SOURCE: Mbalia, Doreatha Drummond. “The Bluest Eye: The Need for Racial Approbation.” In Toni Morrison's Developing Class Consciousness, pp. 28-38. Selinsgrove, Mass.: Susquehanna University Press, 1991.

In the following essay, Mbalia traces the narrative development of racism as the primary focus of The Bluest Eye in order to account for the novel's structural limitations.

In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison's emphasis is on racism. Specifically, she investigates the effects of the beauty standards of the dominant culture on the self-image of the African female adolescent. The role of class, the primary form of exploitation experienced by African people that will become the focus of later works, is only relevant insofar as it exacerbates that self-image. Of the three main characters—all African female adolescents—it is Pecola Breedlove who is the primary focus. It is she who is most affected by the dominant culture's beauty standards because it is...