I found it very difficult to pinpoint just one topic in the first two sections of The Bluest Eye that sparked an interest in me. I’ve chosen some general thoughts I had while reading the book.
1. I’m glad my mom is a nice lady.
None of these mothers seem to really love their kids! Cecelia and Frieda’s mother blames them for everything, even getting sick. She is livid when Cecelia vomits, saying “You think I’ve got time for nothing but washing up your puke?” She gets angry when they’ve drank too much milk; she gets angry for just about everything the children do. Pecola’s mother takes the absence of affection a step further when she requires her children to call her “Mrs. Breedlove”. Never once do I recall a mother telling her child she loves them. This may be just an element of the African American community at the time, but it sure seems insensitive to me.
2. The Breedloves are always in the public’s eye. They also live in a storefront.
As a self-proclaimed ugly family, the Breedloves are judged constantly by people in the town. With their ugliness, they feel they are always being scrutinized for their looks, and Pecola just wants to be beautiful with big, blue eyes. They are also poor, which sends them down another notch in the social ladder. The only place they could afford to live was an abandoned store, with a huge window which faces a street. Store windows are used to display things, meant to be peered into by consumers. The irony of their living there is that they are always on “display”; people try to look into their private affairs. To me, this was the biggest element of symbolism in the entire book.
3. The rite of passage that comes with a period
In many societies, the start of menstruation is a huge life step. In some countries and tribes, there are special rituals for it. I thought it was very interesting that the girls saw such a difference in Pecola from the instant she started her period. “We were full of awe and respect for Pecola. Lying next to a real person who was really ministratin’ was somehow sacred,” Cecelia says. I suppose there really was a difference in their friend to them; all they knew of periods was that Pecola could now have a baby, which was an adult thing to do. I was not surprised that these pubescent-age girls knew nothing of menstruation, though. Obviously, their mother was not likely to sit them down and have a chat about it.
4. The prostitutes seem like the only nice adults in the entire city.
Some more irony is found in the prostitutes. They are poor, live in a bad side of town, and are “ruined.” They are the only ones who show Pecola any respect or kindness, though. I think these characters were added to teach a bit of acceptance. Through the story of the Breedloves, we see the ugly side of a poor family. Through their upstairs neighbor girls, however, we see friendship. They are independent and are just fine with their choices. I think they are very good role models for Pecola to have because they too are looked down upon in society but learn to overcome it in confidence.
Overall, the two sections brought up many points of the life of the poor minorities during the mid-1900s. Not knowing much from that point of view, it was really an eye-opener. I hate to believe that people actually treated each other in the ways the adults do with the children, but I suppose it is an ugly truth that came with the events of the time period.
I'm really glad that you chose to highlight sections instead of one particular instance in the book. In doing this it helps showcase what you thought was important.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the adults aren't always the most loving of people but I disagree that they're always bad. I wrote my blog on Claudia's mother and the 'throw up scene'. I do believe that she loves her daughters, perhaps just not in the most conventional of ways.
I too find it sad that the prostitutes were the nicest people but isn't it almost a play on situation. Prostitutes are supposed to be 'nice' to everybody.
Going off of Dana's point, I don't think the fraught relationship between mothers and children are supposed to imply that they do not love their own children but instead reflects the impact of beauty standards upon black women and shows how beauty standards influence other areas of life.
ReplyDeleteMorrisons black mothers have been taught to think of themselves as ugly and they internalize their ugliness into a form of self hatred. Children can be seen as an extension of the self and therefore mothers are taught to not only view themselves as ugly but their children as well and this self hatred plays out in a mothers initial reaction to reprimand her child. Black women are also at the bottom of the racial/gender hierarchy, this means that the only space black women don't have to perform and conform to others is in the home with their children. Mothers only have power over their children. All of the tensions from other realms are released on the children and children are taught to be submissive. I think Morrison is trying to show how destructive beauty standards are as seen by how they are reenforced within black communities and by black communities. Self hatred is cyclical within the black community because it is taught by mothers to children.
I wanted to make a comment from your first remark Kim. I think this novel is allowing us to view motherhood more as an institution; that is in its expected naturality of love, affection and nurture. We're actually able to see how all of these things, whether absent or present, really affect the lifestyles of children not only in how they are able to form affectionate relationships with their mothers, but more so how the insensitivity from their mothers shapes their perspectives as children. Having read some of Toni Morrison's other novels,I've noticed that she uses motherhood as a vessel to draw on greater topics regarding women of color. I would argue that this is a common method of hers which I appreciate because it confronts the necessity of erotic love that a mother and her child "should" have. It questions its purpose by showing the affect of its absence.
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