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Pecola Ugliness In Othello

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As a poor, African American girl in the 1940s, society has cast Pecola aside. Right from birth her mother thought she had a “head full of pretty hair, but Lord she was ugly” (126). Pecola does not understand the ugliness placed upon her. For “long hours she [would sit,] looking in the mirror, trying to discover the secret of the ugliness, the ugliness that made her ignored or despised” (45). Pecola finds herself drawn to the prostitutes because they do not accept the ugliness forced upon them and instead find themselves worthy of love and beauty. While the prostitutes may look like Pecola, they do not think like her. Pecola’s family “wore their ugliness, put it on, so to speak, although it did not belong to them” (38). Her whole family falls victim to the mask of ugliness placed upon them by their economic status and race. Her parents accept their ugliness and teach it to Pecola, who accepts her ugliness without question. Pecola “hid behind hers. Concealed, veiled, eclipsed—peeping out from behind the shroud very seldom” (39). Rather than allowing others to define their worth, the prostitutes know others want them. This is an idea that pulls Pecola away from her own ugliness while she visits them. …show more content…

Little parts of her body faded away” (45). The prostitutes see Pecola as beautiful and without the ugliness that shrouds her. Pecola does not think this way, instead believing that only those with blue-eyes and the right facial features can achieve beauty. “They know I’m rich and good lookin’” (53), says Miss Marie, one of the prostitutes. Even though Miss Marie knows that she does not hold true physical beauty, she pushes aside the mask of ugliness forced upon

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But it is not only the race and the colour of their skin what makes them unable to change their situation, but also poverty. Race and wealth are intertwined, and Pecola is the fundamental victim of this relationship, for she is a young black girl suffering from this ideology that determines her life. The dominant class imposes its values upon the other, for they think they are the best ones, reducing thus the personality of the people belonging to other classes, and at the same time, making them unable to change their oppressed situation, for they do not have the chance. They just accept their current position, and thus they will always be

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It is the mother’s vulnerability to the racial standards of beauty that is transmitted to the daughter and ultimately leads to her victimization. In fact, the reason of Pauline’s vulnerability to the racially prejudiced notions of beauty lies in her relationship with her own mother. The relationship between Pecola Breedlove, the protagonist, and her mother, Pauline Breedlove, is ironically characterized by lack of love, and emotional attachment, indifference, frustration and cruelty. Set in a small town in Ohio, during the Depression, The Bluest Eye is the story of eleven year old Pecola Breedlove, who, victimized by the racist society, yearns for blue eyes, which, she believes, will make her worthy of love, happiness and acceptance in the

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Only a toilet bowl, inaccessible to the eye, if not the ear, of the tenants” (Toni 34-35). This house has no positive experiences for Pecola. Her days are filled with witnessing domestic violence and the habitual drunkenness of her father. The sense of bleakness and hopelessness of this house is best described by the fact that “the only living thing in the Breedloves’ house was the coal stove, which lived independently of everything and everybody” (37). When you live with a family that think you are ugly and told you every day that you are not beautiful.

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Society has made her feel insecure and unacceptable because she has dark skin and brown eyes. She later becomes so desperate to get blue eyes that she “makes one final attempt to get blue eyes from a local interpreter of dreams, Soaphead Church” (“Overview: The Bluest Eye”). Pecola sees one of Soaphead’s advertisements, “If you are unhappy, discouraged, or in distress, I can help you…Satisfaction guaranteed” (Morrison 173), thinking he could help her with her misery of ugliness. He tells her he is unable to help her and only god could grant her the wish. The people around Pecola has made her feel self-conscious about herself and causing her to have a desire for blue eyes.

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