Subaltern Children in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison (1931- ) is a Noble Prize and Pulitzer Prize—winning writer, who has emerged as one of the major contemporary Afro-American women novelists on the literary scene of American literature. The burden of history, the devastating effects of race, gender or class on an individual and especially on a woman in American white, male-dominated society constitute her thematic concerns. Morrison in her very first novel, The Bluest Eye (1970), examines the debilitating effects of race, class, and gender on three pre-teen African American girls, Pecola, Claudia and Frieda, in 1940s’ Ohio. Mainstream white culture and cultural products re-emphasize black people’s ‘difference’ from the (white) norm and successfully alienate them and instill a deep sense of inferiority and self-hatred. Moreover, this legacy of self-alienation in one’s own country and privileging of everything white conditions black parents who, in turn, impress upon their children the insecurities that can traumatize the most vulnerable section of American society, the black children.

The superstructures of race in USA inform, deform, and complicate the identities of the marginalized along lines of gender, class, and family structure. Effectively, a type of domestic colonialism, exercised by the respective national elitists, silence and exploit the subaltern women and emasculate the men. This repression from above disrupts the respective family structures in the societies, traumatizes the children, and confuses the relationships between all the members of the families. While some subaltern children may survive disastrous experiences, others may be traumatized into silence. Representation bears witness to these traumatic silences and the silencing processes. In The Mod...

... middle of paper ...

...logical state of the subaltern for the dominant group as it relentlessly imposes its values on the marginalized and traumatizes them.

Works Cited

Bjork, Patrick Bryce. The Novels of Toni Morrison: The Search for Self and Place Within the Community. New York: Peter Lang, 1994. Print.

Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Vintage Intl., 2007. Print.

Mutalik-Desai, A. A., comp. and ed. Indian Views on American Literature. New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1998. Print.

Prasad, Murari. “Articulating the Marginal: Arundhati Roy’s Writings.” Arundhati Roy:

Critical Perspectives. Ed Prasad, Murari. Delhi: Pencraft International, 2006.

Print.

Swain, S. P., and Sarbajit Das. “The Alienated Self: Searching for Space in Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Sula.” Modern American Literature. Eds. Rajeshwar Mitta Palli and Claudio Gorlier. New Delhi: Atlantic, 2007. 89-97. Print.