Race and Equality in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison | Race and Equality in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

The Bluest eye essay 03/05/05

Whiteness; the standard of beauty

The novel The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison. Morrison provides us with an extended portrayal of how whiteness is the standard of beauty, which distorts the lives of black women and children, Through messages everywhere that whiteness is superior. An example of this is the white doll given to Claudia, the idealistic portrayal of Shirley Temple. How the lighter skinned Maureen is prettier and cuter than all the other black girls are. No one looks at her funny. She is respected because she is closer to white.

Mrs.Breedlove even shows us that they idolize whiteness when she is working with the white girl and cares for her much more than her own child, and right in front of her child. This white girl calls Mrs. Breedlove by her first name; no one else calls her Pauline. "Another door opened, and in walked a little girl, smaller and younger all of us. She wore pink sun back dress and pink fluffy bedroom slippers with two bunny ears pointed up from the tips. Her hair was corn yellow and bound in a thick ribbon. When she saw us, fear danced across her face for a second. She looked around the kitchen." "Where's Polly"" she asked. "The familiar violence rose in me her calling Mrs.Breedlove Polly, when even Pecola called her mother Mrs.Breedlove, seemed reason enough to scratch her." When Mrs.Breedlove's pie fell on the floor the little girl in the pink started to cry, Mrs.Breedlove turned to her "Hush baby, hush. Come here. Oh, lord look at your dress. Don't cry no more. Polly will change it." "Over her shoulder she spit out words to us like rotten pieces of apples.

Pecola suffers the most from this white beauty standard. She connects being beautiful and being loved with the possession of blue eyes. Like the beautiful white people have. She believes if she had blue eyes, the cruelty of her life would be replaced by respect. Pecola goes to see Soaphead church in order to fulfill her desire for these blue eyes. Pecola says to church "I can't go to school no more. And I thought maybe you could help me." He replies "help you how"" Pecola says "my eyes", he replies, "what about your eyes"" Pecola says " I want them blue", he says to himself "A little black girl who wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes...for the first time he honestly wished he could work miracles." So after she made her sacrifice through poisoning that dog, she truely believed she had blue eyes. . This poor girl's hopeless need for affection in the end results in her madness. " A little black girls yearns for the blues eyes of a little white girl, and the horror at the heart of her yearning is exceeded only by the evil of fulfillment." Pecola is so influenced by society's idea of whiteness is being beautiful, she feels she needs to change herself in order to be accepted.

Whiteness is related with beauty and purity, specifically with Geraldine, but also is associated with sterility. On the other hand, color is connected with happiness. As Mrs.Breedlove shows most noticeably in the rainbow of yellow, green, and purple memories she sees when making love with Cholly. Morrison uses this imagery to accentuate the destructiveness of the black community's privileging of whiteness. While suggesting that vibrant color, rather than the pure absence of color, is a stronger image of happiness and freedom in the end. " I begin to feel those little streaks on color floating up into me-deep in me. That streak of green from the June bug light, the purple from the berries trickling along my thighs, mamas lemonade yellow runs sweet in me." She explains the wonderful feelings and relates them to colors. Saying that it is a rainbow inside her. Relating them to good feelings of certain things such as her mama's lemonade.

The novel The Bluest Eye, the theme of whiteness is superior is portrayed through the lives and stories told by the characters mostly in the Breedloves family and through Pecola and a few others. Along with through the struggles those people have endured. Morrison shows us the effect of this idea of white beauty on the person and on society.