Feminist Criticism In Morrison's Bluest Eye, By Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison is one of the most talented and successful African-American authors of our time. Famous for works such as The Bluest Eye, Sula, and Beloved, Morrison has cultivated large audiences of all ethnicities and social classes with her creative style of writing. It is not Morrison’s talent of creating new stories that attracts her fans. In contrast, it is her talent of revising and modernizing traditional Biblical and mythological stories that have been present in literature for centuries. Morrison replaces the characters in these myths, whom would have been white, middle-class males, with characters who depict the cultural practices in black communities. The protagonists in Morrison’s works are primarily African-American women

...Morrison explores in the novel [and] centers upon the standard of beauty by which white women are judged in this country. They are taught that their blonde hair, blue eyes, and creamy skins are not only wonderful, but

The author tries to show us the reader that even back then, at a time where racism was a huge problem that it is a problem that it is still seen today. Toni Morrison tries to open our eyes and let us know that there is a big problem that still needs to be fixed. If something is still not being done when is the change going to happen? I as the reader feel that in most passages there is always a point of view of how a women must be characterized. It is important to realize that women are being underestimated and racism is still

Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a genius piece of literature that stands out from the others. Following its publishing date in September of 1987, it was rewarded with a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction only a year later. This novel holds an abundance of literary merit for numerous reasons but the main one being that it combines the powerful forces of history and literature into a pure work of art. Not only does this book display vivid historical accuracy in the perspective of a slave during the Reconstruction era in the United States, but the language that explains this particular situation is rich in figurative language and challenges readers line by line.

Furthermore, Biman Basu’s The Black Voice And The Language Of The Text: Toni Morrison’s Sula, investigates what he calls “one of the most significant developments in African American tradition…the formation of a class of intellectuals” (Article). More precisely, Basu is speaking of individuals like Morrison, who have not only broken down barriers for herself as a woman writer, but the others whom have followed in her footsteps to publish a rich tapestry of African-American literature. Furthermore, Basu’s investigates the conflict that arises when one class overtakes another stating that the conflict “on one hand, is between African-American and American Culture, and on the other, between this class of intellectuals and the ‘people’”(article).

Clearly, the significant silences and the stunning absences throughout Morrison's texts become profoundly political as well as stylistically crucial. Morrison describes her own work as containing "holes and spaces so the reader can come into it" (Tate 125), testament to her rejection of theories that privilege j the author over the reader. Morrison disdains such hierarchies in which the reader as participant in the text is ignored: "My writing expects, demands participatory reading, and I think that is what literature is supposed to do. It's not just about telling the story; it's about involving the reader ... we (you, the reader, and I, the author) come together to make this book, to feel this

Throughout all of history there has been an ideal beauty that most have tried to obtain. But what if that beauty was impossible to grasp because something was holding one back. There was nothing one could do to be ‘beautiful’. Growing up and being convinced that one was ugly, useless, and dirty. For Pecola Breedlove, this state of longing was reality. Blue eyes, blonde hair, and pale white skin was the definition of beauty. Pecola was a black girl with the dream to be beautiful. Toni Morrison takes the reader into the life of a young girl through Morrison’s exceptional novel, The Bluest Eye. The novel displays the battles that Pecola struggles with each and every day. Morrison takes the reader through the themes of whiteness and beauty,

African-American author Toni Morrison, in her novel, Beloved, explores the experience and roles of black men and women in a racist society. She describes the black culture which is born out of a period of slavery just after the Civil War. In her novel she intends to show the reality of what happened to the slaves in the institutionalized slave system. In Beloved, the slaves working on the Sweet Home experiences brutality, violence, torture and are treated like animals. Morrison shows us what it means to live like a slave as she sheds light on the painful past of African-Americans and reveals the buried experiences for better understanding of African-American history. In the story of Beloved, special importance is given to the horrors and tortures of slavery to remind the readers about the American past. Morrison reinvents the past because she does not want the readers to forget what happened in African-American history.

It is within human nature to fear that which we do not understand. In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, this idea is explored through the lens of racial discrimination. In this passage, Morrison uses animal imagery as a means to criticize the whites’ dehumanization and subsequent fear of the blacks. With a focus on this inherent, primal fear, this section stresses the novel’s theme of the “Other” and reinforces the existence of racial prejudice. While this piece of the narrative emphasizes that this “othering” strips the blacks of human identity, it also brings to the forefront the idea that through this cruel evaluation of the blacks, the whites only degrade themselves. This reinforces the novel’s idea that anywhere slavery exists, each individual suffers a loss of compassion and humanity.

Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize winning book Beloved, is a historical novel that serves as a memorial for those who died during the perils of slavery. The novel serves as a voice that speaks for the silenced reality of slavery for both men and women. Morrison in this novel gives a voice to those who were denied one, in particular African American women. It is a novel that rediscovers the African American experience. The novel undermines the conventional idea of a story’s time scheme. Instead, Morrison combines the past and the present together. The book is set up as a circling of memories of the past, which continuously reoccur in the book. The past is embedded in the present, and the present has no

After detailing the conflict between the way early American history is portrayed heroically and optimistically in historical texts and the way it is depicted solemnly and grimly in literary texts, Toni Morrison goes on to explain that “nothing highlighted freedom – if it did not in fact create it – like slavery” (Morrison 38). Morrison explains how writers incorporate an Africanist persona into their work until their literature overflows with stereotypical images of blackness meant to the represent dissimilarity, distress, and anxiety felt by early American settlers. Instead of writing explicitly about the problems of the time, these authors rely on an assumed definition of blackness to act as a platform on which they can contemplate issues

The novel Paradise by Toni Morrison concentrates on the love of God towards his people. Evidently, the opening of the book starts with violence because of the bloody massacre that happens at the convent. It is run-down for refugee for broken females living in the town of Ruby. The descendants of the town are dark-skinned African Americans who try to fit in the lighter-skinned category. However, they have turned away an event they remember in history as “The Disallowing.” The purpose of this paper is to analyze the theme of violence in the book.

There exist a vast number of novels apropos the African American slave experience within American history, however, few capture the intensity and personal feeling that is the essence of Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Written in 1987, Beloved exemplifies a perspective of African American life that is seldom explored: the lives of former slaves following being granted their freedom. Rather than setting her book in the middle of the horrible slavery experience of her main character, Sethe, Morrison opts to set this information as a flashback. Instead, her novel focuses on the woman’s struggle to deal with the inner demons of her past while attempting to build a normal life for herself and her daughter, Denver. There are many rich and deep themes that

Therefore Morrison's novel must be viewed not only as a retelling of a former slave who committed infanticide and what becomes of her but, as a history of an actual event and the parameters under which it occurred.

Toni Morrison’s work always impact and hit the audience soul. Regardless of the reader’s background, Toni Morrison’s work will find a way to grip the reader into a trance. The short story ‘Sweetness’ affected me because I’m a mother in the black community. Although I feel the complete opposite of the narrator, I’ve witness the demonstration of the character. Toni Morrison writes in the narrator as a mother who is disgusted and compassionate. ‘Sweetness’ is a representation of the hardship of parenting with regret, colorism, love, and discrimination within the black community.