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According to Stuart Hall, a Jamaican-born cultural theorist, and sociologist black people living in the diaspora are constantly reinventing themselves and their identities by mixing, hybridizing, and creolizing influences from Africa, Europe, and the rest of the world in their everyday lives and cultural practices. Therefore, there is no one-size-fits-all cultural identity for diasporic people, but rather a multiplicity of different cultural identities that share both important similarities and important differences, all of which should be respected.
Morrison wants to fight the myth-making that she sees surrounding the struggle for black Americans to assert themselves in the white-dominated society. She feels that a culture’s strengths should depend on what the people are, not on what they look like, she believes, “the concept of physical beauty as a virtue is one of the dumbest, most pernicious and destructive ideas of the western world”(Morrison 89).
Morrison examines the perspective view of the black community about beauty and the psychological damages it created to the black woman. The protagonist of the novel, The Bluest Eye, Pecola Breedlove is a young African American girl coming of age during the 1940s. she longs to be loved and accepted by her own community as well as in a world that rejects and diminishes the value of the members of her own race. Pecola Breedlove believes that if she has blue eyes, which is the symbol oh white beauty. She will be beautiful just like Shirley Temple and will be loved by everyone. Her yearning to have blue eyes culminates in madness. She is ignoring the reality that she cannot have blue eyes. Moreover, she thinks that if she can have blue eyes then her parents will stop quarrelling and they will all live happily. A black girl fails to appreciate their own race in terms of beauty for they believe beauty means white. The search for identity in being white because they are scared of being discriminated against by their surroundings. Pecola has so little sense of self-worth, however, that her anger quickly turns back to shame an overwhelming, self-blaming, self-hating emotion. Every time when she tries to live her surrounding makes her realized that she is ugly, not worthy even for touch. So Pecola self-segregates herself in order to earn self-respect. Whenever her brother and parents fight she shut herself up in the room and prays to God to make her disappear. But for Pecola’s mother, this fight gives her an identity. She considers herself a good Christian woman burdened by a worthless husband as punishment from God. She often speaks to Jesus about Cholly’s sins. Once, during a fight, Cholly falls on the stove, and she yells out for Jesus to take him. Mrs.Breedlove needs Cholly’s sins for her sense of self. Cholly Breedlove also needs her. If he hates her, he can keep his own identity free. By the end of the novel, her life is full of hatred which compels her to isolate herself. She is hated by her mother who considers Pecola as “ugly”, her father rapes her and is not able to live a worthwhile life which leads to perpetual frustration and drives into madness.
Morrison attacks the socially constructed western images of beauty and the psychological damages it creates for black women. Morrison rightly points out: “when the strength of a race depends on its beauty when the focus is turned to how one looks as opposed to what one is, we are in trouble”.(Morrison 88). Thus she analyses the ways of being that are ridiculed, declared inferior and in some cases, eliminated. But the community reinforces the identities of its members through belief and heritage and individuals must remain a part of the collectivity in order to be innately complete. Claudia, although she abhors the white ideals which are internalised by her community, she is accepting her heritage and blackness.
Morrison also exposes the boundaries of black society that are set and defined by the dominant white community. Black people always admire the white geographical boundary but they are not allowed to enter unless they are employed by the white people. When Claudia and Frieda Mac Teer go in search of Pecola’s mother Pauline works for a white family, known as the Fishers. The girls admire the beautiful house with great furniture and gardens. Morrison tries to give a clear picture of how black society yearns for their identity amidst hybridised culture.
The novel reflects how Pecola’s quest for true women identity which according to socially structure culture is being white with a black eye. Above that Morrison clearly mentions that even the black man sees white beauty as something to be admirable that’s why Cholly Breedlove hates her daughter.
Pecola like many young black girls becomes metaphorically captured by the image of the white aesthetic. At the beginning of the novel, The Bluest Eye shows that black girl’s minds are captured by primary school texts such as Dick and Jane primer. There are other ways that the white aesthetic invades Pecola’s psyche. From candy wrappers to movie stars and dolls Pecola cannot escape the culturally promoted image of blonde hair and blue eyes. As the narrator, Claudia says bitterly: “the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl treasured. ‘Here’ they said, ‘this is beautiful, and if you are on this day ‘worthy’ you may have it”(Morrison 18-19). The narrator Claudia tries to resist the white aesthetic. She dismembers the white dolls by breaking the fingers and pulling out the eyes.
Without the money to purchase skin-bleaching creams or to access coloured contact lenses that allow today’s black girls to buy into the fantasy of whiteness, Pecola must find other ways to make the transformation from black to white. Pecola’s resolve is to digest whiteness, Pecola must find other ways to make the transformation from black to white. Pecola’s resolve is to digest whiteness. She achieves this by eating Mary Jane candy in which the candy wrappers feature a blonde, blue-eyed girl and frequently drinking from a cup that is stamped with a picture of a child icon Shirley Temple. Morrison shows that Pecola’s fascination with whiteness is not unique. Pecola’s older sister, Frieda, is also attracted to Shirley Temple. It clearly shows that they have been caught by white aesthetics. With so many images of white female beauty, black girls find it difficult to affirm their own beauty.
The home of the Fishers for whom Pecola’s mother works, for example, is a symbol of the utopian white world. The flowers that frame the house symbolise life as well as beauty. In addition, not only the exterior of the house but also the interior decoration is white. The Fisher home is totally different from the description of Pecola’s storefront, which is totally lacking colour, similar to the absence of colour that occurs in the fall once the flowers begin to demolish. Pecola, throughout the narrative, remains locked in the darkness of her reality. It is only when she eats the Mary Jane candy or visits her mother at the Fisher home that she can step out of her darkness.
Pauline’s southern mannerisms, her inability to dress as well as other women, and her failure to apply cosmetics tastefully leave her open for ridicule. Pauline is hurt by the women’s “goading glances and private snickers at her way of talking (saying ‘chil’ren’)” (Morrison 116). Similar to Pecola’s fascination with Shirley Temple, Pauline finds her salvation in the movie theatre where she learns to “assign” faces to categories “of absolute beauty”(Morrison 120), with white faces, like actress Jean Harlow. The more she watches the films, the stronger her desire becomes to mimic them. She thinks that she can lead a happy life if she looks and behaves like these white actors. The narrator clarifies, “The sad thing was that Pauline did not really care for clothes and makeup. She merely wanted other women to cast favorable glances her way” (Morrison 116). She wanted to be accepted, and so she mimics the white movie actors. She sees that white actors romance their heroines, something that she misses from her marriage to Cholly. She idealises the white life. As she sees the beautiful actresses on screen, she starts to internalize the notion that she herself is ugly as she does not look like them. “Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another physical beauty”(Morrison 120). When she secures a job as a domestic she is able to leave behind the ugliness and blackness of her own underworld reality and enters the Dick and Jane world. Pauline desires so much to become part of this white world that she neglects her own household as well as her own children in favour of her whiteness.
Geraldine is a minor character and is described as a mulatto. A curious behaviour depicted by Geraldine is her extensive bathing rituals, she uses costly bath products as an attempt to clean off the black in her. She keeps cleaning her house so it looks perfect, what she feels a white person’s house would look like. She feels that cleaning herself and her house will make her white. In the end, she has learned to hate the self and mimic, yet remains an ‘other’ as the society would never see her as a white and give her the reverence she desires. She ignores her son, her husband, and has affection only for their family cat, who like herself, loved to groom itself frequently.
In Sula Morrison shows that identity is not a definite thing but rather a notion that is fluid, always being shaped and moulded by life. She does this through the character of Sula. Although numerous relationships and incidents in Sula’s life contribute to her self and aid Sula in her quest for identity, the character ultimately lacks true identity but her self develops only as of the perception of others. Sula’s childhood contributes greatly to her identity and concept of herself. Many negative events in her childhood cause Sula to become self-centered and undirected. As a child, Sula is neglected by her mother, Hannah, and allowed to develop and grow with little care. One summer day, Sula overhears her mother says that she loves Sula but does not like her. This event shapes Sula’s identity, causing her to become independent, and she learns that she can count on no one. Another event, the death of Chicken Little, which is an accident but Sula’s fault, causes Sula to realise that she can not even count on herself. When she held responsibility for Chicken Little’s life in her hands, she let him go, causing him to fall to the river and down. The narrator sums up these two events: “The first experience [Hannah’s denial of liking her] taught her there eas no other that you could count on; the second [Sula’s accidental murder of Chicken Little] that there was no self to count on either”(Morrison 118-119).
Sula’s relationship with the character Nel also plays an important role in shaping her identity. Morrison created the characters of Sula ana Nel to be a whole. She describes the two as “unshaped, formless things” who found relief in each other’s personality”(Morrison 53). Morrison writes that Sula “clung to Nel as the closest thing to both an other and a self, only to discover that she and Nel were not one and the same thing” (Morrison 119). Sula used Nel to fill a gap in her personality, but Nel’s personality changes and she moves on to marry Jude, Sula discovers that Nel could never fill her gap and she must make her own identity.
By portraying Sula as only half a person and the second of her as her conventional best friend. Morrison denies Sula the originality she wants. Philip Page explains that the consequences of a person’s attempt to find meaning in a relationship are that they have difficulties in maintaining a workable self-concept. Their identities become entangled with her pursuits for fulfilling relationships with another, and their identities suffer (Page 69-70). This notion holds true in Sula because, as Sula engages in her relationship with Nel, she loses grip on her own identity, confusing it with Nel’s, and ultimately her identity suffers. These events in Sula’s past cause her to strive to create her own identity. In other words, as Philip Page writes, “Neither aided by the usual models for self-development nor checked by the usual restraints, and finding that she can neither find an identity in the other nor form her (either in conjunction with or separate from that other), she [Sula] drifts into the attempt to make herself” (Page 73). After discovering that she has “no center, no speck around which to grow” (Morrison 119). Sula sets out to create her own identity. As the narrator says that Sula is
“completely free of ambition, with no affection for money, property or things, no greed, no desire to command attention or compliments – no ego. For that reason she [feels] no compulsion to verify herself – be consistent with herself” (Morrison 119).
Sula is declaring that she wants to “make [her]self” (Morrison 92) beyond community and social expectations. She uses her life as a medium, exploring her thoughts and emotions. She feels no commitment to please anyone else unless it makes her happy. One way Sula attempts to find her identity is through sexual acts. Carmean writes, “The sexual act becomes for Sula an act of self-exploration and affirmation” (Carmean 39). The narrator writes that Sula “went to bed with men as frequently as she could” (Morrison 122), taking pleasure in the act and not feeling guilty. It is through sex that Sula can explore her identity and become intimate with herself.
After sex, Sula enters that “Post-coital privateness in which she met herself, welcomed herself, and joined herself in matchless harmony” (Morrison 123). This act emphasises that sex is not a way of sharing intimacy with a partner, but rather a way for Sula to become closer to herself. Patrick Bjork gives further explanation on this topic when he writes,
“Sula is not interested in love, sexual gratification, or even simple human contact, she
wishes instead, as she does with all of her exploratory gestures, to visibly demonstrate the community’s certitude and conformity and, as a result, create her own form” (Bjork 77).
The birthmark above Sula’s eye serves as another contributor to her identity. The mark is interpreted differently depending on the viewer’s perspective. To Shadrack, whose livelihood is catching and selling river fish, Sula’s birthmark resembles a tadpole, symbol of Shadrack’s earthy nature. To Jude, it looks like a poisonous snake, which recalls the serpent in the biblical garden of Eden and symbolises the sin that the married Jude commits when he has a sexual affair with Sula. To Nel, including the narrator, the birthmark is a stemmed rose, a symbol of beauty and rose to her plain face. This stemmed rose imagery is a positive symbol of Sula’s character. She remains true to herself, which Morrison linking Sula’s birthmark to the image of the traditionally beautiful rose.
Ironically, all of Sula’s attempts at an egoless, guiltless life lead her not to identity but instead to solitude and isolation. Sula never discovers herself or finds a focus in her life. She becomes “an artist with no art form” (Morrison 121). She never achieves completeness in her life. Even when she dies, Sula welcomes the “sleep of water” signifying through water that even as she dies, she is simultaneously being reborn. While Sula’s identity is always changing and never completed. She helps to define the identities of others within her community. Nel expresses, “Sula never completed she simply helped others define themselves” (Morrison 95). By presenting herself in the manner she did, aided the community in defining themselves.
By presenting Sula the way she does, Morrison depicts that identity is not a definite characteristic easily defined, but rather a complicated thhhat changes throuuughout life. She suggests that people are not made up of the unified personality or self, but, instead, have many different identities. In the case of Pecola wants to create an identity by admitting herself to the world’s perceptions despite her unique black identity and everchanging identities and physical beauty. In the thinking of achieving whiteness, she starts to lose her innate blackness.
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