The Effect of Standard of Beauty toward Pecola in The Bluest Eye

A Search For A Self Finding a self-identity is often a sign of maturing and growing up. This becomes the main issue in novel The Bluest Eyes. Pecola Breedlove, Cholly Breedlove, and Pauline Breedlove are the characters that search for their identity through others that has influenced them and by the lifestyles that they have. First, Pecola Breedlove struggles to get accepted into society dued to the beauty factor that the normal people have. Cholly Breedlove, her father, is a drunk who has problems that he takes out of Pecola sexually and Pauline physically. Pauline is Cholly’s wife that is never there for her daughters.

In The Bluest Eye, Pecola Breedlove is a young african-american who wishes at a very young age to be blessed with blonde hair and blue eyes. Her natural skin tone is dark, which leads to her being constantly mocked by other children. Pecola believes that by having blonde hair and blue eyes, she will be accepted, and will no longer be isolated and disregarded. Later in the novel, Pecola was raped. While some people believe that Pecola was to blame for her rape, and while others think that Cholly was the one to blame, Morrison shows how society is to blame for Pecola’s rape, due to placing racial beauty and western aesthetics standards on her.

The meaning of beauty is abused emotionally because the characters consider whiteness beautiful. It is associated with beauty and cleanliness. Blue eyes mean beauty, “It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes...were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different”(Morrison 46). Pecola dislikes herself because she doesn't have blue eyes. She wants people to view her differently and wants to view the world differently. Another instance of emotional abuse is when Pecola is framed for killing a cat . Junior frames Pecola for killing the cat because he feels that Geraldine his mother pays more attention to the cat rather than him, so he likes the cat to suffer .Geraldine says to Pecola, “Nasty little black bitch ”(Morrison 92). Pecola and Junior want people to love them but does not believe they do because of their actions and words towards them, which causes them to develop depression. Pecola's mother Mrs.Breedlove fails as a parent because she doesn’t believe in her daughter about being raped. “Regained consciousness, she was lying on the kitchen floor under a heavy quilt, trying to connect the pain between her legs with face of her mother looming over her ”(Morrison 163). Mrs. Breedlove fails to believe her daughter because she has gone through same circumstances of trauma as her. Someone one’s appearance, is taken

However, she becomes the scapegoat or the sacrificial lamb for all the characters, as they too suffer from insanity. In attempting to retain his masculinity, Cholly Breedlove stains his own blood, his own daughter. He was abandoned by his father, degraded by two white men when he had his first sexual encounter, and got many kicks in life. But when alcohol blots out his senses, it also blots out his humanity switch. Pecola grappled by her father was now in ruins. This was a result from the damages of racism and self-hatred. Leaving Pecola bewildered and silenced, depicting the very idea of how women have less rights and are often oppressed. “Dangerously free. Free to feel whatever he felt- fear, guilt, shame, love, grief, pity. Free to be tender or violent, to whistle or weep. Free to sleep in doorways or between the white sheets of a singing woman.” (Morrison, 159). Cholly crossed all boundaries and does whatever he wishes to do. He can sleep with prostitutes, sleep in doorways, quit jobs, spend time in jail, kill three white men, and knock a women in the head. He feels free of all responsibilities and feels freedom for the first time. Cholly’s self-hatred literally enters Pecola as she bears his child, the symbol of his ugliness and hatred. He looks at his daughter with loathe and tenderness but doesn't pick her up and covers her with a blanket. This season shows that Pecola was the dumping ground for the black community’s fears and feelings of unworthiness. She was fully broken and gave up hope in ever achieving the perfect family life. If the mother did not know how to love herself, or the father did not know how to love himself, then it would be impossible for them to teach Pecola how to love herself. They were doing the best they could with what they had been taught as children. Spring

Her poverty kept us generous. Even her waking dreams we used--to silence our own nightmares. And she let us, and thereby deserved our contempt.” Pecola was the only person in the town who was naïve and had hope of a better life. The town used her as a scapegoat and projected their insecurities and any negative feelings onto her since she was an easy target.

Instead of comforting her child or trying to make sure she isn’t hurt Mrs. Breedlove begins attacking Pecola. She is more concerned with her crying charge as she calls her baby and comforts her. She tells Pecola to take the laundry and get out. Pecola is further showed that because of the color of her skin even her mother does not deem her more important than a blonde haired, blue eyed white child. The uncaring and harsh attitude of her mother and father only lower her self-esteem and her poor

Pecola Breedlove, is an eleven-year-old black girl whom the story revolves around. She is abused by almost everyone in the novel and eventually suffers being raped by her father, Cholly Breedlove. Pecola's experiences, however, are not typical of all black girls who have to grow up in a hostile society. But who is to blame? One could easily argue that it was Mr. and Mrs. Breedlove. But who is to blame for how they treat their child? The white supremacy is the main cause of Cholly’s past, Pecola’s rape and the psychological mindset the mother is in. Pauline is Pecola's mother, and her character allows the reader to see how cultural conceptions of beauty can play themselves out in a more affectionate, but still unfortunate, form than Pecola's

None of the parental figure are inspirational to her. Cholly, father of Pecola makes her more traumatizing. Because of his disoriented, undignified past, he rapes her own daughter. Perhaps, Cholly would not have done it if he hadn’t had to go through his gruesome haunting past. He is abused inhumanly by white men by making him expose his intimate activity.

From Pecola’s point of view, people are disgusted by her when they see her ugliness. She spends “long hours [...] looking in the mirror, trying to discover the secret of the ugliness” feeling bad for herself because that ugliness makes “her ignored and despised” (45). To fix her ugliness, Pecola thinks that she needs to have blue eyes because “if she looked different, beautiful, maybe Cholly would be different and Mrs. Breedlove too” (46). Pecola also expects that her change will adjust other people’s image of herself as well, making them less disgusted by her. Having these altered

In the novel, The Bluest Eyes, the author Toni Morrison informs us of the many things that are going on in the time period of the 1940's. The novel describes various things such as; race, abuse, self hatred, rape, etc. The story The Bluest eyes is a novel, with the setting of the time period of the ending of The Great Depression. These were hard times for African Americans. In this analysis I will be going more in dept of self hatred of one of the main characters by the name of Pecola.

Despite the vulgarity of Cholly’s actions, Morrison avoided demonizing Pecola’s antagonist; so as to emphasize the flaws of society rather then his particular character. She focused more on the tragedy of his childhood experience and only hastily depicts his experience as an adult aggressor. For the same reason, she chose the vignette structure (in order to stagger the upsetting episodes that occurred). The audience is thereby forced to reassemble the story; causing them to not immediately pity Pecola and criminalize her oppressors. The turmoil that African American males experienced in the novel imposed an inferiority complex in their psyche that drove them to persecute individuals weaker than themselves, namely, children. Morrison purposely avoids portraying

When Pecola was born, her mother even recollects, “Head full of pretty hair, but Lord she was ugly” (128). The person who was to love Pecola unconditionally was biased against her just because she was not as pleasant to look at as other people. One of the other issues Pecola faced was that she was an African-American living in America at a time when people were still extremely biased against anyone who was not white. The store owner, Mr. Yacobowski, seemed to look through Pecola because she was not the same color. Pecola notices the distaste as “She has seen it lurking in the eyes of all white people.

Pecola’s peers in school, mainly the girls, would find ways of mocking the boys through her ugliness by shouting phrases like, “Bobby loves Pecola Breedlove! Bobby loves Pecola Breedlove!” (46) an embarrassment for both parties involved. When it comes to the different bystanders, their reaction is full of laughter with no sense of comfort. Additionally, one would think that the adults around Pecola would give her some justice but it was the opposite. “They tried never to glance at her, and called on her only when everyone was required to respond” (46). The actions of the teachers further show how Pecola is received in her community since stereotypically teachers should be the most accepting members, but even they follow suit, avoiding Pecola and who she is. Altogether, it was not just Pecola planting seeds internally telling herself how ugly she is but it came from many other people, some of which are respectable figures around

In this time period, the world was filled with Eurocentrism. Society makes people think being black means you are ugly and have no power, and being white means you are beautiful and have power. To deal with this they consume whiteness to feel beautiful and to deal with there internalized racism. Pecola feels as if she is ugly and unloved. Pecola longs to be white, beautiful and loved.

Throughout The Bluest Eye, Pecola struggles to find acceptance in a community which neglects her due to lack of beauty. Pecola is a young black girl who feels she cannot live up to ideal standards of femininity and faces abuse from her family. Therefore, these injustices begin to peel away at Pecola’s innocence. Her only refuge is within desire to obtain blue eyes, which she feels will defend her from the aforementioned injustices. However, her whims are never completely fulfilled, indicating that although Pecola searches for solace in ‘better’ appearance, she is never able to regain her innocence in the face of injustice.