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The Effects Of Motherhood In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

3280 Words14 Pages

Afro-American women writers present how racism permeates the innermost recesses of the mind and heart of the blacks and affects even the most intimate human relationships. While depicting the corrosive impact of racism from social as well as psychological perspectives, they highlight the human cost black people have to pay in terms of their personal relationships, particularly the one between mother and daughter. Women novelists’ treatment of motherhood brings out black mothers’ pressures and challenges for survival and also reveals their different strategies and mechanisms to deal with these challenges. Along with this, the challenges black mothers have to face in dealing with their adolescent daughters, who suffer due to racism and are heavily influenced by the dominant value system, are also underlined by these writers. They portray how a black mother teaches her daughter to negotiate the hostile, wider world, and prepares her to face the problems and challenges boldly and confidently. Toni Morrison in The Bluest Eye depicts how motherhood is influenced by various factors present in …show more content…

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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‘The Bluest Eye’, as the critic Jane Kuenz argues, certainly shows the power of the media and culture "in the seemingly endless reproduction of images of feminine beauty in everyday objects and consumer goods". Pecola falls victim to the media’s portrayal of physical beauty, which in turn it leads to her receiving “the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought”, there are hints of Morrison’s political past in this as she was indeed a key activist in Black feminist movements who, unlike many other Western variations of feminism at the time, aimed to liberate and dislodge white structures of beauty. Pauline is indoctrinated into the detrimental ideology of directly associating whiteness with beauty and blackness with ugliness. Morrison

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They constantly encounter the problem of not living up to society’s beauty standards, which results in feelings of self-hatred based on race. These feelings perpetuate racism, as society, and even black people, tend to favor white beauty since it is held up as superior. The problems that Pecola, Pauline, and Claudia face in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye are not just figments of the past. Today, millions of women across the country feel some sort of self-loathing stemming from dissatisfaction over how they look. It is important that society tries to free itself from these nonsensical standards and celebrate the unique beauty of each individual

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In the novel, The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, Claudia Macteer is depicted as the polar opposite of the novel 's main protagonist, Pecola Breedlove. Whilst Pecola is surrounded by constantly fighting parents and is even victimized by one of her parents, Claudia was able to grow up in a stable household with loving parents that support both of their children, Claudia and Frieda. Claudia also has a very strong demeanor; she often takes action in many of the plots throughout the novel. Pecola, on the other hand, acts very child-like in some events in the novel and is very frail and closed in. In this novel, Morrison inserted a debate in which she never intended to write into the pages for us, as the readers, to figure out: a Nature vs Nurture

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A Researched Analytical Essay: The Bluest Eye By Toni Morrison

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A Researched Analytical Essay: The Bluest Eye In the novel “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, we are provided an extended interpretation of how whiteness is the standard of beauty, which distorts the lives of black women and children, through messages everywhere that whiteness is superior. The theme of race and that white skin is greater is portrayed through the lives and stories told by the characters, especially the three girls Claudia, Pecola and Frieda. Through the struggles those people have endured, Morrison shows us the destructive effect of this internalized idea of white beauty on the individual and on society. “The Bluest Eye” has a number of elements that relate closely to Toni Morrison’s own personal life.

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Throughout the Bluest Eyes, Toni Morrison emphasizes the idolization of Whiteness through cultural conceptions of beauty that significantly influences the characteristics and actions of Pecola and Pauline Breedlove, alluding to the detrimental effects that romanization of White features has on modern America. The main character of the Bluest Eyes is Pecola Breedlove, who is raised by her parents Cholly and Pauline Breedlove. Cholly and Pauline have an estranged marriage, where Cholly’s abusive alcoholism leads the the parents’ negligence to their family. Particularly for Pecola and Pauline, their fascination with White

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In her interview to the newspaper The Gurdian Morrison says, “In this country American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate” (Jan 29 1992). Racial bigotry in The Bluest eye is an obvious indication of Toni Morrison’s concern, to describe creatively the insensitivity of the white folks towards black. Pecola, the Chief character in The Bluest Eye is the most woeful creation who consistently suffers the racial discrimination. Her own mother Pauline Breedlove abuses Pecola by treating the white girl of her employers as superior to her just because of the colour.

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The social standards of beauty and the idea of the American Dream in The Bluest Eye leads Mrs. Breedlove to feelings of shame that she later passes on to Pecola. The Breedloves are surrounded by the idea of perfection, and their absence of it makes them misfits. Mrs. Breedlove works for a white family, the Fishers. She enjoys the luxury of her work life and inevitably favors her work over her family. This leads Pecola to struggle to find her identity, in a time where perception is everything.

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Toni Morrison´s The Bluest Eye (1970) conveys the Marxist idealism that social and economic realities are the factors that determine the culture and consciousness of a particular group. The struggle within the context of the Civil Rights Movement, as well as the rejection of African American people is displayed in Morrison´s work, showing the author´s consciousness. Thus, in this paper I will try to show the author´s belief that human self-realisation is determined and delimited by the dominant class at every level. For this purpose I will focus on the relation between wealth and social class, on how the dominant class, in this case the white one, imposes its values over the black community, reducing its personality and leading its members to lose their identity. I will also try to show how the victims of the capitalist system see themselves trapped in an order from which it is very difficult to escape, and find themselves forced to give up and accept their current condition.

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Toni Morrison, the first black women Nobel Prize winner, in her first novel, The Bluest Eye depicts the tragic condition of the blacks in racist America. It examines how the ideologies perpetuated by the dominant groups and adopted by the marginal groups influence the identity of the black women. Through the depictions of white beauty icons, Morrison’s black characters lose themselves to self-hatred. They try to obliterate their heritage, and eventually like Pecola Breedlove, the child protagonist, who yearns for blue eyes, has no recourse except madness. This assignment focusses on double consciousness and its devastating effects on Pecola.

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Therefore, here attempted to believe that Toni Morrison's very success as a writer may be a testimony to her power to examine themes from various angles and to accept unresolved situations as they are. Patrick Bryce Bjork in his conclusion observes that: "Her[Toni Morrison] characters waver within the contradictions and ambiguities o desire and repression, control and chaos, attraction and chaos, attraction and repulsion, connection and withdrawal" (Song of Solomon, 1977). Some scholars have even come to the conclusion that what Toni Morrison talks about in her novels is almost entirely foreign, different from the notion of the "rugged individualist" that characterizes the works of the Transcendentalists, even distasteful to many Americans

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Corruption of Men There is a large sense of wickedness around the world, and although it might not seem true, but most of it comes from corrupt man. The novel, The Bluest eye, was written by Toni Morrison following the years after the Great Depression. It centers around the story of a young girl named Pecola who experiences domestic violence and racism within her surrounding. Pecola often feels “ugly” due to her black skin color; she tries to deal with it by wishing for blue eyes in order to assimilate with the white culture.

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Toni Morrison, in numerous interviews, has said that her reason for writing The Bluest Eye was that she realized there was a book she wanted very much to read that had not been written yet. She set out to construct that book – one that she says was about her, or somebody like her. For until then, nobody had taken a little black girl—the most vulnerable kind of person in the world—seriously in literature; black female children have never held centre stage in anything. Thus with the arrival of the character Pecola Breedlove, a little hurt black girl is put to the centre of the story. Pecola’s quest is to acquire “Shirley Temple beauty” and blue eyes – ideals of beauty sponsored by the white world.

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The book “The Bluest Eye” was based off African American families and struggles, they were poor and this was the time period after the Great Depression had ended. Nine year old Claudia lived with her parents and ten year old sister Frieda even though the family was barely making ends meet they were still living in an atmosphere of love and safety. In the book you could tell that was a house to go to in time of need anf you could feel secure. The family shared their home with several people one of them a young girl, Pecola, who had moved in with the MacTeer family after her father tried to burn down their families home. Claudia’s mother had a good heart but often felt like she was taken for granted, “Time for me to get out of the giving line

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