Race and Gender in Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye" (PDF)

Examination Thesis from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, University of Koblenz-Landau (Anglistik), language: English, abstract: Throughout history, the highly contested concepts of race and gender have adversely shaped the lives of millions of people. In the United States it is most notably Native Africans and African Americans who have been victimized on the grounds of their skin color. Women of African descent have suffered a double jeopardy due to the intersection of race and gender. For a great many of African Americans, men and women alike, literature has become an "important vehicle to represent the social context, to expose inequality, racism and social injustice." In The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison explores the issue of African American female identity. The female Bildungsroman scrutinizes the problem of growing up black and female in a society which equates beauty with blue-eyed whiteness. Consumer goods, the media, adult approval and a dismissive attitude towards her mislead the protagonist Pecola Breedlove to internalize white beauty standards. With the story of Pecola, Morrison points out how the internalization leads to racial self-loathing and eventually to self-destruction. Nonetheless, the negative tone of The Bluest Eye is in part counteracted through Claudia MacTeer, whose narrative is juxtaposed to Pecola's anti-Bildung and thus turns the novel into a double Bildungsroman with one girl "growing up" and the other one "growing down."

The following thesis will focus on the issues of race and gender in The Bluest Eye. The topic can be considered of particular relevance as it addresses a theme which remained unexamined until the 1970s, a theme which many have not wanted to know about and which others have been in denial about. Morrison, though, faces the truth about the intersection of race and gender by exploring in her novel how racism and sexism function, as well as the devastating consequences that can occur. Her debut further underlines that the search for culprits is complicated since the perpetrators in the crimes against Pecola are often victims themselves.
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