Toni Morrison And Virginia Woolf's The Bluest Eye

Toni Morrison, the author of The Bluest Eye, centers her novel around two things: beauty and wealth in their relation to race and a brutal rape of a young girl by her father. Morrison explores and exposes these themes in relation to the underlying factors of black society: racism and sexism. Every character has a problem to deal with and it involves racism and/or sexism. Whether the characters are the victim or the aggressor, they can do nothing about their problem or condition, especially when concerning gender and race. Morrison's characters are clearly at the mercy of preconceived notions maintained by society. Because of these preconceived notions, the racism found in The Bluest Eye is not whites against blacks. Morrison writes about

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison is a novel which is unquestionably about race, particularly about standards of beauty that make non-white people feel undesirable in a society that praises only white standards of attractiveness. However, this does not answer the question of how the novel challenges whiteness. At first glance the novel seems to praise whiteness in the scenes such as when Frieda and Pecola fawn over the beauty of Shirley Temple, or when Claudia receives a white doll from her parents and is told that she should appreciate it’s beauty early on in the novel (Morrison 19, 21). However, this is when the Bluest Eye begins it’s challenging of whiteness. After receiving the doll, Claudia begins to dismember it in order to better understand

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,

“The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, is a story about the life of a young black girl, Pecola Breedlove, who is growing up during post World War I. She prays for the bluest eyes, which will “make her beautiful” and in turn make her accepted by her family and peers. The major issue in the book, the idea of ugliness, was the belief that “blackness” was not valuable or beautiful. This view, handed down to them at birth, was a cultural hindrance to the black race.

In the novel The Bluest Eye, author Toni Morrison uses the internalization of beauty standards and its effect on characters’ social interactions with the community to reveal society’s assumption that appearance is the decisive factor in determining one’s status and critique its detrimental effect on one’s personal identity.

“Her writing demands participatory reading” (Bump). But do critics or even readers themselves feel comfortable enough to discuss this experience? Did Morrison tell too much of the truth about society that it exposed their own ugliness? Some critics have remarked on the emotional impact of The Bluest Eye but can feelings about beauty and ugliness enable white readers to become more conscious of the impact of racism? We can use this novel as a template as an ethical emotive criticism that connects feelings to thought - psychological models of racism, stigmatism, judging by appear-ance, and hierarchies of emotions (Bump). Using Claudia as the narrator, Morrison uses her feel-ings of anger to express how she herself feels; Pecola is too vulnerable to be angry at what she goes through but it is Morrison who is angry at the dissolution of African-Americans and their appearance. The novel itself intensifies rather than deflects the reader’s sense of Morrison’s an-ger. Morrison’s scale of anger about racism parallels with the characters and what happens to them in the book, meaning that as Claudia gets angry or upset with Pecola at times, us as readers should too. Morrison’s anger does not just come about to write a good story but out of frustra-tion, she wants readers to understand that race is an ideologically

A Person’s Appearance: True Beauty In Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye, she teaches readers the many problems that occur in Lorain, Ohio. We see many instances in this novel where people are discriminated, based only on their appearance. In many cases, Morrison uses the themes “Whiteness as standard of beauty” as well as “The power of stories” to address the many problems that plague the black community of Lorain, Ohio.

In a time where being black is equated with being ugly, Pecola Breedlove struggles to find beauty in herself and the world around her due to her race. With the beauty standards reinforced to her since birth through the media and the society she lives in, she sees no option but to conform to them. In “The Bluest Eye”, Toni Morrison uses the characterization of the black women in her novel to show how society has caused the black community to internalize white beauty standards.

In the novel The Bluest Eye written by Toni Morrison, the author details the tragic story of a young African American girl named Pecola Breedlove, who is exposed to bias social constructs that results in her internalizing high levels of racist ideologies. The novel illustrates the controversy of the perpetration of Eurocentric beauty standards and how it affects the black community, specifically the children within it. Pecola is surrounded around the notion that white standards are favored within American society. She vividly sees these implementations in aspects such as pop culture, the racial hierarchy in education, and societal systematic order. These bias limitations subconsciously result in detrimental effects on the psyches of the young

In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison brings to light the often unrecognized struggle that many people in the black community face. She exposes the “whitewashing” that has been prevalent in society for decades and the societal imposition of impossible beauty standards. Morrison uses the book to show us the psychological tolls on children and adults that stem from these unattainable goals. Children, like Pecola Breedlove, are so indoctrinated by society and the quest for superficial “perfection” that they lose sight of what truly matters. Those desires for superficial superiority even carry over into adulthood, as seen by Mrs. Breedlove’s “skin deep values.” The Bluest Eye even shows that anyone and everyone is affected by the desire to become perfect; even the Maurine Peals of the world have their own insecurities.

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, presents the reader with some of the strong racial imbalances present in the African American communities in the United States. The novel, The Bluest Eye, addresses many themes such as, feminism, rape culture, repetition in rupture, abjection, oppression, racism and the innocence of youth (Morrison 1970). The evident issue in the novel is the way that the African American people oppress not only themselves but others, to the standards of the white American standards of things such as beauty. The characters, Pecola and Pauline, are the major characters in the novel and are, as written by Morrison (1970), the ciphers of the way African Americans treated each-other and themselves in a time of racial oppression

“Blackness” in The Bluest Eye and the Islamic religion in Disgraced are perceived as inferior and in opposition to American society and ideas, and characters associated with these backgrounds constantly experience discrimination from the rest of society. Throughout Morrison’s novel, Pecola has

Is someone who strives to become something that they are not, motivated simply by acceptance? For example, a person who changes his or her hairstyle or way of dress may desire to be seen as cool. Also, others may even join a sport simply to be popular and feel more accepted. In our lives, we are always changing and adjusting in order to show progress or to be seen as better. The changing of one’s race is another action taken by individuals who seek acceptance in high society. In The Bluest Eye, the author Toni Morrison tells of several intertwining stories of many black individuals. Most of these individuals, when addressed by other characters, struggle with negative references of name-calling and descriptions. Negative remarks aside, some black individuals in the novel are raised in a light that mirrors the opposing race’s life rather than their own. Throughout the novel, the author and society constantly place black individuals on a lower pedestal so much that they strive to be white or to have white qualities.

The themes of sex, power and violence intersect throughout Toni Morrison’s novel ‘The Bluest Eye’ within a number of narrative scenes. The example Pauline uses is a recount of her more loving relationship with Cholly, where sex, power and violence are intersected as Cholly’s orgasm coming before hers gives her ‘a power’ of feeling ‘strong’, ‘pretty’ and ‘young’ . However, there are also contradictory intersections of the themes in the novel, such as the intersection of sex, power and violence within Cholly’s rape of Pecola, which leaves both characters powerless. Power and violence are almost always connected; to be ‘powerful’ one must violently assert themselves as superior over another. Sex then frequently intersects with these two themes to either strengthen or undermine this power; a power which is either violently achieved or violently strengthened or diminished by sex. Therefore I will argue that whilst power and violence always intersect as a character cannot have one with the other; sex can then have opposing consequences on this intersection; due to the different ways in which the themes intersect throughout the novel. These varying presentations can thus provoke alternative interpretations of the novel which can be seen in the works of literary critics, which I will continually refer to throughout this essay.

Beloved is one of the most beautifully written books and Toni Morrison is one of the best authors in the world. After reading the Bluest Eye and seeing how captivating it is, it is not highly expectant to think that Beloved to be just as enchanting. Anyone who has read Beloved would read it again and those of us who have not should be dying to read it. Beloved is a historical fiction novel based on a true historical incident. Beloved is set during the time period of the Civil War . The American Civil War to be exact , which took place between the years of 1861 and 1865., As stated before it is based or should one say inspired by the life of the slave Margaret Garner, who was an African American slave . She attempts to escape in 1856 Kentucky by fleeing to Ohio, which was a free state. A mob of slave owners , planers and overseers arrived to repossess her and her children under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which gave slave owners the right to pursue slaves across state borders. Margaret killed her two-year-old daughter rather than allow her to be recaptured. Morrison links the middle passage with the plight of former black slaves. She links the supernatural and fantasy with historical times. She brings in that old slave religion that many African Americans have continued to used even after slavery. Toni Morrison honors those slaves who died in