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White Beauty Standards Pecola

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Characters: Pecola Breedlove- She’s eleven-year-old black girl who underscore that having blue eyes will make her beautiful. Unfortunately, she is abused by her mother, father, and classmates. She changed from a protagonist character to a broken girl that haunts the town to remind them of their reprehensible hatred and ugliness that they treated her with. Claudia MacTeer- She’s the narrator of the story. Claudia is a strong independent nine-year-old fighter that isn’t tractable and rebels against adults. She makes it her mission to fight against the black community idealizing the white beauty standards. Cholly Breedlove- Cholly is Pecola’s pernicious and impulsively,violent father. He suffered from humiliation early in his childhood and …show more content…

Theme: White Beauty Standards- This books provides an example of white beauty standards detering black girls and women. The desire to induce white beauty standards on black women result in an encroach hasherness and tragedy than the actual white beauty standards. Seeing v.s. Being Seen- Pecola has an unrealistic desire to get blue eyes. She has this inaccessible dream because she thinks having blue eyes will dispel people doing ugly things to and in front of her. Pecola decides the only way for her to get blue eyes is to blind herself. She’s finally able to see herself as beautiful with the cost of not seeing at all. There’s a connection between how we see ourselves and how other sees us. Sexual Abuse- Many of the characters experienced sexual coming of age in a abusive environment. For instance, Cholly first sexual experience ends with two racists white men forcing him to finish having sex, while they watch. However, the worst sexual abuse in the novel was when Cholly raped his daughter Pecola. This theme buttress how people falsely believe women’s body are available for abuse and that ruins black’s childhood.

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revealing to the reader Cholly’s internal conflict. Unknowing how to show love to Pecola, Cholly rapes her, assuming that is the way a father is affectionate

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In the book Cholly Breedlove, father of Pecola comes in at night while she is sleeping and rapes her when he is drunk. She sometimes is awake but doesn’t let him know or acts to be sleep. The sex themes and situations relate in both the movie and book. In my opinion I am truly disappointed and disgusted in the decision and choice of

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Claudia was deeply affected by the way Pecola was treated, even though she was young she understood that Pecola wasn’t treated fair. The author and speaker’s reputation conveys being controlled by authority. Claudia mentioned how she was never to start conversation with an adult. She had to treat adults with respect.

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Jim Crow and Segregation In the 1880’s, there were many restrictions set on African Americans, including the Jim Crow laws. Jim Crow laws were basically restrictions on everything African Americans could or could not do. Jim Crow was a very influential law pursued on men and woman of the same race. Who really is “Jim Crow?”

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The author describes Cholly as child like," his reactions were based on what he felt at the moment" ( Morrison, p161), Cholly was mixed with two emotoins hatred and tenderson,. ( Morrison, p 163). After he raped Pecola, he would not pick her up from the kitchen floor, but would cover her up with a heavy quilt,leaving her alone. Despite Cholly's childhood , his behavior is no excuess to the abuse he inflicted on Pecola. I feel sad for Cholly's abuse as a young child, but I cannot excess his actions, that would effect another person in a negative

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He is very reckless and a person who is constantly putting his family in danger, but his violence is the way he shows his love. This quote that Claudia sums up the dynamic of the Cholly, saying “We had dropped our seeds in our own little plot of black dirt just as Pecola’s father had dropped his seeds in his own plot of

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Pauline Breedlove, Pecola’s mother is also one of the people who made her feel that she is ugly. Pauline wanted a white child more because she thinks that being black is ugly. She encourages her husband’s behavior to be able to bring back her own role as a martyr. The father of Pecola, Cholly, felt like he was trapped in his marriage and has lost his interest in life. One day, Cholly went home and saw Pecola washing the dishes; he rapes her out of the feeling of hatred.

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Pecola and her mother, Pauline, see themselves as ugly because they hold themselves to beauty standards in which light-skinned people are the ideal. Pecola and her mother have a brutal home life due to the drunken violence of Cholly Breedlove, and the constant pressure of beauty standards only adds to their misfortune. Morrison explains this pressure by asserting that “[i]t was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they

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Societal influence and internalized discrimination is the main message in Toni Morrison’s, The Bluest Eye. Using her main character Pecola as the focal point of the novel, Morrison establishes how the influence of race and beauty standards corrupted a young girls mind. Within each chapter, Morrison was able to depict cultural icons such as Shirley Temple, idolized classmates like Maureen and a mother figure all attack a vulnerable character. Because Pecola Breedlove does not meet the white western culture standards, Pecola is in a “world in which only little white girls with blue eyes are loveable” (Bennett). Morrison has illustrated countless times to overlook the white gaze and step out of the spotlight.

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It was also the way of an escape from the many pains she was exposed to, for example, bullying, mother’s beating and rape by her father. Reading the book, it was quite clear that Pauline, Pecola’s mother, rejected her own children and paid the attention to the Fisher’s house as if it was her own home, which was reflected by her maintaining this

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Pecola is challenged by the idea that her mother prefers her work life, that they have an outdated house, and that she does not look like the Shirley Temple doll with blue eyes. Morrison went into great detail when describing the elegance and beauty that was present in the Fisher home, to demonstrate that those who do not fit into the ideal American life often feel shame. The Breedlove family lived a very simple life, and in no way did they fit into what society believed to be correct. Mrs. Breedlove was the only member of the family that truly understood what the American Dream looked like. The work that she did for the Fishers lead her to envy the American Dream.

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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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At another level, it is a clear narration of how internalized concepts of beauty works in the minds of blacks and they themselves become their oppressors. All through the novel we can find numerous instances where “whiteness” is the measure for beauty. This is evident in all the characters in the novel who degrade themselves for not being fair and lovely like the whites. The novel is narrated through the eyes of a ten-year old girl Claudia McTeer who witnesses white hegemony around her as well as this superiority being unquestioningly accepted by the blacks. Sexism is one

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The Bluest Eye is a novel about a black girl named Pecola Breedlove who wishes for beauty in order to attain a better life. She faces emotional and physical conflicts throughout her childhood. At eleven years old, Pecola is raped by her alcoholic father and becomes pregnant. Unlike anyone else, Claudia and Frieda MacTeer, tries to help her through the pregnancy. However, Pecola’s baby ends up dying because it is premature.

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