The Bluest Eye Research Paper

Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye, provides an interpretation of how whiteness contributes to society’s standard of beauty, which distorts the lives of Morrison’s characters through the message that whiteness is superior. Pecola Breedlove, Geraldine, and Maureen Peal portray the theme of race and beauty throughout the story. Through their struggles, Morrison shows the destructive effect of the internalized idea of white beauty in society. To begin with, Morrison includes a number of elements closely related to her personal life in the novel. The story occurs in the 1940’s in Lorain, Ohio, —Morrison’s home town. The population was ethnically unequal and segregation was still legal, although most of the community integrated—all races would attend the same school and neighborhoods were commonly interracial. Claudia Macteer, the narrator, is nine-years-old, Morrison’s age in 1941. Similarly to the MacTeer family, Morrison’s family struggled financially during the Great Depression. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison creates a statement about how vulnerable a young black girl feels by the exposure of beauty standards, superiority, and racism. Claudia’s white baby doll, the idealization of Shirley Temple and Mary Jane, and Maureen’s depiction of

She refers herself as being ‘colored’ rather than black; she taught Louis Junior that “colored people were neat and quiet; niggers were dirty and loud” (87). Geraldine makes the point by dressing her son in European clothes and covering him in lotion everyday to keep his skin from becoming ashen. When Geraldine opens the door and sees Pecola and her dead cat, she erupts with anger and calls Pecola a “nasty little black bitch”—a hypocritical statement that discontents her own race. Although Geraldine struggles to make sure her son doesn’t conform to the black stereotype, she loves the cat more than her son because it has blue