The Bluest Eye
Toni Morrison - 1975
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison is a novel written in America in 1970. It is a text consumed by the widespread themes of American life: self-image, family, racism, class, beauty and womanhood. The Bluest Eye begins with the focus on two sisters, Claudia and Frieda who are growing up in a working class, secure and relatively loving home in Lorain Ohio. However, the novel does not center around these two girls, but through their narrative and the fragmented narratives of others we uncover the story of Pecola Breedlove who we meet at the beginning of the novel, pregnant with her own father's baby. Pecola is branded ugly by herself and the community and comes from a home steeped in poverty, racism and hatred. The novel follows the internalisation of cultural structures that leads Pecola Breedlove to a life of self-loathing and abuse.
Context
The 1970s was a decade filled with widespread fury and discontentment. Feminist, anti-racist and anti-war movements proliferated across America and much of the western world. It was an angry decade which fuelled angry, confronting literature. However Morrison occupies a unique space of vulnerability. The Bluest Eye presents a reality of human identity and human flaws in which the culmination of a racist society internalises itself in a young girl.
It is this intimate, human exploration of culture which makes Morrison as relevant today, globally as it did in 1970s America. Of course racism is still a deep rooted problem in society, but it is more than that - Morrison's adept storytelling and her way of involving the reader as an active participant in the novel mean the social and political role of the reader as a participant in cultural structures are realised.
Society and humanity is responsible for the demise of innocent Pecola and the reader is made to feel their own role in this tragedy. Morrison invites the reader to be both the judged and the judge - at once both the convict and the jury. I explore how Morrison achieves this in greater detail in the section "Eye and I" further on in this post.
Morrison said of her writing process with an interview with the Guardian in 2014 "The point is not having the white critic sit on your shoulder and approve [what you're writing]". She was not looking at the world through the oppressors eyes but through her own, which sets The Bluest Eye apart from some of the other texts that came out of the civil rights movement. It is reeling fiercely against society's perpetuation of racism, but it does so in a way that puts you inside of it without ever being aware of its doing so.
Morrison has written extensively over her realsiation that American culture and national identity is often definined by an inextricable tie to whiteness that exists in antithesis to everything else (see Morrison's recent article Making America White Again here). In the interview linked below, the interviewer asks her "Will she ever stop writing about race". Morrion replies by asking whether he would ask that question to Joyce or Tolstoy? Who both of course talk about race in their works, but because they are not seen as a racial minority, and exist outside of the racialised view of literature, their work is not deemed a racial text.
Morrison makes the point here, as she demonstrates so thoroughly in the Bluest Eye, that literature written by a person, regardless of their race, will be about what they see, what they know, what they want to say - it is not about what they think others will want them to say. To the label of "Black Writer" Morrison would say, well of course she's a black writer - but what of it? She is an African-American woman who writes. But she does not exist merely in antithesis to the white gaze in this way. Toni Morrison is a true hero of literature for black people and for anyone else who happens to read her novels.
The Bluest Eye - The Title as Key to Understanding the Text
The title of the novel gives is reflective of the style, form and structure of the novel.
Blue Eyes = White Idealism
At face value, the title reflects the novel's narrative in which Pecola longs and longs to have the bluest eyes: something she deems as being synonymous with popular culture's darling blonde-haired blue-eyed girls she sees everywhere from ice-cream logos to Claudia and Frieda's Shirley Temple cups. To her, the blue eyes are her key to happiness, self-love, beauty and societal acceptance. In reality, Morrison depicts how blue eyes with black skin look somewhat freakish and unnatural, yet Pecola would preference this over her own perceived black "ugliness".Set in 1940s, post-great depression America, it can be argued these values of blonde hair and blue eyes mirror the facist ideals of the "aryan race". The same beliefs that lead to the destruction of the Jewish race by the Nazi regime. Blue eyes have connotations of purity, innocence and beauty, yet with these labels attached, everything else comes to exist in antithesis to it. If you don't have blue eyes, does that mean you don't possess purity, innocence and beauty but instead are inupure, corrupted and ugly? And the further you differ from that stereotype, the more ugly and the more disgusting you are? Morrison plays out these ideas in the novel.
"If she was cute - and if anything could be belived then she was - then we were not. And what did that mean? We were lesser. "
Eye/I
Ways of seeing and perspective are important when it comes to the structural understanding of the novel. As said before, it is with marvelous dexterity that Morrison allows you to live Pecola's life and yet still reflect on yourself as a perpetrator of her fate. Morrison does this by assuming many different perspective with which to tell the story. Pecola is never our voice, she is never our eyes as a reader, it is as though she has so little authority and she is too passive in life to narrate any part of the story.
We learn Pecola's story through the eyes of Claudia, her mother Pauline or Mrs Breedlove, her father Cholly, Bay Boy, Woodrow Cain - a boy with skin paler than hers who chooses to bully her and Soaphead Church, a local church leader and paedophile. Each perspective holds some blame for the fate of Pecola, by living and understanding each character we build up a thorough understanding of her demise and the social, political and cultural environment which leads to her final condition. The social, political and cultural environment that we, either directly or indirectly play a part in.
Evil Eye/I
Evil in the novel is not clear cut and simple, but complicated and convoluted. Although horrific things take place in the book: bullying, neglect, domestic violence, the murder of a cat, the rape of a daughter, Morrison takes us by the hand and gives us a tender explanation for every single one. There is no doubt in justice that the rape of a daughter is right or explainable - this is not what Morrison is trying to do - instead the message is that truly evil acts are never independent of a greater cultural, political and social evil. That is where the self judgement comes in, in understanding Cholly's story, in taking part in his demise - do we the reader become the rapist?Women Jealousy and Power
Women are at the novel's center: they are villains, they are heroes, they are suppressed and they are built up. The issues the novel deals with surrounding women are still central to contemporary life. Morrison presents very strong female characters in the novel and depicts how through sexual and social supression, women can be hardened or ground down and broken.
Although much of the obvious sexual and social suppression comes from men in the novel, the majority of the suppression largely comes from other women. The constant cultural and social need to compare looks, morals, class to gain self worth is played out among women in particular in this novel. Jealousy is a fierce emotion every woman feels towards another and the effect of it is destructive:
When rich, pretty white girl Maureen Peal arrives at school. "Frieda and I were bemused, irritated and fascinated by her. We looked hard for flaws to restore our equilibrium, but had to be content at first with uflyin gup her name, changing Maureen Peal to Meringue Pie. Later a minor epiphany was ours when we discovered that she had a dog tooth - a charming one to be sure - but a dog tooth nonetheless." (pg. 61)
The gossiping of the women at the end of the novel too is the way we eventually find out the course of Pecora's rape. It is their tongues that deem Pecora's life useless and shameful - they have no pity for her fate. These women perpetuate a problem of degradation.
One of the most redeeming scenes of the novel is when Pecora get her period as she is playing with Claudia and Frieda in the garden one day. The uniting force of womanhood brings all the girls together in a protective force against outside ridicule from the girl next doof. Where before relationships were fragmented, the mother was angry, the girl next door was annoying, the girls weren't bonding - the arrival of the period allows for the women to come together, show strength in a scene of touching, powerful femininity.
QUOTES
I've split these up into sections but obviously these quotes don't always belong in these defined groups :)
Ugliness
"They lived there because they were poor and black, and they stayed there because they believed they were ugly." (pg. 36)
"It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question. The master had said, "You are ugly people." They had looked about themselves and saw nothing to contradict the statement; saw, in fact, support for it leaning at them from every billboard, every movie, every glance." (Pg. 37)
Beauty
"It had occured to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights - those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different."
"Each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes." (Pg. 44)
"THrown, in this way, into the binding conviction that only a mircale could relieve her, she would never know her beauty. She would see only what there was to see: the eyes of other people." (Pg. 45)
"Meaureen Peal was not the Enemy and not worthy of such intense haterd. The Thing to fear was the Thing that made her beautiful, and not us." (Pg. 72)
"If she was cute - and if anything could be belived then she was - then we were not. And what did that mean? We were lesser. Nicer, brighter but still lesser...What was the secret? What did we lack? Why was it important? And so what? Guileless and without vanity, we were still in love with ourselves then. We felt comfortable in our skins, enjoyed the news that our senses released to us, admired our dirt, cultivated our scars and could not comprehend this unworthiness."(Pg. 72)
Racsim
After white men had found Cholly having sex with a girl in a bush and shined a flashlight at him: "For some reason Cholly had not hated the white men; he hated, despised, the girl." (Pg. 40)
""Get out," she said, her voice quiet. "You nasty little black bitch. Get out of my house."" (Pg. 90)
Americana
"Each pale wrapper has a picture on it. A picture of little Mary Jane, for whom the candy is names. Smiling white face. Blond hair in gentle dissaray, blue eyes looking at her out of a world of clean comfort." (pg. 48)
"There is nothing more to say about the furnishings. They were anything but describable, having been concieved, manufactured, shipped, and sold in various states of thoughtlessness, greed and indifference" (pg. 33)
Religion
"If Cholly had stopped drinking, she would never have forgiven Jesus. She needed Cholly's sin's desperately. The lower he sank ,the wilder and more irresponsible he became, the more splendid she and her task became. In the name of Jesus." (pg. 40)
"Holding Cholly as a model of sin and failure, she bore him like a crown of throns, and her children like a cross" (pg. 125)
Violence
"Cholly and Mrs. Breedlove fought each other with a darkly brutal formalism that was paralleled only by their lovemaking." (pg 41)
"when my eye traced the white border patterns of those Kelly-green socks, and felt the pulll and slack of my brown stockings, I wanted to kick her." (pg. 61)
When boys are harassing Pecola in the playground. "it was their contempt for their own blackness which gave the first insult its teeth."(pg. 63)
Social Values
"They never seem to have boyfriends, but they always marry. Certain men watch them, without seeming to, and know that if such a girl is in his house, he will sleep on sheets boiled white, hung out to dry on juniper bushes, and pressed flat with a heavy iron." (Pg. 81)
"She explained to him the difference between colored people and niggers. They were easily identifiable. Collored people were neat and quiet; niggers were dirty and lous. He belonged to the former group: he wore white shirts and blue trousers; his hair was cut as close to his scalp as possible to avoid any suggestion of wool, the part was etched into his hair by the barber." (Pg. 85)
""No'm"
"Ain'r 'llowed to what?'
"Go in your house. "
"I that right?" The waterfalls were still. "How come?"
"My mama said so. My mama said you ruined.""
Other
"She herself was no longer a child. So she became, and her process of becoming was like most of ours: she developed a hatred for things that mystified or obstructed her; acquired virtues that were easy to maintain; assigned herself a role in the scheme of things; and harked back to simpler times for gratification." (124)
"They were old enough to be irritable when and where they chose, tired enough to look forward to death, disinterested enough to accept the idea of pain while ignoring the presence of pain. They were, in fact and at last, free. And the lives of these old black women were synthesized in their eyes - a puree of tradgedy and humour, wickedness and serenity, truth and fantasy."
"Sullen, irritable, he cultivated his hatred of Darlene. never did he consider directing his hatred towards the hunters. Such an emotion would hav edestroyed him. They were big, white, armed men. He was small, black, helpless. His subconcious mind did not guess - that hating them would have consumed him, burned him up like a piece of soft coal, leaving only flakes of ash and a question mark of smoke."
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