The Bluest Eye
Chenxi Wang
Professor Gail
Introduction to Literature
November 6th, 2012
Sisterhood in The Bluest Eye
I’m writing about love or it’s absence. —Toni Morrison The loneliest woman in the world is a woman without close woman-friend. —Toni Morrison
From the quotations above, I’d like to choose two words, “love” and “woman-friend”, to reveal the focus of Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye, that is, the representation of sisterhood. In The Bluest Eye, personally, sisterly love is represented as a “voice” to speak what is unspeakable. In other words, a sister gives words to another sister who is the ultimate “other” and who is silenced and damned by her unspeakable experience in the white patriarchal world. Pecola, the heroine in The Bluest Eye suffers what Philomela does, for she is raped by her own father. Moreover, she suffers from emotional rape from her mother. Pecola’s father Cholly Breedlove has a traumatic childhood when he is abandoned by his parents and his is forced to perform sexually for two white hunters. Then, Cholly regards his black identity as inferior and stigmatized because of the disgraceful exposure of himself as weak. When Cholly becomes an adult, even a father, he still negates himself and transfer his own shame to his daughter. Cholly even becomes the perpetrator of rape on his own daughter. In fact, such sexual violation is common in the African-American world; because of the grave oppression from the White, the Black male transfers it to the Black female, even if she is closed to him. As a black male in a society that values only whiteness, Cholly believes that he is useless and powerless, so Pecola, his daughter, becomes the only person he can dominate to assert himself. By committing such violent incest, Cholly thinks he has gained power in his otherwise dismal world but he does not realize that he has violated the sacred values of family life and even destroyed his own daughter’s childhood. What’s
Professor Gail
Introduction to Literature
November 6th, 2012
Sisterhood in The Bluest Eye
I’m writing about love or it’s absence. —Toni Morrison The loneliest woman in the world is a woman without close woman-friend. —Toni Morrison
From the quotations above, I’d like to choose two words, “love” and “woman-friend”, to reveal the focus of Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye, that is, the representation of sisterhood. In The Bluest Eye, personally, sisterly love is represented as a “voice” to speak what is unspeakable. In other words, a sister gives words to another sister who is the ultimate “other” and who is silenced and damned by her unspeakable experience in the white patriarchal world. Pecola, the heroine in The Bluest Eye suffers what Philomela does, for she is raped by her own father. Moreover, she suffers from emotional rape from her mother. Pecola’s father Cholly Breedlove has a traumatic childhood when he is abandoned by his parents and his is forced to perform sexually for two white hunters. Then, Cholly regards his black identity as inferior and stigmatized because of the disgraceful exposure of himself as weak. When Cholly becomes an adult, even a father, he still negates himself and transfer his own shame to his daughter. Cholly even becomes the perpetrator of rape on his own daughter. In fact, such sexual violation is common in the African-American world; because of the grave oppression from the White, the Black male transfers it to the Black female, even if she is closed to him. As a black male in a society that values only whiteness, Cholly believes that he is useless and powerless, so Pecola, his daughter, becomes the only person he can dominate to assert himself. By committing such violent incest, Cholly thinks he has gained power in his otherwise dismal world but he does not realize that he has violated the sacred values of family life and even destroyed his own daughter’s childhood. What’s