Women In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

997 Words4 Pages

The novel The Bluest Eye is the novel by Tony Morrison published in 1970. in the novel, Morrison emphasizes the enduring problem faced by Black American in the racial society of white American in the United States and specifically points out the impact it had on the life of black African American females who grew up in the mid- the 1930s. She composed the novel during the mid-1960s, the idea was inculcated twenty years earlier through an unpleasant conversation telling her is been two years now praying to God for to give her blue eyes but she had not received any answer (Conversations with Toni Morrison 1994 ). Morrison was still thinking about this conversation during the 1960s when the ‘Black is Beautiful ' cultural movement, which started …show more content…

In the novel, the dominant white racial ideology is that everything related to white is beautiful and therefore black is ugly. Through the interpellation of the western ideological thoughts, the African American identity is destroyed. Majority of Black Americans are persuaded by the rules and ideologies instilled by white Americans as the way of life. Whereby they end up losing their sense of identity and freedom. In the novel, the black people identity is constructed based on the white stand. This is evident on one of the protagonists Pecola, when she became the victim of the society that conditions her in believing that she is ugly and worthless, because she does not embody Western white cultures idea of beauty. Furthermore, in The Bluest Eye, Pecola 's presences as a subject is unrecognized by individuals who have internalized and absorbed white standard of beauty. When Pecola interns Mr. Yakobowski 's store he denies acknowledging her presence as a subject by refusing to look at her. At some fixed point in time and space, he senses that he need not waste the effort of a glance. He does not see her .because for him there was nothing to see."(Morrison 41-2). According to people like Mr. Yakobowski Pecola does not fit the social standards of beauty, so they absent her from