The White Haired Girl

Throughout Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye, she captures, with vivid insight, the plight of a young African American girl and the American culture whose ideal is the quintessential blue-eyed, blonde haired woman. For Pecola Breedlove, blue eyes, blonde hair, and pale white skin is the definition of beauty; however, for Claudia MacTeer, blue eyes, blonde hair, and pale white skin are oppressive cultural standards. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison uses specific descriptions of Claudia and Pecola’s upbringings

from the orderly world of the white households we have read so much about in feminist literature of the time, the story of Pecola and Pauline introduces us to a world that is vastly unfamiliar, but no less significant in its existence and validity; a world that is a stark contrast from the Dick-and-Jane world in the preamble or those we have seen in the worlds crafted by Levin or Kaufman; instead of focalizing around the challenges that White adult females face in a White patriarchal society, she turns

The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, is a novel born from the author’s experience with a little black girl who wanted blue eyes, an effect of “racial self-loathing” (Morrison 210). The novel explores a similar, but much more extreme story: the story of Pecola Breedlove. Pecola is a little black girl living not only in a world that divides itself by race and is prejudiced against black people, but also amidst a family that holds conflict and divisions within itself. Morrison’s novels are known for their

blonde is the expectation of everyone's beauty standards. In the short story “Blonde” by Katherine Min, Jean is a young asian girl who wants to fit into the standards of the beautiful blonde. Katherine Min explains that you are your own self beauty and putting on a wig won’t change to make you anymore beautifuller. This is meaningful because Jean doesn’t think dark haired girl are beautiful because society makes her think that blonde is the beauty standard. Jean desires for the blonde wig so she can

Claudia does not understand why people have to be perfect to be liked and does not know why people can not be themselves. It seems as though “all the world [has] agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured[,]” yet Claudia hates the dolls (20). She thinks they are “uncomfortable [...and the] lace on the cotton dress irritated any embrace” (20). Instead of loving a doll, Claudia only wants to dismantle it. She wants

and having children, working for a white family, or become a prostitute. Women in this community aspired to “whiteness” because society’s perception of beauty promotes this and leads the women to believe they can gain more opportunity. Women presume that this would bring them beauty, and therefore respect. “Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs-all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl treasured. ‘Here,’ they said, ‘this

Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison is a very complex story. While not being a novel of great length is very long on complexity. It tells the story of Pecola Breedlove, a young African American girl immersed in poverty and made “ugly” by the Society of the early 1940’s that defines beauty in terms of blonde haired white skinned , and in this case specifically Shirley Temple. The novel opens in the fall of 1941, just after the Great Depression, in Lorain, Ohio. Nine-year-old Claudia MacTeer and her 10-year-old

but one theme specifically is also the central disrupter of everyone's lives. It is the idea that white skin or whiteness is the beauty standard, whiteness and racism are main issues that contribute to Pecola's eventually madness by the end of the story. Every black character in the book besides Claudia MacTeer is brainwashed into believing that the color of their skin makes them ugly and that white is the only true definition of beautiful. Pecola Breedlove is one main character that believes this

destroys her innocence, he abuses and hurts himself as a helpless man whom his little child embodies. Considering his past, Cholly's rape of his daughter makes more sense. Pecola represents Cholly as a child. She is an ugly little helpless girl who is rejected by everyone. Whenever cholly sees her, he remembers his childhood as a helpless child . Being rejected by his father when he goes to meet him is similar to the way Pecola is rejected by everyone. He feels revulsion towards her. Instead

Cycle Lack of empowerment due to white domination, have lead black, particularly women, to suffer. Throughout the novels The Bluest Eyes and Sula by Toni Morrison, characters strive to survive in a world that is prejudice against them due to their race, class, and sex. For characters in the novels, being African American meant they had to survive the prejudice of racism. In the Bluest Eyes it is recognized that beauty is only found in whites’. “Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window