Hegemonic Domination of White over Black in “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison (original) (raw)

THE SUBJUGATION OF PEOPLE OF COLOR IN LINE WITH BEAUTY STANDARDS IN TONI MORRISON'S "THE BLUEST EYE"

The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's first novel and a book heralded for its richness of language and boldness of vision. Set in the author's girlhood hometown of Lorain, Ohio, it tells the story of black, eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the autumn of 1941, the year the marigolds in the Breed loves' garden do not bloom. Pecola's life does change-in painful, devastating ways. It is a vivid evocation of the fear and loneliness at the heart of a child's yearning and the tragedy of its fulfillment. The Bluest Eye remains one of Toni Morrison's most powerful, unforgettable novelsand a significant work of American fiction. This research shed light on how whites subjugate black people psychologically in line with beauty standards.

Subversive Politics of Racism in Toni Morrison's the Bluest Eye

2013

The narrator in The Bluest Eye states that "A little black girl yearns for the blue eyes of a little white girl, and the horror at the heart of her yearning is exceeded only by the evil of fulfillment" (162). The little black girl is Pecola Breedlove who is dissatisfied with the world around her. She is born into a society that is confused as it shuns its own cultural values and craves for self-gratification in the culture of the whites. In the novel this tendency of the society finds its symbolic and subversive expression in Pecola's quest for blue eyes which represent the western/racist ideals of beauty. The quest results in the suffering and anguish of the blacks which is presented by Toni Morrison in The Bluest Eye. This article proposes to analyse how the subversive politics of racism is operative in the narrative in the novel.

The Lack of Beauty and Identity in the Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

2012

Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye is a novel that contains many rhetorical arguments and logical fallacies. However, before going into detail about what they are, here is a brief synopsis of what The Bluest Eye is about. The Bluest Eye depicts the tragic life of a young black girl, Pecola Breedlove, who wants nothing more than to be loved by her family and her schoolmates. She surmises that the reason she is despised and ridiculed is that she is black and (actually, her skin is a lot darker than most other black people, which is the main reason that she gets ridiculed), therefore, ugly. Consequently, Pecola sublimates her desire to be loved into a desire to have blue eyes and blond hair; in other words, to basically look like Shirley Temple, who Pecola thinks is adored by all (Tate, C., Black Women Writers at Work, 1985). Pecola, soon after entering young womanhood, is raped and impregnated by her father, Cholly. Her mother, Pauline, finds haven, hope, life and meaning as a servant...

The Destructive Effects of the Dominant White Ideology: Physical Beauty in The Bluest Eye

Global Journal of English Language and Literature, 2017

Adopting Althusser's notion of Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, this paper analyzes the representation of the dominant white ideology in Toni Morrison's first novel The Bluest Eye. The paper focuses on mostly the construction of beauty with a special emphasis on the cinema and school, and examines how the wish to conform to an unattainable beauty standard destroys the individuality of Geraldine and Pauline; how it completely breaks Pecola; and how Claudia and Frieda try to subvert it, although unsuccessfully. Thus, as the broken primer at the beginning of the novel already implies, white standards of beauty are inappropriate for African Americans, and trying to conform to the expectations of the majority only results in a mental dislocation: possibly even in schizophrenia. About the Author(s): Eszter Enikő Mohácsi is a Ph. D. student

THE ILLUSIONS OF 'WHITE BEAUTY' AND THE POLITICS OF COLOR: A STUDY OF THE BLUEST EYE

VEDA PUBLICATIONS, 2024

The Bluest Eye (1970) is an eye-opening novel that deals with the tremendous oppression of African-Americans. Toni Morrison brings out the conception that the appetence of having white skin devours the African-Americans and their self-esteem gradually becomes self-loathing. The illusions of white beauty and the politics of color are compatible. The keenness of having white skin originates from being a victim of the politics of color. Morrison traces Pecola, the protagonist of this novel, as the scapegoat of an inter-racial society. Her extreme struggle because of having a dark complexion ultimately drives her to be an insane psyche. All the individuals also endure the agitations and agony of the racial society. Pauline Breedlove, Cholly Breedlove, Geraldine, Frieda MacTeer and Claudia MacTeer-all of them become the victim of racism along with Pecola. This paper particularly focuses on the reprimand of the African-Americans for being black and their eagerness of having white skin for escaping those social stigmas in The Bluest Eye. The prejudice against western standards of beauty as well as the illusions of white beauty and its effects on the lives of African-Americans are thoroughly depicted here.

The White Standard of Beauty and its Traumatic Impact: A Study of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye

2020

Beauty is defined by individual senses or mind. Since our minds and senses differ individually, the idea of beauty also varies accordingly. It is all about how we shape our mind and how we get ourselves influenced by the others’ definition of beauty. In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison has woven story that depicts the disturbing consequences of the White standard of beauty that has rooted deep and firm in the consciousness of the Americans. Colonialism implanted in their mind a politicized and racist sense of beauty“White is Beautiful”. Since the white Americans were politically superior, their ideafair complexion, straighter hair and blue eyes as the ideal characteristics of beautybecame dominant. This standardization of the notion of beauty triggered a race among the darkerskinned people to hunt ways and means to achieve fairer skin. However, this race has some adverse effects onthe psyche of the African-Americans. They often have to suffer from societal pressure to be beautiful and ...

Racism and Representation of Racialized Beauty in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye

SMART MOVES JOURNAL IJELLH

The American novelist Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye portrays black society and deals with the themes of black victimization and racial oppression. It presents a prolonged representation of the means in which the standards of internalized white beauty contort the life and existence of black women. This paper explores and elucidates the impact of race, racial oppression and representation in The Bluest Eye. And how racism also edifices the hatredness between Blackand White communities. This paper will discuss various issues and concepts such as Race, Race in the Colonial Period, Racializing the Other and Stereotyping. The paper also deals with understanding Representation through the ideas of Saussure, Barthes, Levi-Strauss, Foucault, Geertz, and Said. Racism is primarily a belief in the supremacy and dominance of one race upon another that consequences in the differences, discrimination and prejudice of people towards one another rooted and established on their race or ethnici...

Racism: Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye a Mouthpiece of Cloured People

2018

Racism is basically a belief in the superiority of one race to another which results in discrimination and prejudice towards people based on their race or ethnicity. The life of African-American cloured people have been affected by racism. These so-called systems of social and psychological restrictions make coloured people to feel inferiors. Toni Morrison has gained reputation internationally with the publication of her first novel The Bluest Eye. This novel mirroring us the terrible consequences for blacks personalizing the values of a white culture that rejects them both directly and indirectly. Even though slavery is abolished legally through the tough efforts of eminent leaders but still the African-Americans are not considered equal to the whites. The Black people are trying to identify themselves with the white and their cultural ways. Toni Morrison insists on Black cultural heritage and solicits the African-Americans to be proud of their Black identity. This paper presents t...

Racial Conflicts in Tony Morrison's The Bluest Eye: A Literary Analysis

Sujana Suvin., Sch J Arts Humanit Soc Sci, Nov, 2020; 8(11): 553-559, 2020

Racism is a belief in the superiority of one race to another which results in discrimination and prejudice towards people based on their race or ethnicity. The life of African-American colored people has been affected by racism. For this purpose, the paper tries to focus on a system where chauvinism, malevolence, and domestically sexual harassments against Pecola Breedlove whose only target is to achieve beauty, which means happiness and survival. The novel portrays the effect of discrimination on a budding teenager's sexual being that put her in a gloomy and scary atmosphere from where the character was unable to leap out. The novel shows the prejudices that create a crater in the black man's psyche and his unexposed aggression on the white world led to his psychological repression. Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye presents black cultural heritage and solicits the African-American to be proud of female black identity. Thus, this paper would like to examine the nature of the black people's struggle for their race and endurance in a multicultural postcolonial white America.