Perception of Self-Identity in ”The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison

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In the novel, The Bluest Eye Morrison depicts the life and grievances of black women and their perception of self-identity. Morrison’s emphasis on form manifests itself through the framing of the narrative that creates specific interpretations by the reader but also suggests closings and resolutions. Many black women characters feel they do not meet standards of beauty because of false social values and ideals imposed by the “white” community. Thus, they also need to know that they are not alone in this world.

The novel portrays that cultural domination is seen as a struggle between two competing worlds of reality whose legitimacy is asserted. The novel illustrates the concept of the relationship between the authoritative and internally persuasive difference between the white society and the black community (Werrlein 53). The Bluest Eye depicts the struggle between two worlds in which a black person feels separated from mainstream society.

Through the character of Pecola, Morrison shows that a black girl needs to find a person like she is to overcome solitude and loneliness. These traits are encoded in the community as within the domain of the feminine and symbolize what is being repressed. While the control of feelings is the main factor, stability and security are key concerns. These differences between whites and blacks emerge in contrasting portraits of Geraldine’s family life and her insight into Pecola’s life. The narrator presents Geraldine’s life as a symbol of stability and close relations with other people and friends:

[Women such as she 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 with a heavy iron (68).

Morrison portrays that false social ideals put manacles on society and deprived black women of a chance to feel equal to white women and fit the ideal of American beauty. Rebellion against socially dictates roles and emphasizes the hostility that the community encourages between white and black girls. This idea of beauty marks the emergence of a consciousness grounded in feminine experiences. The questioning and challenging of beauty ideals, the insertion of the problem of female bonding in the text, and, most significantly is the construction of a rebellious protagonist. Morrison portrays an idea of loneliness through the description of body image and a need to follow this ideal by people:

I had only one desire: to dismember [the doll]. To see of what it was made, to discover the dearness, to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped me, but 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 (Morrison).

Thus, Morrison states that beauty is nothing more than ideological production imposed on society and deprived black women of a chance to ‘compete’ with white females. One major effect of this is that the complexities of women’s issues, although suggested in the text, are often passed over.

In the novel, women have rejected the norms of the community, although they are inscribed in the text as one aspect of “the real” community. They generate issues that are almost totally unrelated to the novel’s dominant focus. What is stressed is their absolute economic and sexual autonomy, the significance of which becomes evident when we examine another group of women.

Everybody in the world was in a position to give them orders. White women said, “Do this.” White children said, “Give me that.” Then they were old. Their bodies honed, their odors sour. Squatting in a cane field, stooping in a cotton field, kneeling by a riverbank they had, they had carried a world on their heads…. [Their] lives were synthesized in their eyes — a puree of tragedy and humor, wickedness and serenity, truth and fantasy” (109).

The life story of Pecola shows that a person needs close and warm relations with other people to become a part of society and the local community. These two narratives are readily subsumed by the ideological thrust of the novel through their focus on the feminine, but they create points of rupture in the text. As elements of “real life,” they contribute to the total representation of Black culture, but as specific articulations of women’s lives (Werrlein 53).

At times in the novel, an embedded narrative developed to support the dominant theme is related to the feminine issue and ideals. For instance, the schoolteacher Geraldine can be seen simply as a middle-class Black woman who has divorced herself from “real” Afro-American culture. My view, however, is that she is far more complex. What strikes one first is her background: “They [women like Geraldine] come from Mobile. Aiken. From Newport News. From Marietta. From Meridian.”

In sum, differences in appearance and a negative body image can lead to social separation and rejection o a person by the community. The case of Pecola and other black women shows that everybody needs to know that he is not alone in this world. Although black women in the novel seem to fill in the ideal that constitutes Afro-American culture, they also disrupt the emphasis by introducing the problem of feminine beauty.

Works Cited

Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Washington Square Press, 1970.

Werrlein, D. T. Not So Fast, Dick and Jane: Reimagining Childhood and Nation in the Bluest Eye. MELUS, 30 (2005), 53.

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Perception of Self-Identity in ”The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison

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