was always a big, blue-eyed Baby Doll” (19-20). Her view is extremely different from the views of her older peers as well as the black community featured in this novel as a whole. Shirley Temple is idolized; she is pretty and worthy of affection. The motifs of Shirley Temple and a white doll are used to represent a master’s tool such as the ones described by Adre Lorde in The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House. Only the childhood innocence of Claudia who has yet to be tainted by the psychological damage her older peers have already fallen prey allows her to see the absurdity of admiring a little white girl or doll when they are treated more preciously than she is.

Another major theme in The Bluest Eye is sexual experience and its abuse. Through the character of Claudia, Morrison writes, “It never occurred to either of us that the earth itself might have been unyielding. We had dropped our seeds in our own little plot of black dirt just as Pecola's father had dropped his seeds in his own plot of black dirt. Our innocence and faith were no more productive than his lust or despair” (6). Through this quotation, we first learn that before the close of this story, Pecola will have been impregnated by her own father. The thought that it mayn’t have been Claudia’s fault that the marigold seeds her and her sister Frieda planted never sprouted mirrors the thought that there mayn’t be anyone to blame for Pecola’s pain. Although Pecola’s parents (especially her father) are a huge part of the problem, both of them have also received much pain at the hands of others. The possibility arises that there is no escaping suffering. Pecola’s first sexual experience is more violent than many of the others but not necessary less hostile and humiliating. Frieda is fondled by a tenant Mr. Henry and Pecola’s father carries out his first sexual experience under the hostile gaze of white men. The implications of sexual abuse within this novel are not simply the fact that sex is dangerous for black teenagers; black girls are ill-equipped to handle the consequences. Frieda’s parents do not explain the extent of perversion associated with Mr. Henry’s actions and she thinks that she’ll be “ruined” and fat. Pecola’s mother doesn’t believe Pecola has been raped making it possible for Pecola’s father to do this a second time. Pecola seeks solace in the comfort of a friend who can see Pecola’s new blue eyes. The girl is driven to madness because there is no place for her to be beautiful and loved and cared for as long as she is black.

To conclude her melancholy story, Morrison once again uses the voice of Claudia to say, “Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved. The lover alone possesses his gift of love. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glare of the lover's inward eye” (206). These thoughts convey a scary argument that love does not heal or help. Pecola’s father felt love for his daughter and committed such a horrific act out of that love (though mingled with disgust). Love can’t ever be perfect because even loved ones hurt you. Even though there is a hope for perfect romantic love, a black girl like Pecola can never achieve that love. She is black and, therefore, she is ugly. She doesn’t deserve that kind of love. The only beacon of hope Claudia gives us about love is that no matter how grotesquely this love is shown, the way Cholly demonstrated love for his daughter, it was still an act of love; he cannot be completely bad. If even this disgusting man can show love, perhaps there may be a “gift for the beloved.”

Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye ties in with our CAP project because it discusses perception. The sexuality of black women and girls in this time setting is nothing more than an obstacle. It is to be possessed by men (such as Cholly’s first conquest, Pauline Breedlove, Frieda, Geraldine, and Pecola) or to be used as a means of living (such as the prostitutes). Although the media does not highly impact their sexuality as such, it is responsible for their self-perception as women and as people. The recurrent themes of Shirley Temple, a white baby doll, and blue eyes are what these women and girls desire to be or to have. Similar to today with television shows, music videos, and magazine advertisements; these women are given an unachievable ideal to live up to. At that time there weren’t black dolls or child celebrities; there weren’t accurate representations of their femininity, as there often isn’t accurate portrayals of female sexuality. The problem lives on but it has simply taken on a new form.

~Katie Frye