Beauty and Identity in The Bluest Eye

Prepared by: Supervised by:Elmehdi Jamal Eddine Dr. Mohammed Kandoussi

Acadimic year:2014-2015

Acknowledgment

On my spins and all my life, I will never expunge my teacher and supervisors precious help and guidance which spur and foster my sternuous knowledge within the ambit of literature and intercultural communication. For this reason, I take the plunge to liaise with Dr.Mohammed Kandoussi whose deep-rooted knowledge in the field has made my uphill task possible to successfully surmount.

Dedication

To my dear mother and father.To all my classmates.To all whom I love and respect so much.

Table of Contents

Introduction....1

The story: The Bluest Eye.........4Chapter one : Beauty in The Bluest Eye........6 Whiteness as the Standard of Beauty...8

Racial Beauty within African-American Community..13

Chapter Two : Identity in The Bluest Eye..17

A. Self-Loathing :The Breedlove Family...19

B. Self- Acceptance :The Mac-teer Family.......24

Conclusion..29

Bibliography.31

Introduction

It is to be made self-evident that the work reported in this monograph is but an attempt to account for one of Toni Morrisons novels ,The bluest Eye. My choice to investigate this novel is not at random, nor does it crop up out of scratch. Rather, it can plausibly be justified by my unquenched curiosity to get in deeper touch with Amerian literature, especially African-American literature, looking forwards to profoundly understanding some of its prevailing issues. Another cogent reason underlying such a choice is my being an American-Culture Studies major, a fact that will make it, more or less, possible for me to cope with it in a quite esay-fashion. In so doing ,I will try to explore how beauty- white beauty- may hamper the identity of black women in the novel. In their unwanted transition from Africa to America, black women suffered from mistreatments, whippings, rape, segregation and sudden deaths. The physical captivity did not matter as much as the mental and psychological captivity, which still affects black African-American womens identity and self-image to this day. During slavery period, black women were treated as dolls for their masters. They thought, as Byron Woulard says, that the master provided them with everything they needed shelter, food, security and sex, something that forced them to believe that the whites way of life and physical appearances are better than that of the blacks . After the abolishment of slavery, lighter skin became a social advantage and a sign of beauty, in contrast to darker skin which ruefully became a social disadvantage and a sign of ugliness. Light skinned women were more likely to get a job and have a good education. They were most represented in media advertising as being beautiful models to follow because of their skin colour which is tantamount to the white. Dark skinned women, on the other had less opportunities to access public schools, and were not entitled to be in some public places. Society regarded them as wrecked and ugly becauseof their skin colour. Consequently, some light skinned women see themselves as more beautiful than dark ones, while some dark skinned think that light skinned women are not the protypical black;rather, they are just a white woman acting black. Thus, this has created another kind of racism, that is to say, racism within the AfricanAmerican community which Morrison wants to be aware of how they are tearing themselves apart instead of being one, not only as African-Americans, but also as Americans. Being an African-American, a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, Toni Morrison wrote her first novel ,the Bluest Eye, to explore the impact of the pre-established standards of beauty which affect African-American womens self-image and identity. The story is about a little black girl called Pecola who is considered inferior and ugly due to her skin colour. Morrison wroteThe Bluest Eyebecause she felt that someone should bring the issue of black beauty into light, and blame not only the white society but also the black community, especially black women, that accept the fact that they are ugly. Morrison says that she wanted to speak on the behalf of those who didn't catch that right away. I was deeply concerned about the feelings of being ugly. The novel, however, sheds the light also on how this ugliness hamper the little black girl Pecolas identity, which she seeks through procuring and wishing for blue eyes. This is because she finds herself abhored by both her society in general and the black community as well. Doutbless, the body of this monograph is divided into two chapters. The first chapter, being revolved around the concept of Beauty in the Bluest Eye, will serve as an access or a prelude to what comes after in the subsequent chapter. It comprises two sections, Whiteness as the Standard of Beauty;whereas the second section will be wholly dedicated to depicting the racism within the African-American community cencerning skin colour. As for the second chapter, it is about Identity in the Bluest Eye. It is essentially composed of two sections, beginning with Self-hatred that can easily be seen in the Breedlove family . The second section will adress itself to revealing the Self-love by which the Mac-teer family is empowered. Ultimately, a conclusion is there to infer something from all what would be stated through assessing the limitations of the paper, besides opening up new horizons for further research.

The Story Inspired yet shocked by a childhood friend, who wishes she had blue eyes, Morrison wrote The Bluest Eye. The Bluest Eye, which was written during The Great Depression, in Lorain, Ohio, and which had, still has, and it will possibly have a pervasive influence on American Literature History, insofar as it unsparingly mirrors and provokes many vital social issues. Most of the novel s characters belong to the same community, the Black community. The central character, Pecola, impersonates the reserved, the lost, the weak, and the abused, all of which are due to the people she is surrendered by. Although she is raped by her father, ignored by her mother, belittled by her society, she still believes that blue eyes can help her have a better life than the one she has. Morrison tries to represent African-American community and its members in this novel as having an important role in constructing the American society . The Macteers family, who take in a boarder a boy named Henry, and a girl Pecola, can no longer support those two kids on their account. So, Pecola has to get back to her own family, which is like hell for her. Her father Cholly and mother Pauline are only biologically responsible for her, and all that she knows about her brother, who flees from home because he can not tolerate his familys cruel life, is that she has got a brother. The girl has got a strange wish that is of having blue eyes. She prays every night before going to sleep for that wish to happen, because she thinks that would make her loved and accepted by her society. Yet, the thought of how black and dark-skinned she is breaks her heart in two, and that pushes her to hate herself, lose her identity, lose her dignity that she can only gain back if she had blue eyes. In the sequent chapter, the author depicts the hardships Pecolas father and mother have been through during their lifetime. Cholly was born and raised without his parent. He has never known what a family looks like though his Aunt Jimmy takes care and looks after him, and he has never experienced what love is though he is married. He is humiliated by two white fellows, who caught him making love and force him to carry on what he is doing while they watch. He does not abhor the guys, but instead he hates the black girl who is laying on the ground on him. After Chollys Aunt Jimmy funeral, he decides to look after his father who he has never seen or talked with before. When he reaches the station in which his potential father is, the man standing there shouts at him and insults him before Cholly explains how much he needs a father. Right after that, he meets Pecolas mother Pauline. Pauline is dumbfoundedly fond of movies, especially white movies. She considers herself ugly, because she is black. She works in a white family house that she feels it is very comforting, in contrast with her own ,in which she feels chained in. With all that is happening, Pecola still asking for blue eyes.

After her dream does not come true, she goes to a priest called Soaphead Church to help her getting her wish fulfilled. He is mesmerized and shocked by the little black girls wish as nobodyhas asked him such impossible wish before. He wants to help her, but he does not know how. Ultimately, he promises if she gives the dog the liquide he gives her and the dog reacts to it, she will recieve blue eyes the next days. Pecola has been had and decieved by Soaphead Church because he uses her to get rid of the dog he hates.

On her own washing the dishes, Pecola is not aware that her father has got in watching her beautiful legs that his sexual desire can not be stopped at their sight. He holds her waist and put her on the floor enjoying the innocent body tenderly. He rapes her. When her mother gets back from work, she finds Pecola lying on the floor. Pecola tries to tell her mother the truth, but she does not believe her. Pecola neither knows what has happened, nor how it can affect her life, nor does she want to know, because her aim is to get blue eyes. Shortly, Pecola is pregnant. Unlike others, Frieda and Claudia Macteers stand by Pecola and help her to keep the fetus alive.Thus, they save up money so that they can afford all the things a baby needs, yet the baby dies right after he is born. When Pecolas father dies, Pecolas jubilation is tremendous as she considers her fathers death as a fulfillment of her wish and that she actually has got blue eyes.

Chapter one :Beauty in The Bluest Eye

This chapter is wholly dedicated to briefly discuss some issues related to Beauty in The Bluest Eye, and how white standards of Beauty can determine who is beautiful and who is not. It comprises basically two interlinked sections, and each section adresses itself to a particular topic. The first section deals with whiteness as the standard of beauty that affects The Bluest Eyes main character Pecola and her family in a way that they no longer like their blackness. The ensuing section will depict the superiority of light skinned blacks to their conterparts the dark-skinned ones via providing some clues from the novel that show clearly how dark-skinned people are marginalized within their community.

Introduction

Kids are always told by their parents not to lie to themselves because a self-addressed lie can eventually be accepted as a truth, and when it becomes a truth, they end up believing in it. This is the case of many of Toni Morrisons characters in The Bluest Eye. They believe that to be beautiful, they have to meet some beauty standards established by the whites. In the Breedlove family, for instance, Pecola and Pauline are so obsessed with whiteness that they start believing that they are ugly. Even if this ugliness does not belong to them, it almost surrounds their lives in every aspect. They are seen by society as being socially marginal, psychologically wrecked, and physically monstrous because they themselves pave the way for society to treat them so. As Morrison says:You look at them and you wonder why they are so ugly; you look closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all knowing master had given each one of them a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question.What is at issue is the fact that they want to be as beautiful as the white girls by means of wearing blond hair and having blue eyes, which is inaccessible and unattainable for blacks. The purpose of this section is to explore how some black women see themselves in countrast with white women, how white beauty has become the standard of beauty, and how being black can prevent one from appreciating ones sefl.

Whiteness as the Standard of Beauty

From the very beginning of the novel, this self-destruction of the black girls and women is represented in the soliloquy of Dick and Jane. This kind of soliloquies, which American childeren took as a part of their school curriculum, and which mirrors the perfect home and family all Americans want to have, a fact that shows how little children are brainwashed1 .Here is the house.It is green and white.It has a red door.It is very pretty.Here is the family,Mother,Father,Dick,and Jane live in the green and-white house.They are very happy.See Janeshe wants to play.Who will play with Jane? See Mother.Mother is very nice.Mother,will you play with Jane? Mother laughs. See father.He is big and strong.Father,will you play with Jane? Father is smiling.Here comes a friend ..The friend will play with Jane. In light of this, we find Pecolas mother, Pauline, unhappy with the life she has been leading because it has been destroyed in her quest to reach white beauty standards. She already considers herself ugly, since, as a child, her foot was trapped on a nail that left her foot deformed. She always blames her ugliness on her deformed foot: her general feeling of separateness and unworthiness she blamed on her foot. Yet, this is beside the question because her ugliness, according to the white society, lies in her skin color, which is easily observed, and which she herself believes a source of ugliness. This internalization of the look of the majority culture, David L. Middleton claims, symbolizes the deep-rooted ethnocentrism of white superiority, and how white values and standards are woven into the very texture of the fabric of American life2. Pecolas mother only uses the foot to deny the fault the others see, though the others belittle and ignore her just because she does not fit into the western standards of beauty.Furthermore, when she gets married, Pauline thinks that her life will lighten up, but her marriage, which is full of fights and loneliness, is another factor that makes her believe that she is ugly. Before she gets married, she dreams of a man who will transform her life and lead her to happiness, yet, her man, Cholly, is never able to make sense of or find coherence in his own life, and he leaves her alone in her hardest times--while she is pregnant. Therefore, to alleviate her loneliness and ugliness, Pauline turns to the movies as her last resort, and decides to imitate the actresses she watches. There, in the movies, she learns, as the novel states, to differentiate between ugliness and beauty that lies in white actresses she hopes to be like, and these kind of ideas are probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity and, ended up in delusion It was really a simple pleasure, but she learned all there was to love and all there was to hate. The thing to love is the white peoples beauty and lifestyle, and the thing to hate is her own skin-color and people. For Pauline, to be as close as possible to her beauty idols, she starts working for a white family, the Fishers. She thinks that this family has got beauty, order, cleanliness, and praise that she no longer looks after her own family and house. for Pauline, this white familys house does not only security and warmth she lacks in her life ,but also the white beauty she will never gain. Pauline feels there as if she is part of that beauty as her skin gloved like taffeta in the reflection of white porcelain, white wood work, polished cabinets and copperware. This, however, leads her to self-denial and hate for her own daughter, that is to say, her race. She finds the Fishers little daughter beautiful, while her own ugly. This ,however, can be seen when Pauline gets mad at her daughter because she drops the blueberry on the Fishers kitchen floor. Nervously knocks a blueberry onto the kitchen floor, her mother strikes her and curses her.Instead of conforting her daughter ,Pauline comforts the Fisher daughter and shouts to Pecola to pick up that wash get on out of here. Thus, by accepting white beauty, Pauline destroys not only herself, but also her daughter Pecola, who thinks that the love she needs has gone to the white little girl instead of settling in her because, as her mother says, she is black and ugly. Similarly, Pecola is convinced that she is ugly. She sees that ugliness in her blackness and those brown-eyes and features that accompany it, and she thinks that she has to do something in the way she looks, or else she will remain ignored and underestimated by her surroundings. She thinks that she has to have something that will make her look like the white girls: it had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, blue-eyes, she herself will be beautiful, accepted and loved. So, blue eyes function as synonymous to whiteness, and symbolize western standards of beauty which include blond-hair, fair-skin and blue eyes3. To aid in this transformation, Pecola picks up her models that she is going to follow to be beautiful. She likes two little white girls, one is Shirley Temple, and the other is Mary Jane, both of whom are advertising models. Pecola drinks white milk from a Shirley Temple cup not because she is thirsty, or likes milk, but because she wants to be loved and beautiful like Shirley Temple. Like Shirley Temple, Mary Jane, who has exquisite white skin, long blond hair, and blue eyes, is Pecolas ideal of beauty. Pecola is fascinated by Mary Janes blue eyes, which may help her be accepted and beautiful by everybody in her society. Here narrator writes to eat the candy (of Mary Jane) is somehow to eat the eyes, eat Mary Jane, love Mary Jane .Be Mary Jane. Therefore, In a society that values whiteness and white features, Pauline and Pecola can not define themselves as beautiful, and both believe in the fact that they are ugly. Being a toothless, foot deformed, and dark-skinned woman, Pauline cannot see anything but the ugliness of her physical appearance which contradicts what she watches on the movies. This feeling is transfered to her daughter Pecola, who is ignored, belittled, and hated by her society. Like her mother, Pecola experiences all forms of ugliness to the extent that her longing for blue eyes drives her to insanity.This is because those two black female characters see themselves through the eyes of others. In light of this, Sartre observed that human relations revolve around the experience of the Look, for being seen by another both confirms one reality and threatens ones sense of freedom4. So, the look of white society to those two characters makes them believe that thy are ugly. Yet, this look, as it is depicted in the novel, comes not only from the white people, but from black people as well.

Introduction

Although Colorism, which is the discrimination based on the skin colour, is deeply rooted within the African-American community, this kind of discrimination is still somehow a hidden secret. Light- skinned girls and women are perceived as smarter, happier, and more beautiful than dark-skinned ones. This is because light skinned women, Ronald E. Hall would argue, have always represented the black elite, who from slavery up to now enjoy, somehow, the same rights and opportunites that the white women have. This, however, has led light skinned women to think, Dee Brown argues, that just because they are light-skinned, they are better than darkskinned, and has pushed dark-skinned women to resent the light-skinned ones just because they are not real blacks. In light of this, The Bluest Eye focuses not only on the pain experienced by black women and girls concerning white beauty, but also the tension between dark-skinned and light-skinned black women, who are depicted as being more powerful, and beautiful than their counterpart, the dark ones .

Racial Beauty within African-American Community

Some dark-skinned characters in the novel, like the McTeers daughters, hate the little, light-skinned girl Maureen. Freida and Claudia are confused and do not understand why light-skinned girls like Maurreen are more likely to be called beautiful and lovable: We were bemused, irritated and fascinated by her. Notwithstanding their attempt to find flaws to restore their equilibrium, they can not find what it is that makes her beautiful. So, Claudia and Freida had to be contented at first with uglying up her name, changing Maureen Pee to Meringue Pie, an insult which they cannot share with their peers in school like most children do, because none of the other girls would cooperate with their hostility. They adored her. This hatred, however, is due to Maureens skin color, which makes her look like white girls. After all, Claudia later on asserts that she knows that Maurreen Peal does not deserve such hatred, because the thing to hate is not her but her skin color that resembles the whites. Blacks value light-skinned girls, and they devalue dark-skinned ones. The little, dark-skinned Pecola is hated and teased by her community. While playing on the school playground, Pecola is harassed and insulted by a clique of black boys: Black emo. Black emo .Ya daddsleepnaked. Black emo black emo ya dadd sleeps naked .Black emo. This, in fact, shows that not all of the racist acts and attitudes are necessarily white. Such racism can generate, also, from blacks, because those little black kids do not realize that they themselves were black, or that their own father had similarly relaxed habits like Pecolas; and partly because it was their contempt for their own blackness that gave the first insult its teeth. Thus, Morrison zooms out the black cultivated ignorance and self-hatred that pushes them to hate one another just because they do not meet white beauty standards. Furthermore, in the presence of the light-skinned girl Maureen the little black boys show more respect to Pecola and the MacTeer daughters and allow them to leave. When: Maureen appeared at my elbow, and the boys seemed reluctant to continue. They buckled in confusion, not willing to beat up three girls under her watchful gaze. So they listened to a male instinct that told them to pretend we were unworthy of their attention. This, however, indicates the atrocity of Pecolas community, which considers dark-skinned girls ugly, and light-skinned ones beautiful. Thus, it would be fair to say that racism toward dark-skinned girls in the novel, like Pecola, asserts how black women eaquate their dark skin with rejection and suffering ,and the light skin with affection and acceptance5. The Bluest Eye describes light-skinned women and girls as superior to, and more beautiful than, dark ones. Gerldine, who goes to land-grant colleges, normal schools, and learns how to do the white mans work with refinement, does not like dark-skinned people, and she thinks that she, as a light-skinned woman, has a better life than that of dark people. When she finds Pecola in her house, she orders her son, who invites Pecola into the house, not to play with niggers. She had explained to him the differences between colored people and niggers. They were easily identifiable. Colored people were neat and quiet; niggers were dirty and loud. Indeed, Gerldine is not the only character that sees these differences. Maureen, whose beauty saves Pecola and the McTeers daughters from the black little boys insults, and tells them that she is Cu-ute and they are ugly: She screamed at us:I am cute! and your ugly ! Black and ugly black emos. I am cute! It is quite clear from Maureens words that she associates beauty with how dark or light you are, and clearly Maureen sees herself superior because she looks like her the white girls. That is to say, with her physical appearance,namely the skin color, which she finds reminiscent of the whites. So, the novel proves, again, beauty is not beauty if it does not match with Western beauty standards . Therefore, racism does not always come from those whose races differ, but it can also occur within the same race. Light-skinned girls, as we have seen, are more preferred than those with dark skin. Dark-skinned girls, on the other hand, see the light-skinned ones as fake blacks. This, consequently, leads to conflict and animosity, instead of the unity of the members of the black community. Being hated for her skin color, Pecola abhors herself, and becomes obsessed with white beauty to the extent that she wishes she had blue eyes which, instead of making her beautiful, they are likely to push her to lose her own identity.

Endnotes

1.Tessa Roynon, The Cambridge Introduction to Toni Morrison (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2013) 17-18.

2. David L. Middleton, Toni Morrion Fiction: Contemporary Crtiticism (NY: Garland Publishing, 2000) 48.

3. Eckard, P.G, Maternal Body and Voice in Toni Morrison, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Lee Smith (Missouri:University of Missouri Press, 2002) 38 .4.Steven Churchill and Jack Reynolds, eds. Jean-Paul Sartre: Key Concepts (NY: Routledge, 2014) 112-113-114.

5. Ursula M. Brown , The Interracial Experience:Growing Up Black/white Racially Mixed in the United States (CT: Praeger Publishers, 2001) 30.

Chapter two : Identity in The Bluest Eye

The main concern of this chatpter is to scrutinize the differences between the two black families ,the Breedloves and the Mac-teers , in either losing or gaining their identity. For this reason, I find it quite essential to shed the light on some very significant issues related to how Morrison depicts the black identity, which is both destorted by and empowered by the same society.

Introduction

The Bluest Eye explores issues of Black identity, beauty, self-love, self-hatred in a world where race-related violence, gender differences, and class contrasts make it extremely difficult for a large number of people to find dignity in their lives. Identity and beauty, however, are very dangerous objects in the story. Most of the characters search for their identity by considering being white or having the whites lifestyle, partly because they fail in appreciating their own race and self in terms of beauty, and partly because they are afraid of being discriminated against by their society, and partly because they believe that whiteness means beauty . Despite this vulnerability, or, as Morrison depicts it, the wound-ability of these characters, there are some others who are acutely aware of their misfortune and are willing to change their present situation by accepting who they are, as being black and poor. The Breedlove family suffers from the presence of the white society, and finds it very difficult to form a sense of identity. The main purpose of this section is to reveal how Pecolas parents transmit their sense of inferiority to their daughter, how society confirms it by its rejection of dark-skinned people like her, and how white beauty standards may affect the black identity.

Self-loathing:The Breedlove Family

Chollys childhood reflects his failure in defining himself both as a free man and as a father. He is abandoned by a junk heap by his mother, rejected for a crop game by his father, and forced to make love while two white haunters are watching. These events, shape his attitudes to others because from then on his self-hatred grows up. He does not hate the two white men, but instead he abhors the black girl with whom he makes love: Chollly moving faster looked at Darlene. He hated her. He almost wished he could do ithard, long, and painfully, he hated her so much. He hates the girl because she has witnessed his failure and weakness that he cannot protect her. This, however, indicates the compatibility of the blacks in the white society, which turns Chollys anger, being caught making love by strangers, into shame that makes him hate himself and those who look like him. Cholly who accepts his black identity as inferior is deeply traumatized at the disgraceful exposure of himself as weak and compatible1. Ashamed as he is, Cholly wants to get back his identity by finding his father. When he hears that Darlene is pregnant, he runs away to Macon to find his father and start a new, fresh life again. Yet, the son does not seem to be welcomed by his potential father. The father says, something wrong with your head? Who told you to come after me? At this moment, Cholly is confused and shocked because he has lost his last hope to gain his identity, which he has never procured before. Indeed,when he finds himself rejected and abandoned, Cholly loses control and soils himself like a baby, and he feels exposed to the humiliating gaze of the others- the gaze of his father and society2. Thus, Chollys past constitutes his devastated identity, which leads him to end up as the utterly degraded, and socially ostracized person, who transfers his loss of identity to both his daughter and his wife, Pauline. Like Cholly, Pauline has got no sense of identity. She, whose sense of defectiveness is intensified by her crooked, archless foot that causes her to limp, sees herself through the eyes of others. She hates herself to the extent that she identifies with white movie stars, such as Jean Harlow. This hatred of the self is branched out from the interracial shamingshe experiences when she moves to the North and finds Northern Blacks better than whites for meanness, and that they can make her feel just as no count as whites do Black community, for her, does not make her neither strong nor visible because the blacks also find her ugly. She; therefore, takes refuge in whiteness, and tries to ignore her real black identity. The feeling of inferiority and loss of identity can be seen during Pecolas birth. When Pauline is about to deliver Pecola, she overhears the whites at the hospital refer to black women like her as animals, and that they deliver right away and with no pain, just like horses. This, in fact, explains how Plauines surrounding society shapes her identity, marginal and inhuman. So, the same look that devastates her husbands identity pushes her, too, to equate her child with excrement; that is, with something dirty and disgusting, and calls her ugly, as it is mentioned in the novel, head full of hair but Lord she was ugly. Hence, Pauline projects her own sense of ugliness and loss of identity on her daughter at a very early age. Although Pauline expresses her contempt for the white family she works for as dirty and none of them knew, knew how to wipe their behinds, she still considers white people her ultimate idols. Working for a white family, she becomes what is known as an Ideal servant, for such a role filled practically all her needs. To put it differently, Pauline accepts her inferiority- being a servant in a white house- in order to meet the goals of her ideal self and win the white approbation she desires. She finds there beauty, order, cleanliness she cannot find in her own house and community, and which leads her to give up her black identity. So, both Pauline and Chollys past, which is clearly full of shame, self-hatred, and loss of identity, is going to influence their daughter. Thus, Morrison may be here warning us that todays shame may be tomorrows failure to find ones identity. John Locke says that the senses at first let in particular ideas, and furnish the yet empty cabinet; and the mind by degrees growing familiar, with some of them, they are logged in the memory3. In the same sense, Pecola is the empty sheet on which both her family and society write down who she is, and what she is supposed to be. Living in a family that lacks love, security, and appreciation of the self, Pecola learns how to hate herself. For instance, her mother does not love her the way she loves the white little girl; her father rapes her twice, and the town mystic fools her into killing a dog to get blue eyes.So, Pecola knows, based on what she witnesses her father, mother and society doing that she is defined by what she is not -white and blue-eyed girl like Shirley Temple and Mary Jane. Society is the mirror through which Pecola sees herself both hated and invisible. Malvin Lavon Walther claims that Pecolas ugliness ,which is defined by the white features ,pushes her into being invisible and quasi-absent4.Nobody seems to notice her presence, nor wants to look at her. For example, Mrs. Macteer calls her something, not someone: I got something else in here thats going to drink me on in here. Well, naw, she aint. Indeed, the black little boys harass her and insult her black emo,and her temporary friend, Maureen, makes fun of her name and relates it to a movie called Imitation of Life where this millutto girl hates her mother cause she is black and ugly, but then cries at her funeral. Indeed, the title of that movie is a pun, which connotes the failure of Pecola in imitating, or be like the others. Thus, she is, like her parents, always deemed to be hated, invisible and lost.Furthermore, this invisibility can also be seen when Pecola goes to Mr.Yacobowskis store to buy Mary Janes candies. Mr.Yacobowski does not pay attention to Pecola because how can a white immigrant with his mind howned on doe-eyed Virgin Marysee a little black girl? He does not even bother to look at her as his eyes drawback, hesitate and hover releasing that there is nothing to see. However, this look, for Pecola, is very familiar for she has seen it lurking in the eyes of all white people who see only her blackness. The blackness that deteriorates her identity and drives her to insanity looking for blue eyes. It is, as Morrison says, her blackness that accounts for, that creates the vacuum edged with distaste in white eyes. Therefore, as I mentioned above, Pecola is like an empty sheet on which the hate of society to dark-skinned people like her is recorded. The hate that tells her she is ugly and worthless pushes her ultimately to look for her identity in something that does not belong to her, blue eyes. Pecola thinks that only blue eyes can help her get stability and identity in her life, a wish which is unattainable for a black girl like her. After Cholly rapes her, she goes to the church to ask Soaphead church help her make sense of her life, to get blue eyes. Yet, Soaphead church is fascinated by this request that he describes as:The most fantastic and most logical petition he had ever received. Here was an ugly little girl asking for beauty this seemed to him the most poignant and most deserving of fulfillment .A little black girl wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness ,and see the world with blue eyes Although he cannot make her dream happen, he deceives her into killing a dog he hates, promising that if something happens to the dog, she will receive blue eyes. Pecola, now, believes that she really has got blue eyes, something that destroys her self and identity altogether because at this stage Pecolas self-destruction is complete. So, she stepped over into madness to the extent that she talks to herself about having blue eyes and that she is now visible, accepted, and loved. Hated and belittled by her surroundings, and ultimately raped by her father, Pecola has become obsessed with being somebody who she is not-white, blue- eyed girl like Shirley Temple or Mary Jane. Pecolas insanity is not only a result of her invisibility, ugliness, or her fathers rape, but it is due to the combination of all these things. In other words, it is a result of both society and her parents, who filled her with ideas that make her hate who she is and opt for something else. Thus, Pecola may be a victim of society and her family, but she victimizes herself more when she accepts to follow what has already been established in her society and community because there are some characters, such as Claudia, who are happy with their blackness and their identity.

Introduction

The Macteer family is a foil to the Breddloves. Unlike the Breedloves, who are vulnerable, weak and lost, the Macteers are strong and happy with their blackness. Although they too want to have blue eyes, and want to be loved and liked as the other white and light-skinned girls, they are still acutely aware that this is not what it should be, and they must accept themselves the way they are. Claudia, the Macteers daughter, is the character through which we see this self-love and self-acceptance.This section shows the fact that not all the black characters in the novel hate their skin colour, and that by accepting ones self one can strengthen up their identity.

Self-Acceptance:The Macteer Family

Caludia does not hate her body, but hates the way society evaluates it. She says, We felt comfortable in our skin, enjoyed the news that our senses released to us, admired our dirt, cultivated our scars, and could not comprehend this unworthiness. 'This may suggest that Claudia rejects what society imposes on black girls like her, concerning beauty and identity, but she does not understand why society considers her unworthy. As David L. Middelton argues that: The young Claudia represents a rejection of external standard which were impossible for her to meet. Many saw these standards as objective facts : Claudia and her sister did not. Even as a child Claudia seemed aware that not everything that is external to the individual is objective.5 Claudia does not want to be like white baby dolls, and she is happy with her own physical appearances. When she receives a white, blue-eyed baby doll for Christmas, she is unhappy, instead of being pleased: I had one desire: to disremember it. To see of what it was made, to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped me,..Adults, other girls and all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellowhaired, pinked-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured.As it is mentioned in the novel, althought he doll defines beauty and what is constituted as the most beloved in society, Claudia knows that the white doll does not reflect her face and body. So, she wants to get rid of it because she could not love it, and so she Breaks off the tiny fingers, bend the flat feet, loosen the hair, twist the head around in order to convince herself that this is not what she should look like, and be proud of herself.Indeed, Claudia thinks that she essentially deconstructs whiteness by tearing apart her white doll,which the adults think it is Claudias fondest wish. This, however, allows Claudia to come to a greater understanding of herself and her community, and to find her black identity in a white society. Claudia blames her community for giving up their identity. In light of this, she repudiates the idea of having white baby doll because she wants only the security and warmth of Big Mamas kitchen, the smell of the lilacs, the sound of music and all the things that can empower her personality and her black identity. Her greatest wish is not for baby dolls or candy, but for feelings of family, security, warmth, and aesthetic appreciation. She also blames the earth, the land of our town, which is bad for certain kind of flowers.That is to say, she blames the black community which would not nurture a twelve-year-old girl, Pecola, who is rejected by her own community: this soil is bad for certain kind of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live. We are wrong, of course, but it doesnt matter. Its too late. At least on the edge of my town, among the garbage and the sunflowers of my town, its much, much, much too late. Claudia is aware of the differences between her and the others. At some point in the novel she learns to love Shirley Temple: I learned much later to worship her, just as I learned to delight in cleanliness. This learning, however, suggests that both beauty and identity are not inborn in us, but rather, like culture, they are learned. Besides, Claudias hatred toward the light-skinned girl Maureen is due to the thing that makes her beautiful, and that thing is the white society that apperciates the white skin colored people and deppreciates the dark ones. Society fills up peoples mind with the things one should love and the things one should abhor, what to accept and what to reject. Harlod Bloom argues that the thing that made Maureen beautiful and accepted is her complete assimilation into the prevailing expectation of white culture.6 Both The Breedloves and The Maccteers are socially poor, but the Macteers are emotionally rich. It is not poverty that makes the Breedloves hated and rejected, but it is the lack of self-love that makes them so. Pecolas association of beauty to race and social class leads her to feel and accept that she is ugly ,and rejects all that constitutes her blackness including her community and herself as she attempts to breed love instead of accepting of her reality7.It is self-love that makes the Macteers form sense of identity because they are not so absorbed in material values such as blue eyes. Thus, the black identity, which the Macteers have, teaches us that one is able to fully comprehend how society influences our beliefs and shapes our perception of the world around. If we accept ourselves, race, color, we will be able to be loved, accepted, form our own identity, and we will conquer all the stereotypes and grow to our fullest potentials.

Endnotes

1. J. Brooks Bouson, Quiet As It's Kept: Shame, Trauma, and Race in the Novels of Toni Morrison (NY: State University of New York Press, 2000) 35.

2. Bouson J. Brooks, Quiet As It's Kept: Shame, Trauma, and Race in the Novels of Toni Morrison (NY: State University of New York Press, 2000) 36.

3. John W. Yolton, The Locke Reader:Selections from the Works of John Locke with a General Introduction and Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1977) 126.4. Malin Pereira, Embodying Beauty: Twentieth-Century American Women Writers' Aesthetics (NY: Routledge, 2013) 124-125.

5. David L. Middleton, Toni Morrion Fiction: Contemporary Crtiticism (NY: Garland Publishing, 2000) 16.

6. Harlod Bloom, The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison (NY :Infobase Publishing, 2007) 92-93.7. Elizabeth Ann Beaulieu ,ed. The Toni Morrison Encyclopedia (CT: Greewood Press, 2003) 74.

Conclusion

It is no deny that the focal objective underlying th consent study has been to figure out some of the issues Toni Morrison rises in her novel the Bluest Eye, which are generally related to the concepts of beauty and identity.Morrisons usage of beauty here is purposful because it represents the tangible and the recognizble. Beauty ,espacially white beauty, severs as a hinderance to an acknowledge black identity. An identity which is destroyed by the dominant culture ,and which seems to be fading away by the acceptance of such culture. Morrison does not blame the white society ,or how white people treated ,and still treat the blacks, but she blames the blacks who underestimate and submit themselves to the whites supermacy and humilation. At this juncture,the novel depicts the main characters, Pecola and her mother, as being too obessed with whiteness. They look for beauty in something that does not belong to them, blue-eyes and a straight-blond hair. Both Pecola and Pauline accept the fact that they are ugly, because their society ,and their black community see them as such. Indeed, African-American community, as it is depicted in the novel, discriminate between dark-skinned women and light-skinned ones, because the latter lool like, somehow, the whites. Thus, Pecola and her mother find it very hard to accept themselves and their blackness, which is regarded as a sign of evil and ugliness. In the course of rejecting their blackness, Pecolas family loses its identity. Pecolas mother belittles herself and the life she has; therefore, she decides to live in a white familys house ,which symbolizes her final resort. Pecola whishes for blue eyes that she ultimately believe she really have. Both Pecola and her mother abhor their physical appearances, something that pushes them to lose their own black identity. On the other hand, the Mac-teers daughters are strong and aware of the fact that they should abide themselves to their blackness so as not to lose their identity. Claudia does not easily submit to the white standard of beauty, she, instead, loves and accepts her blackness though she tends to appreciate some white figures in the novel. Claudias identity lies in her self-love and self-acceptance that allow her to be a strong and effective power in the novel. Morrison may want us to understand that this character, Claudia, is the model that black people should follow. This is because she is the mirror through which a black identity can be possibly seen and acknowldged. Finally, although it is clear that beauty-white beauty- can affect black womens identity, I can not claim that I have tackled all the aspects related to this issue in the Bluest Eye, or provide a conclusive overview of this matter. In fact, I have dealt with some important elements concerning beauty and identity, but still there are others ,such as the choice of a little black girls vanatge point in solving the black identity, that I hope to be taken into consideration in a future study, espacially that the idea of beauty and blackness still matter not only in the U.S, but also in the world as a whole.

BibliographyAnn Beaulieu, Elizabeth ,ed. The Toni Morrison Encyclopedia.CT: Greewood Press, 2003.

Bloom,Harold. The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison. NY :Infobase Publishing, 2007.Churchill, Steven and Jack Reynolds, eds. Jean-Paul Sartre: Key Concepts. NY: Routledge, 2014.Eckard, P.G.Maternal Body and Voice in Toni Morrison, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Lee Smith.Missouri:University of Missouri Press,2002. Google Book Search. Web. 18 May 2015.J. Brooks,Bouson. Quiet As It's Kept: Shame, Trauma, and Race in the Novels of Toni Morrison. NY: State University of New York Press, 2000.L. Middleton, David. Toni Morrion Fiction: Contemporary Crtiticism. NY: Garland Publishing, 2000. Malin, Pereira. Embodying Beauty: Twentieth-Century American Women Writers' Aesthetics. NY: Routledge, 2013.M. Brown, Ursula. The Interracial Experience:Growing Up Black/white Racially Mixed in the United States. CT: Praeger Publishers, 2001.Roynon,Tessa. The Cambridge Introduction to Toni Morrison. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2013.

W. Yolton,John. The Locke Reader:Selections from the Works of John Locke with a General Introduction and Commentary .Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1977.

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