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Masaryk University Faculty of Education Department of English Language and Literature Radka Havlíková THE BEAUTY STANDARDS IN TONI MORRISON’S THE BL...
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Masaryk University Faculty of Education Department of English Language and Literature

Radka Havlíková

THE BEAUTY STANDARDS IN TONI MORRISON’S THE BLUEST EYE

Bachelor‟s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Mgr. Pavla Buchtová 2011

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the sources listed in the bibliography. ………………………. Radka Havlíková

Acknowledgment First of all I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor, Mgr. Pavla Buchtová for her support and time. I am grateful for her helpful suggestions and valuable comments. My thanks also go to my family and friends who supported me through the years of my studies.

Abstract: The thesis focuses on the white standards of beauty. This issue is analysed in Toni Morrison‟s The Bluest Eye. This study concentrates on the images of white culture and beauty, and shows the devastating impact and the consequences that this white beauty had on African American women.

Key words: Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye, white standards of beauty, beauty, devastating impacts, African Americans, women

Table of Contents

1. Introduction………………………………………………………………1 2. What is Beauty?...............................................……………………..........5 3. Toni Morrison’s Beauty Formula.............................................................9 4. Pecola Breedlove................ ......................................................................12 5. Claudia MacTeer….....………………………………………………….24 6. Conclusion.................................................................................................32 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………36

1. Introduction Toni Morrison, who freguently focuses on African American women protagonists in her fiction, was born Chloe Anthony Wofford in 1930s. She was raised by working-class parents in the small town of Lorain, Ohio, where the story of The Bluest Eye takes place. Because Ohio is on the Kentucky border while its main river leads to Canada, Morrison views it as a crucial boundary between North and South. With a history of underground railroad stations and cross burnings, abolitionist activism and Ku Klux Klan persecution, Ohio is, in Morrison‟s phrase, “neither plantation nor ghetto,” (qtd. in Gilbert) and so it provides Morrison with an ideal site for her analysis of the stuggle for freedom in which so many of her characters engage. After graduating from Harward University in 1953, Morrison went north to Cornell University, where she received a master‟s degree for a thesis on the theme of suicide in the fiction of William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf. While she was teaching at Horward University, she married Harold Morrison, a Jamaican architect, and gave birth to two sons, Harold Ford and Slade. In 1964, she seperated from her husband and moved with her children first to Syracuse, New York, and then to New York City, where she worked as a senior editor at Random House. There she helped shape such autobiographies as those by the activist Angela Davis and the boxer Muhammad Ali, as well as anthology entitled The Black Book (1974), a collection that reflects the breadth of the “anonymous Black man‟s” experience in America. Recently, she has taught at Yale and Rutgers universities. Toni Morrison has been awarded many prestigious awards including the Pulitzer Prize for her fiction for Beloved in 1988, and in 1993 she became the first black woman who received the Nobel Prize in Literature and Composition.

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In the 20th century (in the 30s and 40s) in the USA, Kenneth and Mamie Clark, who were social psychologists, conducted a series of very interesting experiments to test how African American children perceived racial differences. They gave every child a choice between two kinds of dolls. The majority of African American children, even the three years olds, found black dolls to be bad and preferred instead to play with nice, white dolls. The children also went on to identify the white dolls as ones “most like themselves” (gtd. in Cheng 194). Later on, several revised versions of the Clarks experiment have been conducted over the years, producing similar results. In literature, women writers of colour restaged this drama in order to probe the larger tradition of white preference in nonwhite communities. As a typical example of this white predominance is Toni Morrison‟s first novel, The Bluest Eye, which was firstly brought out when she was thirty-nine years old. It was a brand new work which was based on Morrison‟s experience concerning one of her elementary schoolmate‟s remarks that she wanted to have blue eyes. Maria Bring implies that the character of Pecola, the main heroine, is based on a true story of a real girl whom Morrison met when she was 11 years old. Morrison and her little black friend discussed whether or not there is a God. Morrison thought there was a God, however this girl disagreed. The only reason the black girl disagreed was that she had wanted blue eyes. This was a deep and heartfelt wish which she had not been granted. Morrison recalls her reaction well. Morrison could not understand why this little girl prayed for almost two years for blue eyes. This girl did not see her own beauty and Morrison did not understand why this girl would want the most obvious feature of white standard of beauty. This memory of the little girl longing for blue eyes has stayed with Morrison. The idea of being part of two worlds, black and white one, which is typical for Pecola, was first introduced by W. E. B. Du Bois in a term of double consciousness. W. E. B. Du Bois was sociologist, editor, author and intellectual leader in the USA at the beginning of the 20th

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century. “Double consciousness comes from African Americans viewing themselves, individually and as a group, through the eyes of the society they live in” (qtd. in Wickert 299). Du Bois claims that “it is always looking at one‟s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one‟s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” (qtd in Wickert 299). This produces what Du Bois calls a “twoness, - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body” (qtd. in Wickert 299). Pecola innocently believes that she can fuse white beauty with her black body through a strong desire to obtain blue eyes. The results of her desire have devasting consequences on her life. She succumbs to the damaging effects of the white standards of beauty which deny black beauty. In my final thesis I intend to examine Morrison‟s first novel The Bluest Eye. The main aim of my thesis is to investigate how African American women and men have been influenced by the white standards of beauty and to analyze the devasting impacts that these white standards have had on them. My thesis is divided into four parts. The first part deals with general theme of beauty. In the second part Morrison‟s own definitons of beauty are introduced. The third part analyzes the main protagonist Pecola Breedlove as well as the members of her family or community, mother Pauline Breedlove and her father Cholly Breedlove who are influenced by the white standards of beauty. I examine the main images of white standards of beauty and their consequences on African American women in particular. The last chapter handles with the main narrator of the story Claudia MacTeer. I look at her as a powerful illustration of a black girl (not woman yet) who thanks to her parents‟ love is able to love herself and therefore halfheartedly refuse the standards of white beauty. The arguments I make in this thesis are supported by mainly secondary evidence from articles and books written by scholars as Naomi Wolf, the US author and political consultant,

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whose The Beauty Myth with subtitle How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women became an international bestseller and gives a deep insight into the relationship between female beauty and identity. Wolf introduces here very thoughtful and well-researched essays on the women‟s experience. Even though the title of this book mentions women only, Wolf also brings a reader‟s attention to males as the ones who are being manipaluted by the images of beauty as well. Another piece of influential but provocative writing is Anne Anlin Cheng‟s “Wounded Beauty: An Explanatory Essay on Race, Feminism, and the Aesthetic Question” which gives a detailed survey of racialised notions of beauty since the Enlightenment. She notes: “At the conjunction of racial and gender discrimination stands the woman of color, for whom beauty presents a vexing problem both as judgement and solution. This is, between a feminst critique of feminine beauty and a racial denial of nonwhite beauty, where does this leave the woman of color? Can she or can she not be beautiful?” (202). Last but not least is Malin LaVon Walther and her essay “Out of Sight: Toni Morrison‟s Revision of Beauty” which examines visual system upon which definitions of beauty are based. Walther also elaborates on Morrison‟s rejection of beauty and also discusses images of black female beauty. In my thesis I primarily concentrate on The Bluest Eye and on the main characters of Pecola Breedlove and Claudia MacTeer. My focus is also on the main female characters as well as some of the male characters whose lives are affected by the white standards of beauty.

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2. What is Beauty?

It was at once the most fantastic and the most logical petition he had ever received. Here was an ugly little girl asking for beauty...A little black girl who wanted to rise up of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes... -

Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

I have opened my first chapter with this passage from The Bluest Eye for a number of reasons. The passage reflects the long-standing desire that African American women have had with standards of physical beauty. What are standards of physical beauty? What is beauty? The term of beauty is extremely broad so the question mentioned above is difficult to fully answer. We are bombarded every day with beauty contests like Miss World or Miss Universe, as well as magazines like Elle, She or Cosmopolitan featuring the most beautiful people in the world, all trying to show us their ideas of beauty. These magazines are striving to answer the question “What is beauty?” Furthermore, the advertisements around us offer the definition of beauty, sell products with hope of making anyone more beautiful. We have taken for granted what beauty is according to society we live in. Naomi Wolf, regarded as a prominent figure in feminist circle and the author of The Beauty Myth, comes up with the term the beauty myth, when she confirms that “women are beautiful, but they will not believe it the way they need to until they start to take the first steps beyond the beauty myth” (271). The myth of beauty is an illusive and much debated subject even nowadays. Many scholars, philosophers and thinkers claimed to have understood it and tried to explain what “to be beuatiful” means. Nevertheless, their explanations differ to a great extent. Despite this fact,

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they provide us with rich understandings of beauty in various eras of the history. Every century the concept of beauty has changed and has brought a new meaning. In ancient Greece beauty was considered as something that produces pleasant sensations and was greatly admired. There are many images of ideal women on Greek pottery for instance. There are statues of beautiful Greek women as Aphrodite or Athena. These statues are famous for its draperies which are hung loosely around their wide hips. Greek coins featured heads of goddesses, and many of them were very lovely. In Greek myths men are often described with the company of beautiful prostitutes and slave girls. In Homer‟s Odyssey, Helen of Troy is described as the most beautiful woman in the world. Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, beauty and desire, is mostly depicted and considered as a beautiful woman. Athena, Greek goddess of wisdom, is another example of a woman, who is seen and portrayed as holding a spear, her golden helmet pushed back to reveal her elegant beauty. What these goddess have in common is according to the Greek mythology their pale complexion, eternal young body, beauty and power. In ancient Egypt, Cleopatra and Nefertiti, two important figures in the history of Egypt, are famous for their stunning beauty and power. As far as Nefertiti is concerned, in a time and place when women were not equal in status to men, Nefertiti was not only admired and remembered, she was equal in authority to her husband. Cleopatra, known as a Beautiful Queen of Nile, was intelligent, witty and powerful femme-fatale. Her charm which stands as an important attribute to her beauty persuaded many great men of her time to help her on the road to become a successful leader. She succeeded in establishing herself through her influence on others as one of the world‟s most respected and remembered female rulers. Another example of beauty can be seen in the earliest known statue of a human called the Venus of Willendorf. This statue is approximately 25,000 years old and depicts faceless woman with extraordinary breasts, wide hips and large stomach. These atributes of female

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body were considered as trademarks of an ideal mother and thus were considered beautiful. When we proceed to the Renaissance era and into the 17th century, the ideal of the female remained full-figured. The women in this era are “of alabaster skin, with high forehead,

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sharply defined chin, pale skin, strawberry blond hair, high delicate eyebrows,

strong nose, narrow mouth and full lips” (Haughton, 230-31). In his description Haughton confirms that alabaster skin was considered valuable and beautiful for the Renaissance society. Sandro Boticelli depicts the goddess Venus in his paintings The Birth of Venus as a full grown woman standing on the sea shell and arising from the sea foam. In Elizabethan era a pale comlexion was a sign of good health and wealth too. Only rich women could afford to have white skin because poor ones had to work long hours outside and as a result their skin tanned. As far as Victorian era is concerned, it has much in common with previous historical periods, when a pale complexion is a sign of nobility. It means that women are well-off and can afford not to spend hours working outdoors, which would inevitably result in a tan. In this era tanned complexion meant something very vulgar. Importantly, throughout history women have worked very hard to attain these attributes of beauty. The women in the 17th century spent countless hours staying inside not to get their complexion tanned. The goddess in ancient Greece were all considered beautiful. Until nowadays we are not sure about their existence but thanks to their depiction we can admire their beauty. No matter in which century the women have lived in, all these women have followed and have wanted to meet their society‟s expectations. As Naomi Woolf points out “it is not true that beautiful women are more successful” (12). Although the majority of research deals with the topic of beauty in connection with white women, my thesis focuses on adressing the situation of African American women‟s beauty in comparison with white women. Erynn Masi De Casanova implies that

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“traditionally, social scientists, psychologists, and others assumed that the orientation of U.S. culture toward a Caucasian ideal of feminine beauty led to lower body image and self-esteem among Black women and to self-hatred among Blacks in general (292). Elizabeth B. House underscores that “competitive American society teaches that beauty makes people lovable” (182). Bertram D. Ashe confirms that “African American women, with their traditionally African features, have always had an uneasy coexistence with the European (white) ideal of beauty” (579). This can be clearly seen in the African American women characters in Morrison‟s novel who suffer when trying to assimilate the beauty standards. In the 22nd September 1951 edition of Amsterdam News, the Harlem weekly, an ad for Dr. Fred Palmer‟s skin whitening cream that spelled out without reservation “Be Whiter, Be Better, Be Loved” could be found. According to Anne Anlin Cheng “slogans mentioned above announce injury more then remedy” (193). This strategy replaces the main object of beauty without questioning the primacy of that beauty. It is not surprising that African American women continue to be influenced by dominant ideals of the myth of white beauty till nowadays.

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3. Toni Morrison’s Beauty Formula Every woman, every man or even every child know what is beautiful. For men it can be skinny, blond long haired, long-legged, blue-eyed and white woman. This description can also be valid for women. Children can see their fluffy toys, dolls or cars as beautiful. Many women, throughtout the centuries, have been striving for being beautiful. Some people do not consider the main idea of one of the proverb which says that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” (AskOxford Dictionary). Beauty cannot be clearly characterized by what people are told. Standards of beauty are different because we are influenced by the cultural definitions of beauty. When there is a woman passing by, one can see her as beautiful or ugly. It depends on what one considers beautiful. What is beautiful for me does not have to be strictly beautiful for someone else. Beauty is a central focus for many American women. They are not satisfied with their physical appearance. They feel that they are not as beautiful as the women on television or in magazines. The media brainwash women to believe that if they are not slim and do not have blond hair, big breasts and blue eyes, then they are not beautiful. According to Naomi Wolf, “this is a very powerful myth” (qtd. in Sugiharti). Since the ideal of beauty is and has been largely depicted as a woman with light skin and blue eyes, it is even less possible for a woman of colour than for a white woman to achieve this ideal. In her essay, Katherine Stern offers one of Toni Morrison‟s definition of beauty: “The concept of a physical beauty as a virtue is one of the dumbest, most pernicious and destructive ideas of the Western world, and we should have nothing to do with it” (qtd. in Reyes-Conner 77). In this sentence, Morison is responding to the slogan “Black is Beautiful” which she took to be “a white idea turned inside out” (gtd. In Reyes-Conner 78) that still reduced the worth of a people to their appearance. Morrison continues: “Concentrating on whether we are beautiful is a way of measuring worth that is wholly trivial and wholly white and preoccupation with it

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is an irrevocable slavery of the senses” (qtd. in Reyes-Conner 78). However she adds that “much beauty matters to white people, it never stopped them from annihilating anybody” (qtd. in Reyes-Conner 79). Morrison‟s impatience with the very idea of physical beauty is evident in The Bluest Eye, where the narrator calls beauty “one of the most destructive idea of the history of human thought” (TBE1 95). The narrator also claims that “it originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion” (TBE 95). Primarily, Morrison rejects the traditional view of white standards of beauty because she sees it as “racist and frivolous and it separates women from reality” (qtd. in Walther 77576). This is clearly demonstrated on Pecola‟s urgent desire for bluest eyes. In “What the Black Woman Thinks About Women‟s Lib” Morrison asserts: “It seems a needless cul-de-sac, an opiate that appears to make life livable if not serene but eventually must seperate us from reality. I maintain that black women are really O.K. O.K. with our short necks. O.K. with our calloused hands. O.K. with our tired feet and paper bags…O.K. O.K. O.K.” (qtd. in Walher 775-76). Essentially, this statement rejects beauty, yet contains “the seeds of Morrison‟s future definition of beauty” (qtd. in Walther 776). Further, Morrison questions whether “it might be just as well for black women to remain useful” (qtd. in Walther 775). According to Morrison, the women should “remain useful” (qtd. in Walther 776), but in the white culture these women are helpless. In other words, when a woman has tired feet and calloused hands she is not appropriate for the white culture. But for Morrison “these attributes are beautiful and more authentic than popularized standards of white female beauty, because they reflect women who are useful and real” (qtd. in Walther 776). Morrison‟s rejection of white female beauty is reflected in her first novel The Bluest Eye where she reveals the crippling effects of white standarads of beauty on a young black girl.

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TBE stands for The Bluest Eye

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To sum up, Morrison claims that “blacks must love and desire racially authentic beauty, rather than imitating other races‟ forms of beauty” (qtd. in Ashe 589). In the next chapter I will analyze Pecola‟s yearning for bluest eyes and the harmful effects the white standards of beauty have on her as she is searching for love.

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4. Pecola Breedlove2 The main protagonist of The Bluest Eye, Pecola Breedlove, is an eleven-year-old girl, growing up as a black female in The United States in the 1940s. Pecola‟s only one wish is to be loved and accepted by her family and her schoolmates. Throughout the book she searches for love and acceptance of the society. It is clear, as Maria Bring observes, that “Pecola envisions achieving someone‟s affection as something that [she] can do” (8). She already knows that nobody loves her and that there exists something which might change her situation. She believes that through blue eyes and white standards of beauty she will find love and acceptance by the people. However, her wish results in insanity. Pecola is a tragic victim whose victimization results from the society in which she lives and from the family surrounding her. Wayne Blake and Carol Anderson Darling assert that “African American ability to love has required self-acceptance and has been supported by the family” (414). The family Pecola grows up in is full of racial self-loathing. Pecola‟s parents do not know how to love and sadly they cannot give love to their children. Pecola seems to be born knowing, as Jane S. Bakerman suggests, that “the Breedloves were damaged people, undervalued by both whites and blacks” (543). Pecola‟s parents have accepted the only one idea – that they are ugly. It can be clearly seen from the novel that the blacks are forced to see themselves as dirty and ugly. Their white employers often said to them: “You are ugly people” (TBE 28). Most members of the black community looked at themselves and saw nothing to refute this statement. They were not the model which the society portrayed as appropriate. They had no self-confidence and no self-esteem. Although according to Morrison they were beautiful, they were taught and convinced that they were ugly. To Pecola, the youngest member of her family, this was just a fact of life.

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This chapter has already been used in my Bachelor Thesis in Faculty of Arts

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Since Pecola does not witness love at home, she has a vague idea of what it would be like to be loved. Pecola wonders: “What did love feel like? How do grown-ups act when they are in love? Eat fish together?” (TBE 44) The only beings who talk to Pecola about love are the prostitutes who live upstairs. One of them tells Pecola about a man whom she loved. They ate fish together so Pecola deduces when people are in love they eat fish together. This demonstrates that Pecola has no idea of what real love, being love or being in love is, and she concludes that it has much in common with her appearance and the colour of her eyes. As a means of a veil, she prays for a pair of blue eyes. The possession of a pair of blue eyes would remove her ugliness. Pecola‟s mother, Pauline Breedlove, whom Pecola refers to only as Mrs. Breedlove, is the most damaging person who causes Pecola‟s original sense of self-hatred. When Pauline was a young girl, she felt isolated and lonely. This isolation was exacerbated by the removal to the North, where she was unlike other blacks and unaccepted by them. Pauline recalls: “It was hard to get to know folks up here, and I missed my people […]. Northern colored folk was different too. They could make you feel just as no-count, ‟cept I didn‟t expect it from them” (TBE 91). Pauline searched for entertainment and she found it in the movies. Her own idea of love was confirmed by the movie theatres. In her loneliness during her pregnancy with Pecola, Pauline turned to the movies for consolation: “The onliest time I be happy seem like was when I was in the picture show. Every time I got, I went. I‟d go early, before the show started […]. White men taking such good care of they women, and all dressed up in big clean houses with the bathtubs right in the same room with the toilet” (TBE 95). The movies had a devastating effect on Pauline because of what they taught her about romantic love and the importance of physical beauty. Pauline becomes obssessed with Jean Harlow. An incident occured to Pauline when she watched a film starring Jean Harlow, “an American film actress and a top sex symbol known as the „Platinum Blonde‟ for her famous hair” (Stephan, par. 4).

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As Pauline sat in the movie theatre, her own hair styled in an imitation of Harlow‟s, she ate and bit into a piece of candy. Pauline remembers: “[…] it pulled a tooth right out of my mouth. There I was, trying to look like Jean Harlow, and a front tooth gone. Everything went then” (TBE 96). Pauline‟s loss of a front tooth was a determining event in her life. After this affair, she gave up her efforts to be beautiful. As Pauline admits: “I let my hair go back, plaited it up, and settled down to just being ugly” (TBE 96). Pauline felt unworthy and this depressing event heightened her awareness of her physical appearance. She realized that she will never be beautiful and loved like Jean Harlow. She gave up some possibilities of being beautiful. This proves that even with beautiful hair, the loss of her smile has doomed her to ugliness. Pauline feels that without the tooth she will be considered ugly and unlovable. According to Pauline only women with nice teeth are allowed to be loved. Pauline has transferred this ugliness to Pecola and this has affected her treatment of Pecola. In The Bluest Eye white standards of beauty are demonstrated on the child ideal of Shirley Temple. The fascinating power of Shirley Temple is clear in the novel when Frieda, Claudia‟s older sister, brings Pecola a snack: “Frieda brought her four graham crackers on a saucer and some milk in a blue-and-white Shirley Temple cup. She was a long time with the milk, and gazed fondly at the silhouette of Shirley Temple‟s dimpled face. Frieda and she had a loving conversation about how cu-ute Shirley Temple was” (TBE 12-13). Shirley Temple was a famous child actress whose movies were immensely popular in the 1930s and 40s. The popularity of Shirley Temple during the Depression and the importance she had for the Americans are incredible. In that time beauty was represented by this goddess Shirley Temple who embodied “equality, happiness, worthiness, and overall comfort” (The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrsion). If a girl is a white with curly hair like Shirley Temple living in North America, this girl is going to be happy and lovable. The American president Franklin Delano Roosvelt, speaking in 1935, praised Shirley Temple: “During the Depression, when the spirit

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of the people is lower than at any other time, it is a splendid thing that for just 15 cents an American can go to a movie and look at the smiling face of a baby and forget his troubles” (qtd. in Carney). Pecola is fascinated by Shirley Temple because Shirley Temple represents what Pecola is not and what she desires for. As mentioned earlier in this paragraph, Pecola and Frieda have a discussion about Shirley Temple. The definition of „being cute‟ comes into being. There is no need for them to discuss why Shirley Temple is beautiful and cute because Pecola has already had this idea of being beautiful and cute in her mind. Pecola knows that white skin and curly hair are the virtues that make people lovable. It is not just the image of Shirley Temple that Pecola starves for, it is also the white substance inside the cup. It is only later in the story that we are told that Pecola drinks three quarts of milk a day. Pecola drinks so much milk because she believes that she can become as white as the milk. The milk symbolizes the change from being black to being white, from being ugly to being beautiful and from being unlovable to being lovable. This theme concerning desire for love is also clear in Pecola‟s selection of candy from Mr. Yacobowski‟s store. She buys Mary Janes. Even the innocent act of buying a candy becomes an opportunity for Pecola‟s humiliation: “Each pale yellow wrapper has a picture on it. A picture of little Mary Jane, for whom the candy is named. Smiling white face. Blond hair in gentle disarray, blue eyes looking at her out of a world of clean comfort. The eyes are petulant, mischievous. To Pecola they are simply pretty. To eat the candy is somehow to eat the eyes, eat Mary Jane. Love Mary Jane. Be Mary Jane” (TBE 38). Like the milk, the piece of candy is believed to have the power to change Pecola‟s appearance. The surrounding community which Pecola grows up and lives in is another reason for Pecola‟s overwhelming longing for blue eyes. The children at school do not see her as beautiful and tease her primarily because she is dark-skinned. In the school Pecola learns that it is important to have a light skin. Those children who are light-skinned take the chance to

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taunt someone who is darker then they are. The most popular girl in school is Maureen Peal. She is presented as a “high-yellow dream child […] rich as the richest of the white girls” (TBE 47) meaning that she is light-skinned and more lovable. Maureen embodies the ideals by which other girls are judged. She is admired by everyone except Claudia and Frieda. Their loving mother, Mrs. MacTeer, who has no problem in complaining when she feels bad, who “would go on like that for hours, connecting one offense to another until all the things that chagrined her were spewed out” (TBE 16), transfers this ability to Claudia. Claudia and Frieda despise Maureen because she is lighter-skinned and because she is not racked by the boys as they and Pecola are. Maureens‟s lighter skin gives her more self-confidence and power. Pecola is abused and neglected at school and in the community, nobody wants to play with her, nobody seems to see her. As Malin LaVon Walther asserts: “Pecola‟s ugliness, defined visually by white standards of beuaty, forces her into a position of invisibility and absence” (777). Pecola hides behind the ugliness. She feels that she was born at a place where she is worthless and useless. Pecola is resentful but at the same time the most innocent girl. She sees her ugliness as a curse because it excludes her form the society and leaves her lonely. Pecola also feels so powerless that she tries to escape reality: “„Please, God,‟ she whispered into the palm of her hand, „please let me disappear‟” (TBE 33). It is her wish not to be seen as ugly as the blacks are seen but to be as beautiful and lovable as the whites. In order to compensate for her ugliness and her self-loathing, she begins to pray for possessing blue eyes. Walther argues that “women‟s eyes often serve as an attribute of female beauty” (778). Pecola believes that “if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say beautiful, she herself would be different” (TBE 34). If she had blue eyes, she would be beautiful, she would be admired and loved by other people and people would not say bad things about her.

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The most important reason for Pecola‟s mad desire is the fact that she wants to be treated differently by her parents. As Claudia, the narrator, says: “If she looked different, beautiful, maybe Cholly would be different, and Mrs. Breedlove too” (TBE 34). Pecola strongly believes that her beauty would prevent people‟s misbehaviour. She thinks that if she had pretty blue eyes, she would see only nice and pleasant things. Therefore, she begins to pray: “Each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes. Fervently, for a year she had prayed” (TBE 35). Despite the fact that she knows that it will take a long time to obtain blue eyes, Pecola persists. What is really striking is the fact that she keeps on hoping. This shows how much the society affects Pecola‟s view of herself. The pressure from the outside makes her believe that only blue eyes, which represent love, can make her happy and loved. To many African American characters in The Bluest Eye, blue eyes represent love and power. Pecola comes to see her dark skin and her non-blue eyes as trash. She will never accepts herself without blue eyes. She finds salvation only in the hope of blue eyes. Like Pauline, Pecola internalizes that being beautiful is equal to being loved. For Pecola and Pauline beauty is something in which they invest everything. Living her life through white skin, curly hair and blue eyes shown in the movies, it is no wonder that Pauline, when Pecola is born, describes Pecola as “a black ball of hair” (TBE 96). Pauline adds, “But I knowed she was ugly. Head full of pretty hair, but Lord she was ugly” (TBE 98). The reason for Pauline‟s reaction to the newborn Pecola is probably that her child has a dark skin and looks like Pauline. From the beginning we can see that Pauline loathes Pecola. Pauline distances herself from Pecola as well as from her own family. Pauline settles to be a housemaid to a white family. Although she neglects her own family, she is obsessed with cleaning the Fisher‟s house. As Phyllis R. Klotman points out, “[Fishers‟] values become hers and their lifestyle takes on more meaning than her own” (124). In the Fisher‟s house, Pauline feels happy and responsible. The Fisher‟s home has “white porcelain, white woodwork,

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polished cabinets, and brilliant copperware” (TBE 83). These things fill her need for beauty and for power. “They even gave her what she never had – a nickname – Polly” (TBE 99). Pauline realizes that she is accepted by the Fishers. The nickname is a device of acceptance. One of the most heart-breaking scenes in the book occurs in the Fishers‟ kitchen. One day Claudia and Frieda are on a serious search for whiskey. They set out to find Pecola, who is at the Fishers‟ for the laundry. Pauline is not happy to see Pecola‟s friends but she allows them to step inside “her kitchen.” While waiting for Pauline to retrieve the wash, a young white girl – the little Fisher girl – comes into the kitchen where Pecola, Frieda and Claudia are waiting. She calls anxiously for Pauline. Instead of calling her “Mrs. Breedlove,” the formal address that her own children call her, the little white girl calls for “Polly.” When calling on Pauline, Pecola, Frieda and Claudia notice a deep-dish blueberry cobbler near the stove. Pecola decides to touch it to see if it is hot. As she does so, the blueberry pie falls by accident. The hot blueberries are everywhere, with most of the juice splattering on Pecola‟s legs. Pauline treats Pecola “a crazy fool” (TBE 84) as she worries about the dirtiness of the floor. In the meantime, the little white girl begins to cry. Pauline immediately turns her attention to the white girl‟s pink dress that is dirtied by the black blueberries. She repeats, “Hush. Baby, hush […]. Don‟t cry no more. Polly will change it” (TBE 85). She sooths the tears of the “little pink-and-yellow girl” (TBE 85). This clearly shows that the white body must be loved and cherished, while the black body can be insulted and verbally attacked. As the three black girls leave, they can hear Pauline promise to make another pie for the little white girl. The white girl twice asks Polly who they are. Pauline refuses to answer. Klotman summarizes: “Through her mother‟s blurred vision of the pink, white and golden world of the Fishers, Pecola learns that she is ugly, unacceptable, and especially unloved” (124). Black is ugly and substandard. Her own mother prefers the strange white child. She is left to conclude that it is white beauty that guarantees love. This is why Pecola sits for hours “looking in the mirror,

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trying to discover the secret of the ugliness, the ugliness that made her ignored or despised at school, by teachers and classmates alike” (TBE 34). Another example of a person who is to a certain extent influenced by white standards is demonstrated in the crucial character of Cholly Breedlove, Pauline‟s husband and Pecola‟s father. His shame and powerlessness, which stem from his first sexual encounter with a young girl, Cholly passes on to Pecola. He feels unworthy. Cholly‟s life begins with rejection. When he was only four days old, his mother “wrapped him in two blankets and one newspaper and placed him on a junk heap by the railroad” (TBE 103). What is striking is the fact that Cholly‟s mother does not even give him a name. It is his Aunt Jimmy who brings him up and takes care of him. He is rejected by his biological parents. He has never experienced a loving family. A horrible situation occurs in Cholly‟s youth. Cholly is caught by two white hunters when having sexual intercourse with Darlene. The white hunters flash a flashlight in his face and giggle at him. He is forced to continue as they watch. This built up a lot of anger and hatred in Cholly‟s mind. As the narrator says: “They were big, white, armed man. He was small, black, helpless. His subconscious knew what his conscious mind did not guess – that hating [the white hunters] would have consumed him, burned him up like a piece of soft coal, leaving only flakes of ash and a question mark of smoke. He was, in time, to discover that hatred of white men – but not now” (TBE 118). This moment changes Cholly‟s attitudes to his beloved Darlene. He feels humiliated, mad and angry and that is why he transfers this anger to Darlene rather than the hunters: “He hated the one who had created the situation, the one who bore witness to his failure, his impotence” (TBE 118). This horrible act changes him into a man who has trouble expressing his emotions. After this incident Cholly is afraid of Darlene becoming pregnant. He feels that the only person who is able to understand his fear is his real father, since his father got Cholly‟s mother pregnant and abandoned her. Cholly decides to find his real father, Samson Fuller. After walking long hours, he finally finds his

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father playing craps in an alley. Cholly goes up and wants to indroduce himself. At this moment Cholly realizes that he does not know his mother‟s name: “No. Sir, I‟m…” (TBE 122). Cholly does not know who he belongs to. As Samson says: “Tell that bitch she get her money. Now get the fuck outta my face” (TBE 123). Samson rejects him and from this time on Cholly is forced to take care of himself. Cholly‟s rage and failure to protect Darlene from the hunters‟ flashlighst affects his future relationship with women. Pauline‟s need for being beautiful and thus loved is obvious when as a young girl she possesses “a crooked, archless foot that flopped when she walked” (TBE 86). She sees her maimed foot as the reason why she can never find a man who will love her. She falls in love with Cholly because he is the first man to pay her any attention. For the first time Pauline “felt that her bad foot was an asset” (TBE 90). But only for a short time. After having had a deeply humiliating encounter with the hunters Cholly is insecure about his manhood. As the narrator comments: “Even a half-remembrance of this episode, along with myriad other humiliations, defeats, and emasculations, could stir him into flights of depravity […]” (TBE 31-32). As Cholly at first directed his frustration and anger towards Darlene, he does the same later when he is at home against Pauline and Pecola. Once Cholly, being extremely drunk, comes home and sees Pecola washing dishes in the kitchen. While he is watching, he recollects the images of young Pauline and the love he felt for her. The silhouette of young Pauline coincides with Pecola, for “[Pecola‟s] timid, tucked-in look of the scratching toe – was what Pauline was doing the first time he saw her in Kentucky” (TBE 128-29). Not knowing how to deal with this situation, Cholly “[…] with revulsion, guilt, pity, then love” (TBE 127) rapes her. He sees Pecola‟s sad look and this awakes in him his personal failure to protect Darlene. As Walther points out, “the male gaze is connected with sexual desire and objectification of women” (779). Cholly somehow wants to love his daughter but he does not know how. He needs to be someway accepted by his family through love which he would not accept. Cholly‟s isolation,

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unhappy childhood and unsatisfying life are the main causes of his failure: “This incestual act does nothing but bring out more sympathy for the protagonist” (Mellage, par. 16). Cholly had internalized resentment and shame. He lets these feelings out and causes other people to be hurt. I see this as a vicious cycle. His past was full of rejection and he never knew what it would be like to love someone. Cholly thinks he loves Pecola but at the same time he rejects her. He rejected Pauline, but this time he rejects his daughter. After the rape, Pecola becomes pregnant and finds the only refuge available to her – madness. Pecola eventually makes her way to Soaphead Church, a West Indian spiritualist and a sort of faith healer. He had never experienced anything like this: “A little black girl who wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes” (TBE 137). Pecola believes that Soaphead Church is able to help her acquire blue eyes. Soaphead Church‟s idea of love is to endow Pecola with the thing which she aks for, but it is not really love. He sees her, like everybody else, as an ugly little black girl. If he could really work miracles, he would change everything around Pecola. She searches him out as a last resort, after a year of praying has not helped. God is not capable of helping her. But Pecola is tricked and she begins to believe that she has now obtained the blue eyes. She invents an imaginary friend to whom she speaks about her new blue eyes. At the beginning of her conversation with her new friend, Pecola is happy and convinced that people are jealous of her blue eyes. That is why people do not look at her when they meet her. This is the first time she sees herself as beautiful. But a reader knows that it is only an illusion. Her blue eyes are imaginary. Later on Pecola loses touch with reality. In her mind she is not content even when she thinks she has become beautiful. Karla Holloway argues that “even this internal dialoguing of Pecola does not bring her solace, because she is afraid the eyes given to her by Soaphead Church are not blue enough” (qtd. in Mellage). Simply having blue eyes is not enough for Pecola. She is obsessed with the idea of being the most beautiful person possible. Pecola starts to wish for

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even bluer eyes. She needs more. She must have the bluest eyes which would bring her love. Such aim brings along great pain. White standards of beauty have an enormous influence on the African American community. The white standards beauty becomes the ideal for almost everybody from Pecola‟s community. They, however, cannot reach this ideal of blond hair, blue eyes and white skin. They are therefore forced to feel inferior. According to Lawrence Halprin, “women of color are judged according to white beauty and therefore they are always considered ugly” (qtd. in Powers). This implies that many blacks are taught to hate themselves. The white standards of beauty become a dangerous trap for Pecola. She is born black and she can never escape it. Her life is dominated by ideas and beliefs regarding white beauty – a thing so superficial and immeasurable. Pecola and her friends are also exposed to this white beauty. Claudia receives a gift for Christmas. It is a big, blue-eyed baby doll. This doll is considered beautiful but Claudia does not think so. Claudia dismembers the baby doll. She tries to rip out her eyes, tear off her head in the effort to learn “what made people look at them and say, “Awwwww,” but not for me” (TBE 15). Pecola admires the Shirley Temple cup and buys Mary Jane‟s candies. She wants to be like them and she realizes she cannot. Claudia hates Shirley Temple and concerns herself how Mr. Bojangles could select Shirley Temple as his dance partner over herself in a famous movie scene. She refuses these white girls because they steal the attention and love that Claudia deserves. The ideal of white standards of beauty has had a terrible impact on the black community. Due to the power of this ideal, Pecola believes that only through blue eyes will she remedy her desperate life and people will love her. Sharon House points out that “One way to get [love] is by loving and caring for yourself” (par. 3). Pecola believes that she cannot be loved because she does not have blue eyes and blond hair. She is ugly because she does not

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look like the ideal of white standard of beauty. Pecola‟s parents, Pauline and Cholly have never experienced love and they transfer their self-hate to Pecola. They incorporate ugliness into her heart and soul. Morrison suggests that “her extreme case of self-hatred comes from a series of rejections, some routine, some exceptional, some monstrous that combine to form the means of Pecola‟s ultimate destruction” (qtd. in Powers). Pecola succumbs to white standards of beauty. She searches for love, trying to become somebody she is not and can never be.

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4. Claudia MacTeer The main narrator in the novel, Claudia MacTeer, a nine-year-old black girl, is a total counterpart to Pecola. She proves that not all the black characters in the novel admire or are in awe of white standards of beauty. At the very beginning of the novel, Claudia clearly shows that she is aware of the danger of adopting these standards by describing herself “as indifferent to both white dolls and Shirley Temple” (qtd. in Sugiharti). Her attitudes towards a white-girl doll, which is given her every Christmas by the adults in her family and “which were supposed to bring me great pleasure, succeeded in doing quite the opposite” (TBE 13). Claudia hates this doll. As a way out, Claudia‟s desire is to destroy this blond white doll: “The dismembering of dolls was not the true horror. The true horrifying thing was the transference of the same impulses to little white girls. The indifference with which I could have axed them was shaken only by my desire to do so. To discover what eluded me: the secret if the magic they weaved on others. What make people look at them and say, „Awwwww‟, but not for me? The eye slide of black women as they approached them on the street, and the possessive gentleness of their touch as they handled them” (TBE 15). As Claudia is younger than Pecola, she can be confused by the things Pecola longs for. This can also be caused by Claudia‟s not having known the social codes yet. Furthermore, Claudia does not understand what is special about the white baby dolls, but what is worse, she starts to want to kill little white girls as well. She is jealous of the attention. She feels the same way about Maureen, the most popular girl in school, who moves to the elementary school in Lorain. Claudia describes her as “high yellow dream child” (TBE 47) and “as rich as the richest of the white girls”(TBE 47). She becomes the star of the school. Claudia does not understand why is Maureen considered beautiful and favourite and she is not. It seems to Claudia that the main reason is Maureen‟s light skin. She has the respect of black and white

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pupils and teachers treat her in a very nice way. As Claudia describes: “when teachers called on her, they smiled encouragingly” (TBE 48). Maureen is lauded by teachers and Claudia is not. Claudia and her sister are irritated and at the same time fascinated by her. It is evident from Claudia‟s words that Maureen‟s schoolmates are blindly enslaved by Maureen‟s white beauty: “Black boys didn‟t trip her in the halls, white boys didn‟t stone her, white girls didn‟t suck their teeth when she was assigned to be their work partners, black girls stepped aside when she wanted to use the sink in the girls‟ toilet” (TBE 48). These Maureen‟s schoolmates, especially black ones, have been thoroughly taught to revere everything that is white. The fact which is quite confusing here is Maureen‟s skin colour. Claudia‟s description of Maureen‟s skin and eyes offers two important features – yellow skin and “sloe green eyes” (TBE 48). Obviously from the description above, Maureen is not even white. From that example it can be revealed that Claudia, Frieda, Pecola and other children are in awe of someone who is not white. Moreover, Maureen has a dog tooth and she used to have six fingers on each hand. Claudia calls her “six-finger-dog-tooth-meringue-pie” (TBE 48). In short, Maureen is not beautiful at all. She has yellow skin, dark and slanted green eyes and a dog tooth visible when she smiles. Nevertheless, being much lighter than her black schoolmates, she is envied by most of them. Maureen‟s lighter skin gives her more admiration, more attention and more respect. As for Claudia, she does not strongly admire Maureen. Claudia gets on with her in a much similar way that she gets on with the white baby doll and even starts to call her “Meringue Pie” (TBE 48). Another evidence of Claudia‟s hate for white girls can be recognized at the beginning of opening section „Autumn‟, where she sees her next-door friend Rosemary Villanucci who is sitting in her father‟s Buick “eating bread and butter” (TBE 5). This coffee house can be understood as something that Rosemary likes to show off. In other words, Rosemary boasts that she has more than Claudia. She tells Claudia and Frieda that they cannot come in. She is

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arrogant and very much aware of her social status. Claudia narrates: “We stare at her, wanting her bread, but more than that wanting to poke the arrogance out of her eyes...When she comes out of the car we will beat her up, make red marks on her white skin” (TBE 12). This clearly shows Claudia‟s anger and jealousy that is difficult to resist but is not as fatal as for Pecola. Claudia can feel power Rosemary has over her. Claudia‟s feelings can lead from the fact that Rosemary is white and her family runs coffee house below the MacTeers‟ apartment. These attributes give rise to the hostility between Claudia and Rosemary. Shu-hui Liu asserts that “such hostility between Rosemary and the Macteers girls characterizes the racial and economical conflicts shared among the black children” (15). Another incident involving Rosemary Villanucci occurs when she discovers that Pecola has her first menstruation period while she is standing at the Breedlove‟s house. Claudia and Frieda wants to help her. Rosemary misunderstands it for something filthy and she immediately runs and reports it to Claudia‟s mother: “Mrs. MacTeer, Mrs. MacTeer, Frieda and Claudia are out playing nasty” (TBE 21). Rosemary is hateful towards Claudia and makes fun of her. Although the girls do not play nasty, Mrs. MacTeer does not understand the situation and punishes them first until Frieda tells her what really happens. As far as Claudia‟s family is concerned, her mother and her father are loving and careful parents. They teach their daughters how to be strong and how love themselves. In the novel, the bond between Claudia and her mother is quite strong. However, the cruel condition of life, marked by poverty and a bitter climate, shapes Mrs. MacTeer‟s sometimes rough and cruel treatment of Claudia and her sister Frieda. Michael Bennett and Vanessa D. Dickerson state that “these women never speak of their love; nonetheless, it does not mean the love is not present” (214). Despite her painful rebuffs and unjust punishment of her children, Mrs. MacTeer is capable of singing, laughing and an abiding love. This can be supported in opening scene of the novel when Claudia is vomiting in her bed. She is treated with a mixture

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of anger and concern. As she describes: “My mother‟s anger humiliates me, her words chafe my cheeks, and I am crying. I do not know that she is not angry at me, but my sickness” (TBE 7). Mrs. MacTeer complains of cleaning Claudia‟s vomit, but at the same time is nursing her. Nevertheless, even though the naive Claudia is frustrated by her mother‟s harsh caring, she eventually understands as Collin argues that “black daughters raised by mothers grappling with hostile environments have to come to terms with their feelings about the difference between the idealized versions of maternal love extant in popular culture and the strict and often troubled mothers in their lives. For a daughter, growing up means developing a better understanding that even though she may desire more affection and greater freedom, her mother‟s physical care and protection are acts of maternal love” (qtd. in Liu). Claudia remembers that “in the night, when my coughing was dry and tough, feet padded into the room, hands repinned the flannel, readjusted the qiult, and rested a moment on my forehead” (TBE 7). In fact, Mrs. MacTeer is very careful and loving mother. Later Claudia discovers that her mother‟s anger is not pointed at her but at the world full of poverty which they live in. This world is ruled by the standards of white beauty and Mrs. MacTeer finds it very difficult to raise her children in the world like that. She tries to protect her children. Unlike Pecola, Claudia can feel her mother‟s love. As she recalls: “love, thick and dark as Alaga syrup, eased up into that cracked window. I could smell it―taste it―sweet, musty, with an edge of wintergreen in its base―everywhere in that house” (TBE 7). This shows Claudia‟s memory of her caring mother. When Claudia thinks of autumn, she thinks of “somebody with hands who does not want me to die” (TBE 7). In my opinion, Claudia experiences here a very crucial bond with her mother that is important for her future perception of herself. She feels love from her mother and this develops Claudia‟s sense of self-esteem.

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As for beauty, Claudia‟s mother Mrs. MacTeer is relatively disunited about it. There is no even physical description of either Claudia or her throughout the novel. It reveals that the MacTeer women are not interested in these white standards of beauty. As seen from the novel, Mrs. MacTeer character is one of stable, and she transfers this ability to Claudia. She has no problem complaining when she feels wronged and this gives her the ability to vent her frustrations and then to sing: “having told everybody and everything off, she would burst into song and sing the rest of the day” (TBE 16). Mrs. MacTeer is shown here as a little bit of rebelious against the society which dictates her to follow some principles. This gives Claudia ability to think independently and strength to some extent to rebel against the black community‟s idealization of white standards of beauty. As mentioned above, there are no concrete descriptions of the MacTeer females, but there is a quite long description concerning Claudia‟s severe hatred towards white dolls and Shirley Temple. To Claudia, it seems as if “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 child treasured” (TBE 14). However, Claudia rejects this by saying: “I could not love it. But I could examine it to see what it was that all the world said was lovable. Break off the tiny fingers, bend the flat feet, loosen the hair, and twist the head around” (TBE 14). At first Claudia refuses to accept the standards of white beauty which resides in the baby doll until she understands how it is produced. Jill Matus studies this and concludes that “Claudia reacts in angry way rather than a defeated one” (qtd. in Liu). Moreover, unlike most of many characters in the novel, Claudia hates consumerism. She prefers connections to human being to plastic dolls. And what Claudia prefers to get on Christmas Day is not a plastic white baby doll, but “to sit on the low stool in Big Mama‟s kitchen with my lap full of lilacs and listen to Big Papa play his violin for me alone” (TBE 15). In essence, she refuses and hates anything closely linked within consumer society dictating to love white baby dolls

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and she starves to have sincere relationship with her friends and family. Even though Claudia hates receiving white baby dolls as a Christmas gift, she exactly knows what is expected of her. As she explains: “I learned quickly, however, what I was expected do with the doll: rock it, fabricate storied situations around it, even sleep with it” (TBE 13). Taken into consideration, white baby dolls is the only Christmas present the MacTeer girls receive. Except the message of white standards of beauty, there is perhaps more important one: that the dolls are more precious than their owners, because the dolls are white and pretty. Claudia declares that the recipients of the dolls have to prove to their parents that they are even worthy of owning them. According to Alyce R. Baker “the parents‟ demand that children prove their worthiness is, of course, proof of how pervasive Western norms have infiltrated the black community, demonstrating eroding communal values. The act of passing down self-loathing from generation to generation erodes communal values, because a mother‟s role in the black community is to teach love and self-acceptance to her children” (38). Audre Lorde also confirms “that unfortunately, like their parents, the doll owners will learn to hate themselves” (qtd. in Baker). Lorde further comments that “black people have to love themselves before they can love others” (qtd. in Baker). Because the givers of the dolls do not love themselves, they pass this feeling onto their children and, perhaps unknowingly, encourage negating blackness through the use of the dolls. Even girls like Claudia, who are critical, will learn to worship Shirley Temple even if she knows it is “adjustment without improvement and adjustement made by black people remains an illusion” (Baker 40). From Cheng‟s point of view, “Claudia learns to love Shirley Temple primarily as a response to the call of her mother, as a perverse form of maternal connection” (200). Claudia later starts to love Shirley Temple: “I learned to worship her, just as I learned to delight in cleanliness” (TBE 16). In my opinion, she starts to love her for two reasons. First, by learning to love little white girls Claudia can be

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like her mother. Second, learning to love this beautiful icon can also suggests that beauty is something „learned‟ which is not inherent or even natural. Claudia, as a child, has never experienced being put outdoors or watched violent fights between her mother and father like Pecola has. Claudia does not live in a nasty storefront and her mother is not absent for much of the day, working as a servant. Claudia has been brought up in a family where love and possibility to combat negative influences from the outside society seem to be everyday. Pecola unfortunetaly has not. Therefore, because she has developed in a less threatening environment than Pecola, Claudia, while still a young girl, has more courage, is more stable and thus is stronger in the process of protest against the society where the white standards of beauty are dominant. Claudia, in particular, wants Pecola‟s child to thrive. No one in the town wants the baby to live, because it is black, and no one wants to take care of this ugly baby, especially when it was a result of such horrible sin. As Claudia says: “I thought about the baby that everyone wanted dead, and saw it very clearly. It was in a dark, wet place, its head covered with great O‟s of wool, the black face holding, like nickels, two clean black eyes, the fared nose, kissing-thick lips, and the living breathing silk of black skin. No synthetic yellow bangs suspended over marble blue eyes, no pinched nose and bowline mouth. More strongly than my fondness for Pecola, I felt a need for someone to want the black baby to live-just to counteract the universal love of white baby dolls, Shirley Temple and Maureen Peals” (TBE 149). These Claudia‟s words proves that she has not been persuaded yet to believe in the white standards of beauty. She wants Pecola‟s baby to live to counteract all the love of white baby dolls. She demonstrates that she is aware of what is considered beautiful and loved in society. As for movies and movie stars, they influence Claudia as well. Movies, actors and actresses have had major influence over society. Movie stars have embodied what is

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considered beautiful. As Walther declares: “The movies are the primary vehicle for transmitting these images for public consumption” (776). At the beginning of the novel, Mr. Henry visits MacTeer‟s house and meets Claudia and her sister. Immediately after meeting them, he starts the conversation with them saying: “Hello there. You must be Greta Garbo, and you must be Ginger Rogers” (TBE 10). By referring to these two famous movie stars of the time, who both are white, on one hand Mr. Henry gives compliment to Claudia and Frieda being beautiful, but on the other hand he shows that even men (not only women) are influenced by white standards of beauty. Early in the novel, Claudia and her sister are concerned that the marigold seeds they planted that spring never sprouted. Claudia concludes the narrative by commenting on unyielding soil: “This soil is bad for certain kinds 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 doesn‟t matter. It‟s too late” (TBE 164). This Claudia‟s reflection shows that she is aware of the fact that white standards dominating in the society – which stands here as „soil‟ Claudia sees as hostile and Pecola – metamorpholically represented in „flower‟ cannot thrive in this environment. Pecola is not able to thrive in this society because the soil is toxic for her. On the contrary, Claudia with her sister are able to thrive because they find beauty within themselves.

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5. Conclusion The main purpose of this thesis was to demonstrate how the white standards of beauty affected and threatened African American women‟s lives. African American women in particular were exposed to these white standards of beauty and when they did not have stable, caring and loving family they were doomed to follow these white standards which were and still are very damaging for all women in general even in the 21st century. Through the main characters of The Bluest Eye, Pecola Breedlove and Claudia MacTeer, Morrison shows the results these white standards of beauty have on these human beings. Each of these heroines has approched to these white standards in a completely different way. To starts with Pecola, she is an extreme example of a total destruction of herself. Physical beauty represented by white standards of beauty becomes the main target of Pecola‟s fanatic pursuit. Pauline, who as a mother has the most important influence on Pecola, is overwhelmed by the influence of white standards of beauty, and transfers this over to her newly born daughter. In the very first moment when Pecola is born, her mother sees her ugly, because she is black. In this period of time, the mother-daughter bond between Pecola and Pauline splits. Pecola does not fit her mother‟s expectations of a cute, nice and white babygirl which she sees in the pictures show. From this moment on, Pecola has been forced to believe in her ugliness. She accepted her mother‟s fact about beauty as the only valid value and started to judge the world around her according to this value. Pauline‟s acceptance of the white standards of beauty makes her unable in caring of her own child. In the course of time, Pauline starts to scorn Pecola: “I used to like to watch her. You know they makes them greedy sounds. Eyes all soft and wet. A cross between a puppy and a dying man. But I knowed she was ugly. Head full of pretty hair, but Lord she was ugly” (TBE 98). This clearly shows Pauline‟s hostile behaviour and disdain to her only daughter.

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When we take into account Pauline‟s job as a servant for a white family, the white standards influenced Pauline to a certain extent. She is attracted by the lives of her white employers, by their white and clean house that is similar to those she admired in the movies. She damns her own family and wants to be stripped of it. She considers her family as a dark and dirty part of her life. In the same way she approaches to her children. Another impact the white standards of beauty have on Pecola is the Mary Jane candy. They get its brand name because the candy is wrapped in a piece of paper with a picture of a little Mary Jane with beautiful blue eyes and white face which impress Pecola so much that she feels so comfortable while watching at them. Moreover, Mary Jane‟s eyes “are petulant, mischievous, simply pretty” (TBE 38) to Pecola. Mary Jane stands here as a provider of definition of beauty for Pecola who undoubtedly accepts it as a fact. For her, the beautiful faces on the candy wrapping papers are the images of the white standards of beauty from which she learns what it means to be beautiful. The same situation occurs when Pecola drinks milk out of the Shirley Temple cup. Not only is she fond of Shirley Temple‟s face depicted on the cup but she is also keen on milk which she takes as a symbol of white beauty. Pecola assumes that drinking milk changes her skin to be whiter and therefore she gets nearer to be beautiful and cute as Shirley Temple. As far as Claudia is concerned, Pecola‟s closest friend and the narrator of the book, she is a total opposite of Pecola. When she is given a white baby-doll for Christmas, she hates it and intentionally destroys it. The main reason of her action is Claudia‟s refusal of the society which admires white, blond-haired and blue-eyed girls. This supports my idea that Claudia breaks the baby-dolls because she is jealous of them than she would understand them as the symbols of white beauty. She does not long for being white and resembles the dolls. This is also evident in her rejection to watch and accept Shirley Temple as an image of white standards of beauty. Thus she cannot see what is so fascinating about drinking milk from

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Shirley Temple cup. However the only thing Claudia desires is love. Mrs. MacTeer, Claudia‟s mother, stands as a counterpart to Pauline Breedlove. Despite beating up and screaming at her children, Mrs. MacTeer is a mother who gives them love and care which is on the other hand expressed in a hard way. This is apparent in the scene when Claudia is sick and she describes how her mother scolds her: “What did you puke on the bed clothes for? Don‟t you have sense enough to hold your head out the bed? Now, look what you did. You think I got time for nothing but washing up your puke?” (TBE 6). Mrs. MacTeer is not angry at Claudia but is anxious about Claudia‟s sickness. This clearly proves that Mrs. MacTeer takes care of her daughter. Considering the question of Pecola‟s and Claudia‟s household, it is obvious that Claudia grows up in a less threatening environment than Pecola. Claudia describes the house as “old, cold and green. At night a kerosene lamp lights one large room. The others are braced in darkness, peopled by roaches and mice” (TBE 5). Contrast to Fishers‟ household where Pauline works, MacTeers‟ is old and poor. Although being not luxurious, it suggests that the MacTeers have a place where they live, meet and eat together. Figuratively speaking, the house is a metaphor for stable and consistent family where family bonds cultivate the personalities of the members, in this case Claudia and Frieda. On the other hand, Pecola‟s father Cholly burns up their house and leave his family outdoors. Pecola does not protest against the society where the white standards of beauty predominate as Claudia does because she does not come from a loving, stable and functional family. Juxtaposing Pecola with her peers, her reactions are reversed ones. Claudia and Frieda hate a lovely white Shirley Temple or their new classmate Maureen Peal while Pecola loves and admires them. By this hate, Claudia and Frieda express that they do not respect the white standards of beauty impose on them by parents, friends, teachers or public: “We felt comfortable in our skins, enjoyed the news that our senses released to us, admired our dirt,

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cultivated our scars, and could not comprehend this unworthiness. […] And all the time we knew Maureen Peal was not the Enemy and not worthy of such intense hatred. The Thing to fear was the Thing that made her beautiful, and not us” (TBE 57). In conclusion, the white standards of beauty have a devastating impact of African American women. Their effort to become something they are not and they can never be is very ruining. The lives of the heroines, which are dominated by white standards of beauty, are damaged and as in many cases described in this thesis there is no way back.

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Cheng, Anne Anlin. “Wounded Beauty: An Explanatory Essay on Race, Feminism, and the Aesthetic Question.” Tulsa Studies in Women‟s Literature 19. 2 (2000): 191-217. 26 Feb. 2011 . Haughton, Neil. “Perception of Beauty in Renaissance Art.” Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology 3. 7 (2004): 229-33. 13 Apr. . House, Elizabeth B. “The „Sweet Life‟ in Toni Morrison‟s Fiction.” American Literature 56. 2 (1984): 181-202. 23 Feb. 2011 . House, Sharon. “The Language of Choices and Personal Needs.” 2006. 9 Feb. 2011 . Klotman, Phyllis R. “Dick-and-Jane and the Shirley Temple Sensibility in The Bluest Eye.” Black American Literature Forum 13. 4 (1979): 123-25. 20 Feb. 2011 . Liu, Shu-hui. “Toni Morrison‟s The Bluest Eye and Sula: Black Communities – Within and Beyond.” 2003. 10 Mar. 2011. . Mellage, Kristin. “The Bluest Eye.” 28 Apr 1998. 7 Jan. 2011 . Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. 1970. London: Vintage, 1994. Powers, Dan. “Portrait of an African American Girl: Mazes of „Beauty‟ in The Bluest

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“The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.” Anti Essays. 21 Apr. 2011 . Walther, Malin LaVon. “Out of Sight: Toni Morrison‟s Revision of Beauty.” Black American Literature Forum 24. 4 (1990): 775-89. 4 Dec. 2006 . Wickert, Matthew. “Exploring W. E. B. Du Bois' Concept of Double Consciousness.” 17 Apr. 2011 < http://www.associatedcontent.com>. Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women. 1991. The Anchor Books. 1992.

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