The person that suffers the most from the white beauty standards is Pecola. Pecola wants blue eyes not because it conforms to white beauty standards but because she wants to view different sights and pictures to escape reality. To Pecola, the color of one’s skin and eyes do influence the way one is treated. Pecola is beautiful because she is human, but this beauty is invisible to the community who has identified beauty with whiteness. She gives others beauty because what other people assume about her "ugliness" makes them feel beautiful. Pecolas gift of beauty is ironic, because she gives people beauty because they think she is ugly, not because they perceive her true beauty as a human being. Pecola connects beauty with being loved and believes that if she possesses blue eyes, the cruelty in her life will be replaced by affection and respect. Pecola believes that the cruelty she witnesses and experiences is connected to how she is seen. If she had beautiful blue eyes Pecola imagines that people would not want to do mean things in front of her or to her. Pecola and her family are mistreated because they are black. By wishing for blue eyes rather than lighter skin. Pecola indicates that she wishes to see things differently as much as she wishes to be seen differently. But Pecola can only receive this wish by getting blinded by Mr. Soaphead. Pecola is then able to see herself as beautiful, but only at the cost of her ability to see accurately both herself and the world around her.
You May Also Find These Documents Helpful
-
1. The history of the Breedloves' home is that it use to be a store. The Breedlove's lived in a store front. It is a very unattractive building within the community. "...pedestrians, who are residents of the neighborhood, simply look away when they pass it."(Morrison 33). That statement shows me that no one cared about this abandoned store. Before the store was abandoned it was a pizza parlor, a real estate office, and a gypsies base of operations. I believe that no one remembers the Breedlove's living in the store because no one ever took notice of the store also the Breedlove's were not active with in the community to be noticed by anyone. The book states that the Breedlove's did not make a wave in the mayor's office.…
- 260 Words
- 2 Pages
Satisfactory Essays -
values abolished the poor Breedlove parents who fail to shelter their children, Pecola and Sammy,…
- 155 Words
- 1 Page
Good Essays -
The characters are repeatedly being subjected to images of whiteness offered through movies, books, magazines, toys, and of course advertisements. Early into the story, Pecola gushes over Shirley Temple’s beauty, and later on Mrs. Breedlove spends her days at the movies admiring the white actresses, wishing she could be in their place. The association between beauty and whiteness pushes the idea of beauty beyond the body’s exterior, making it a signifier of one’s value and worth. Many characters in the book believe their beauty means who they are in society, community, and…
- 1060 Words
- 5 Pages
Better Essays -
“I had never really thought of them as white before. Now all of a sudden they were white, and their whiteness made them better than me.”2 Essie-Mae also realized at this point that whites had nicer and better things, everything was better for someone who was white. Her confusion continued to increase as she questioned the racial differences. She didn’t understand how looks alone did not make someone white, as was with her white skinned “black” relatives. “If it wasn’t the straight hair and the white skin that made you white, then what was it?”3 The racial hierarchy was not only comprised of blacks and whites, which Essie-Mae Moody discovered at a young age. In between white and black were all shades of people, some almost flaunted their white…
- 1283 Words
- 6 Pages
Better Essays -
An analysis of the literary elements imagery, symbolism, and tone/mood in “Barbie Doll”, by Marge Piercy and, “Hanging Fire” by Audre Lorde reveals each character and their struggle with their identity in society.…
- 2721 Words
- 11 Pages
Better Essays -
A main theme in the novel is that Pecola believes traditionally white features such as blue eyes are seen as more beautiful than her own black features and often longs for them, thinking it will make her life easier if she was prettier, and other characters in the book, like…
- 658 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
The Bluest Eye is a complex novel written by Toni Morrison, an African American literary theorist. Morrison evokes a society still plagued by the premise of slavery and the exposes this mode of white inferiority through The Bluest Eye. “Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe”, Morrison endows these last couple of sentences with a lyrical quality that makes the readers truly understand the depth of Cholly’s character and the “freeness” he experiences. Morrison initially introduces Cholly Breedlove as the antagonist, a drunk and very abusive father; any man who would beat his wife, set his house on fire and rape his daughter couldn’t…
- 1214 Words
- 5 Pages
Good Essays -
Beauty standards set by society for black women fuels into their insecurities and drives them towards self-hatred. From the start, Pecola’s community, classmates, teachers and parent’s drill into her head that she is unattractive. Pecola Breedlove comes to admit she is ugly as she starts obsessing over the idea of having the bluest eyes to make her attractive. Pecola full-heartedly believes that blue eyes are a necessity for beauty and if she were to by some means acquire them, all of her problems in life would disappear. “Why, look at pretty-eyed Pecola. We mustn't do bad things in front of those pretty eyes” (46). Pecola assumes blue eyes are the key to gaining admiration from her community and love from her family. While Pecola Breedlove is constantly reminded of everything she is: ugly, poor, and black; her innocence is also stolen from her as she is figuratively raped by society and literally raped by her father.…
- 972 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
“They lived there because they were poor and black, and they stayed there because they believed they were ugly…Except for the father, Cholly, whose ugliness was behavior, the rest of the family- Mrs. Breedlove, Sammy Breedlove, and Pecola Breedlove- wore their ugliness, put it on, so to speak, although it did not belong to them.” (p.38) This ugliness that did not belong to them was always portraying itself their lives; everywhere they looked among themselves, they saw nothing but hideousness. Societal standards ingrained into their beings from adolescence leads to the whole family's…
- 1004 Words
- 5 Pages
Good Essays -
The Bluest Eye is a novel written by the famous author Toni Morrison. Toni Morrison whoms real name is Chole Anthony Wofford was born in 1931 in Loraihn, Ohio. She was the second of four childern in a black working class family. Morrison grew up in a integrated neighborhood and did not fully realize racial divisions until she was a teenager. She admits that as a child she was the only black and the only one who could read. She always had an interest in literature and even took Latin in high school. She graduated from Lorain High School with honors in 1949. Morrison furthered her education and her strong desire for literature at Howard University. She majored in English and graduated from Howard in 1953. Not yet satisfied with her education Morrison decided to also attend Cornell University. She taught English at both Howard and Texas Southern University. After returning to Howard to teach English Morrison met her future husband Harold Morrison. They got married in 1958 and had their first son in 1961. Morrison first novel was The Bluest Eye which was published in 1970. It was about a young African female who believes her life would be perfect if she had blue eyes. Her next novel was Sula which was published in 1973 and explores the good and evil through the friendship of two women who grew up together. Sula was nominated for the American Book Award. Her next work Song of Solomon became the first work by an African American author to be a featured selection in the book of the month club since Native Son by Richard Wright. Other works include Tar Baby, Beloved, Jazz, Paradise, Love and many others. Morrison has won many famous awards during her writing carrer. Her novel Beloved won New York State Governor's Arts National Book Award nomination and National Book Critics Circle Award nomination. Morrison biggest accomplishment though has to ber her Nobel Prize for Literature in 19993. She became the eighth woman and the first African-American to win the prize. She is…
- 353 Words
- 2 Pages
Satisfactory Essays -
Maud Martha realized that she was not the cherished one because of her darker skin color at an very early age, thus “to be cherished was the dearest wish of the heart of Maud Martha Brown”.( Brooks 1650) In her own family, her beloved father preferred her sister Helen because Helen was lighter; At school her schoolmates also liked Helen and ignored her; When she grew into womanhood and got married, her husband Paul also showed a partiality to lighter women. Martha’s father, classmates and husband acted this way because as black people they themselves were treated as inferior creatures all the time by white Americans. Under this white gaze, the value that the black was inferior was accepted and internalized by the gazed over time. This internalizing also happened to Martha as she struggled all the way to build up her subjectivity. That accounts for her inferiority about her appearance and jealous of Helen her prettier. When a white schoolmate Charles came to visit Martha, she should feel “a sort of gratitude.”…
- 883 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
She notices peoples' skin color and makes immediate judgements of them. For instance, when she sees the little negro boy, she suggests that his family can't afford pants for him. Not only does she notice a person's race, but their style of dress as well. It is evident that she is concerned with clothing because of how she dresses for the trip. She dresses up so that if she should be killed in an accident, passersby would know she was a…
- 440 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
In The Bluest Eye, the main character Pecola is a young girl, who lives in Lorain, Ohio during the 1940s. She grows up in a very abusive household, where she is verbally, physically and sexually abused by her mother and father. Specifically, her father rapes her and impregnates her. Pecola is also constantly ridiculed by her community and her family for being ugly. This same community has established certain standards for beauty. In order to be considered beautiful, an individual had to conform to the standards set forth by popular icons of the time period like Shirley Temple and Ginger Rogers. It was most desirable to have white skin, blond hair and blue eyes. Pecola did not fit this ideal, so she desperately prayed for blue eyes, in the hope that she could become beautiful and be accepted by society. Unfortunately, Pecola was unable to acquire blue eyes. True to her human nature, Pecola tried to improve her life but failed.…
- 935 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
To have value is to be important, useful, and worth something. The way society and alienates Pecola reveals that they hold no value for her. She has been told her whole life that she is ugly, her own mother even said, “But I knowed she was ugly. Head full of pretty hair, but Lord she was ugly” (126). Pecola is alienated from everyone because she is “ugly”. She has been called ugly so much that she now believes she is. If society held any value for Pecola they would not call her ugly; they would boost her up, not bring her down. The black community has been alienated from the whites and has come to believe that whites are superior to them. The Black community idolizes the white community and they believe that the wealthier someone is, the closer to white they are. The black community, trying to be more “white”, then turns around and alienates Pecola because she is the lowest black there is. The Black community views her as less because she is what they call “ugly”. She is “ugly” because of everything that has gone on in her life, and as the novel progresses so does her “ugliness”, along with her alienation from society.…
- 854 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
Although Claudia and Frieda are embarrassed and hurt for Pecola, their sorrow is intensified by the fact that none of the adults seem to share the same feelings of grief and their hopefulness tries to heal their disjointed society. In the passage Claudia begins to describe how she can see the baby, the living human that everyone else wanted dead. The baby that is still in the womb, she pictures the baby, in a dark place this could symbolize death of the baby later. She paints a picture for the reader saying that the baby’s hair like great O’s of wool as in sheep leading us to think that the baby might be a Jesus figure. She describes the baby’s eyes as clean, pure because it hasn’t yet seen the evil of the world. The flared nose, as if the baby is mad or out of breathe again symbolizes death. She says kissing-thick lips, shining a light on the more sexual side making it seem like thats all your lips should be used for. She concludes by saying “the living, breathing silk of black skin”, to express that this baby is living, it is a human, it is taking a breath just like everyone else. Silk is an expensive fabric, something of worth just like this baby’s life. “No synthetic yellow bangs suspended over marble-blue eyes, no pinched nose and bowline mouth.” Claudia goes on to describe the baby as a doll, saying that they are nothing alike, dolls are fake in fact worse they are “synthetic”, and they are far from perfect, they have pinched noses, pinched towards the sky like a snooty white girl. But not like this baby, Claudia felt a yearning, a burning for someone to care for this baby to love it and want it to live. “Just to counteract the universal love of white baby dolls,” she wanted this baby to come into the world to change it, to change how the world viewed black babies, to “counteract” set off the balance, of the whole universe meaning everybody and the love it had for a doll rather…
- 1246 Words
- 3 Pages
Better Essays