Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies
Volume 2, Issue 4, April 2014
ISSN: 2321-8819 (Online)
2348-7186 (Print)
Available online at www.ajms.co.in
Hateredness against White and Loss of Identity in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye
Prabal J. Roddannavar
Dept. of Studies in English,
Karnataka University Dharwad-580 003
Abstract: The novel The Bluest Eye is important for many reasons, “This novel came about at a critical moment
in the history of American Civil rights” (A miserable Black Girl-Analysis of the Theme In Toni Morrison’s The
Bluest Eye. p. 1). When Morrison was writing the novel The Bluest Eye, it was the time of transformations, one
of those was a new recognition of Black-American beauty. Black-Americans began to argue for a new standard
of beauty The black is beautiful (a cultural movement that began in the United States of America in the 1960s by
African-American). The paper makes an attempt to reveal the possible psychological impact of love for beauty
standards in a black community through “The Bluest Eye” of Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison- an Afro-American
writer.
Key Words: New standard of beauty, White superiority, Hatred against White, Light skin, Loss of Identity
In the novel The Bluest Eye, we hardly see the
major characters rebelling against white superiors.
It is seen only Claudia, the narrator, and Cholly
Breedlove, the father of Pecola, going against the
white people. Claudia, the narrator, narrates the
story from the perspective of a child and from the
perspective of an adult. Though Claudia suffers
from white beauty standards, unlike Pecola, she has
had her own loving family. Therefore, Claudia,
unlike Pecola, is a rebel who rebels against the
white ideology of beauty. In the novel The Bluest
Eyes, for instance, when Claudia is given a white
doll which she doesn‟t want, she destroys it.
Another time, when she finds a group of boys
teasing Pecola for the reason she is blacker and
uglier than the others, she goes to the extent to
attack on them. When a society abandons Pecola
for being pregnant by her own father, it is Claudia
and her sister who comes to her help. Claudia‟s
community was fond of white ideology and was
encouraging the worship of Shirley Temple, who
with blonde hair and blue eyes was regarded the
only kind of beauty. Claudia felt wrong with the
white ideology. She was curious to know what
made her look ugly and the white doll so precious.
She investigated the doll by tearing it.
Apart from Claudia, it was Cholly, the
father of Pecola who raped her, had hatred against
white people. This is so because, when Cholly was
having sexual pleasure with a girl named Darlene,
he was cut in by the two white men who forced
him, a fourteen year old boy, to perform the act of
sex on Darlem for their entertainment. Since he
was powerless then to encounter those men, he
turned to the powerless than he Darlene, who was a
witness for his humiliation.
Implementation of white beauty ideology,
without having rationality in it by her own
community, made Claudia not to accept it which
she never liked. The subjugation of the Black by
White for their entertainment and privileges made
Cholly to hate White race.
To be precise, Claudia doesn‟t really hate
even light skinned Maureen but hates the thing that
makes Maureen beautiful:
“[a] and all the time we knew that
Maureen Peal was not worthy of such intense
hatred. The Thing to fear was the Thing that made
her beautiful and not us” (Morrison, 1999).
As Munafo argues,
“It is the ideology of whiteness that makes
Maureen appear beautiful” (Sugiharti, Esti).
As Esti Sugiharti mentions Bouson‟s argument in
her Racialised beauty, “the „Thing‟ Claudia learns
to fear is the white standard of beauty that members
of the African American community have
internalized, a standard that favor‟s the „highyellow‟ Maureen Peal and denigardes the „black
and ugly‟ Pecola Breedlove”. Thus, hatred of
Claudia is not against white people rather it is
against the ideology which oppresses the persons
like Pecola, who became the victim of white
ideology of her own people.
Claudia doesn‟t want to become white.
When she is exposed to the white standard of
beauty she is angry and confused. When she
receives a white, blue-eyed doll, she revolts against
it rather than being pleased:
“I had only one desire: to dismember it.
To see of what it was made,
to discover the dearness, to find the
beauty, the desirability that had
escaped me, but apparently only me.
Adult, other girls […and] all the world had agreed
that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll
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Hateredness Against White and Loss of Identity in Toni Morrison‟s The Bluest Eye
was what every girl child treasured” (Morrison,
1999).
designed hopelessness and sucked it all up into
a fiery cone of scorn” (Morrison, 1999).
To White doll, Claudia doesn‟t want to become a
mother. She candidly rejects to pretend to be a
mother of the white doll. By doing so, she rejects
the white standardized values:
Treating black as ugly makes Pecola to lose her
own identity. She is measured by white ideology of
beauty which she doesn‟t have. As a result, people
treat her either as an ugly creature on the earth or as
an object. In the novel The Bluest Eye, it is seen
Mrs. MacTeer refers her as something, not
someone (Morison, 1999).
“The big, the special, the loving gift was
always a big, blue-eyed Baby Doll. […]
I was bemused by the thing itself, and the
way it looked. […]
I had no interest in babies or the concept
of motherhood. […]
I was physically revolted by and secretly
frightened of those round moronic eyes, the
pancake face, and orange worms‟ hair” (Morrison,
1999).
The MacTeers are another black family in the
novel The Bluest Eye who unlike Breedloves, both
work hard to provide for their children Frieda and
Claudia. The family does not deny the reality.
Claudia describes her father:
“Wolf killer turned hawk fighter, he
worked night and day to keep one from the door
and the other from under the window
sills” (Morrison, 1999).
Claudia‟s family works for the survival of their
family and even takes care of Pecola when her own
family leaves her without a home.
“Claudia‟s family represents Morrison‟s
example of black ideologies‟ triumph over
Eurocentric ideals. The MacTeers are able to
balance their double-conscious minds.
Instead of constant longing for the
unreachable American dream like the Breedloves,
the MacTeers embrace their community
and their family values” (A Miserable Black Girl!
Analysis of the Theme In Toni Morrison’s The
Bluest Eye).
MacTeers family protests against dominant
culture‟s ideologies and supports blacks‟ ideology
„Black is beautiful‟ (a cultural movement that
began in the United States of America in the 1960s
by African Americans).
LOSS OF IDENTIY:
Pecola, because of her weakness and lack of
confidence, becomes an easy victim even for her
black schoolmates‟ bullying:
“It was their contempt for their own
blackness that gave the first insult its teeth. They
seemed to have taken all of their smoothly
cultivated
ignorance,
their
exquisitely
learned self-hatred, their elaborately
Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 2(4) April, 2014
In another incident, Pecola goes to Mrs.
Yacobowski‟s store to purchase Mary Jane
Candies. Mr. Yacobowski doesn‟t even look at
Pecola. For him, she is a thing of “distaste”. That is
why, the narrator rhetorically questions,
mind
“How can a… white immigrant [with] his
honed
on
the
doe-eyed
Virgin
Mary…see a little black girl?” (Morrison,
1999)
Instead, his eyes “hesitate, and hover,” because he
doesn‟t want to “waste the effort of a glance” on a
poor, inconsequential, little black girl (Morrison,
Toni The Bluest Eye, Vintage, 1999). Though Mr.
Yacobowski doesn‟t see Pecola, he advises her to
be like Mary Jane, a little girl on the wrapper, with
blonde hair and blue eyes. He says,
“To eat the candy is somehow to eat the
eyes, eat Mary Jane. Love Mary Jane. Be
Mary
Jane” (Morrison, 1999)
This is how all white and the black expect the black
to be white in color.
As Esti Sugiharti mentions Madhu Dubey‟s
argument in her Racialised beauty,
“Each expression of black feminine desire,
whether Pecola‟s longing for blue eyes, Frieda‟s
love of Shirley Temple, Claudia‟s hatred of white
dolls, Maureen‟s adoration
of
Betty
Grable, or Pauline‟s of Jean Harlow, takes the
white woman as its objects”.
Thus, it unfurls the attraction of all black women
who become unable to accept themselves and
prefer to become like white women. Though
Claudia, the narrator, shows her hatred towards
white ideology during her childhood, eventually
agrees to accept it during her adulthood. Hence, all
the black women lose their own identity and would
like to be one in white racial shift.
CONCLUSION:
The novel was written “…. during the years of
some of the most dynamic and turbulent
transformations of Afro-American life” (A
miserable Black Girl-Analysis of the Theme In Toni
Morrison’s The Bluest Eye). When Morrison was
writing the novel The Bluest Eye, it was the time of
transformations, one of those was a new
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Hateredness Against White and Loss of Identity in Toni Morrison‟s The Bluest Eye
recognition of Black-American beauty. BlackAmericans began to argue for a new standard of
beauty, The black is beautiful (a cultural movement
that began in the United States of America in the
1960s by African-American).
The ideology of Black is beautiful
emerged against the white oppression. Its aim was
to eradicate the ill treatment of blacks that black
people‟s natural features such as skin color, facial
features and hair are ugly. John Sweat Rock was
the first to coin the term “black is beautiful”. The
movement encouraged men and women to stop an
attempt to lighten or bleach their skin. The
movement was also against the American culture
which attributed blacks as less attractive or
desirable than those of “whites”. According to
some research, it is said that, the idea of
“blackness” as ugly is highly damaging to the
psyche of Africa Americans.
Since Morrison is influenced by the
Harlem Renaissance and Black is beautiful cultural
movement, she also through her novel The Bluest
Eye tries to discuss the issues dealt with black
people during the 1940s and 1960s; she does it
through the characters such as Claudia and her
MacTeer family, who support the Black is beautiful
ideology. The details of a typical life of black
people are seen through the novels of Toni
Morrison, The Bluest Eye is one such.
Morrison upholds the psychological
impact of white supremacy on the black. Selfhatred and hatred against white are the
consequences of color segregation in The Bluest
Eye. In the novel, self-hatred an extreme dislike or
hatred of oneself goes to the extent that the black
people begin to hate their own people; this
becomes so much that a mother hates her own
child, the classmates hate their own classmate, a
friend hates a friend, a shop keeper hates his
customer, own community members hate their own
members; moreover, an individual begins to hate
himself. Pecola, for instance, hates herself and
would like to become a white as white people are.
This is because her family and her community
should not ill treat her.
Morrison, in fact, mocks at the black
people who hate their own brotherhood and,
moreover, themselves. Her motto is to support the
Black is beautiful movement, which gives back up
to the black who are regarded as inferiors just on
the basis of their color. She supports to have one‟s
own identity but not through color. She negates
self-hatred which poses a threat to one‟s own
identity.
REFERENCE:
A miserable Black Girl-Analysis of the Theme in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. (n.d.). 1, 23.
Morrison, T. (1999). The Bluest Eye. London: Vintage. 59.
Sugiharti, E. (n.d.). Racialized beauty: Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. 2-3.
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