The Bluest Eye

Introduction 

The Bluest Eye, debut novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison, published in 1970. Set in Morrison’s hometown of Lorain, Ohio, in 1940–41, the novel tells the tragic story of Pecola Breedlove, an African American girl from an abusive home. Eleven-year-old Pecola equates beauty and social acceptance with whiteness; she therefore longs to have “the bluest eye.” Although largely ignored upon publication, The Bluest Eye is now considered an American classic and an essential account of the African American experience after the Great Depression.

Structure

The Bluest Eye is divided into four sections, each of which is named for a different season. (The novel begins with “Autumn” and ends with “Summer.”) The four sections are further divided into chapters. Most of the chapter titles are taken from the simulated text of a Dick and Jane reader. Three versions of the simulated text appear at the beginning of the novel. The first version is clear and grammatically correct; it tells a short story about “Mother, Father, Dick, and Jane,” focusing in particular on Jane, who seeks a playmate. The second version repeats the message of the first, but without proper punctuation or capitalization. The third version lacks punctuation, capitalization, and spaces between words. It reads:

The three versions symbolize the different lifestyles explored in the novel. The first is that of white families like the Fishers; the second is that of the well-adjusted MacTeer children, Claudia and Frieda, who live in an “old, cold, and green” house; and the distorted third is that of the Breedloves. Morrison’s references to Dick and Jane—an illustrated series of books about a white middle-class family, often used to teach children to read in the 1940s—help contextualize the novel. They also comment on the incompatibility of those “barren white-family primer[s]” (as Morrison called them) with the experiences of Black families.

Summary

Pecola’s story is told through the eyes of multiple narrators. The main narrator is Claudia MacTeer, a childhood friend with whom Pecola once lived. Claudia narrates from two different perspectives: the adult Claudia, who reflects on the events of 1940–41, and the nine-year-old Claudia, who observes the events as they happen.

In the first section of the novel (“Autumn”), nine-year-old Claudia introduces Pecola and explains why she is living with the MacTeers. Claudia tells the reader what her mother, Mrs. MacTeer, told her: Pecola is a “case…a girl who had no place to go.” The Breedloves are currently “outdoors,” or homeless, because Pecola’s father, Cholly, burned the family house down. The county placed Pecola with the MacTeer family until “they could decide what to do, or, more precisely, until the [Breedlove] family was reunited.”

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Despite the tragic circumstances of their friendship, Claudia and her 11-year-old sister, Frieda, enjoy playing with Pecola. Frieda and Pecola bond over their shared love of Shirley Temple, a famous American child star known for her blonde curls, babyish singing, and tap-dancing with Bill (“Bojangles”) Robinson. Claudia, however, “couldn’t join them in their adoration because [she] hated Shirley.” In fact, she hated “all the Shirley Temples of the world.” The adult Claudia recalls being given a blue-eyed baby doll for Christmas:

From the clucking sounds of adults I knew that the doll represented what they thought was my fondest wish...all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured. “Here,” they said, “this is beautiful, and if you are on this day ‘worthy’ you may have it.”

Claudia remembers dismembering the doll “to see of what it was made, to discover the dearness, to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped me, but apparently only me.” Finding nothing special at its core, Claudia discarded the doll and continued on her path of destruction, her hatred of little white girls unabated.

The second section (“Winter”) consists of two short vignettes. The first of these is narrated by Claudia, and in it she documents Pecola’s fascination with a light-skinned Black girl by the name of Maureen Peal. Friendly at first, Maureen ultimately humiliates Pecola and her friends by declaring herself “cute” and Pecola “ugly.” The second vignette, narrated by a third-person omniscient narrator, focuses on Geraldine and Louis Junior, a young mother and son in Lorain, Ohio. Geraldine and Junior’s connection to Pecola is not immediately obvious; she does not appear until the end of the vignette. On a particularly boring afternoon, Junior entices Pecola into his house. After she comes inside, he throws his mother’s beloved cat at her face. Scratched and verging on tears, Pecola attempts to leave. Junior stops her, claiming she is his “prisoner.” Junior then picks up his mother’s cat and begins swinging it around his head. In an effort to save it, Pecola grabs his arm, causing them both to fall to the ground. The cat, released in mid-motion, is thrown full-force at the window. At this point Geraldine appears, and Junior promptly tells her that Pecola has killed the cat. Geraldine calls Pecola a “nasty little black bitch” and orders her to leave.

The third section of the novel (“Spring”) is by far the longest, comprising four vignettes. In the first vignette, Claudia and Frieda talk about how Mr. Henry—a guest staying with the MacTeers—“picked at” Frieda, inappropriately touching her while her parents were outside. After Frieda told her mother, her father “threw our old tricycle at [Mr. Henry’s] head and knocked him off the porch.” Frieda tells Claudia she fears she might be “ruined,” and they set off to find Pecola. In the second and third vignettes, the reader learns about Pecola’s parents, Pauline (Polly) and Cholly Breedlove. According to the omniscient narrator, Polly and Cholly once loved each other. They were married at a relatively young age and migrated together from Kentucky to Lorain. Over the years, their relationship steadily deteriorated. One disappointment followed another, and sustained poverty, ignorance, and fear took steep tolls on their well-being. At the end of the third vignette—just before the events of the first section begin—Cholly drunkenly stumbles into his kitchen, where he finds Pecola washing dishes. Overwhelmed by conflicting feelings of tenderness and rage, Cholly rapes Pecola and leaves her unconscious body on the floor for Polly to find.

The fourth vignette picks up not long after the rape. It begins by delving into the personal history of Soaphead Church, a misanthropic Anglophile and self-proclaimed spiritual healer. Soaphead is a deceptive and conniving man; as the narrator observes, he comes from a long line of similarly ambitious and corrupt West Indians. His latest scheme involves interpreting dreams and performing so-called “miracles” for the Black community in Lorain. When Pecola goes to him asking for blue eyes, Soaphead initially sympathizes with her:

Here was an ugly little girl asking for beauty…A little black girl who wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes. His outrage grew and felt like power. For the first time he honestly wished he could work miracles.

Soaphead forms a plan to trick Pecola. He gives her a piece of raw meat and demands that she give it to his property owner’s dog. If the dog “behaves strangely,” he tells her, her “wish will be granted on the day following this one.” Unbeknownst to Pecola, the meat is poisoned. After the dog eats the meat, gags, and dies, Pecola believes her wish has been granted. Thus begins her sharp descent into madness.

The fourth and final section (“Summer”) takes place after Pecola loses her mind. In the beginning, Claudia and Frieda learn that Pecola has been impregnated by her father. The sisters hope that the baby will not die; they pray for it and even offer a sacrifice (a bicycle) to God. Meanwhile, Pecola converses with an unidentified person—presumably, herself—about her new blue eyes, which she still thinks “aren’t blue enough.” In the final moments of the novel, the adult Claudia tells the reader that Pecola gave birth prematurely and the baby did not survive.

Claudia MacTeer

Claudia is the first-person narrator of the first section in each of the four units. Claudia is nine years old, extremely bright, and comes from a loving family that owns their own house. She is warm-hearted and sensitive, but she is also angered by injustice and instinctively feels threatened by the standards of beauty that glorify Shirley Temple while ignoring black children. As a narrator, she fluctuates between an adult voice and a child's‹ without problems.

Pecola Breedlove

Pecola is twelve years old. Her family lives in a converted storefront. She is considered ugly, and is emotionally and socially awkward. She prays for blue eyes, because she knows from images in movies and on candy wrappers that to have blue eyes is to be loved. She is raped by her father, Cholly, in the spring, and becomes pregnant. Her baby comes too early and dies. Terrified of her parents, she is not free (due to gender and age) to run away from home as Sammy does. Either during the pregnancy or after the miscarriage, Pecola goes mad, manufacturing an imaginary friend who becomes her only conversation partner.

Characters

Frieda MacTeer

Frieda is Claudia's sister, age eleven. Frieda makes important decisions at several places in the novel, and she is the clear leader of the MacTeer sisters. Like her sister, she is sensitive and concerned about Pecola, and is willing to stand up for herself and others. She is the more fearless of the two girls.

Pauline Breedlove

Pauline is the mother of Sammy and Pecola, and Cholly's. She has a lame foot and a missing front tooth. She is harsh and abusive to her children. She lavishes her love on the Fishers, her generous white employers, while her own family falls apart. She and Cholly battle constantly. Although once she longed to have nicer things and romantic love, she settles into surviving through her work and being a martyr by staying with Cholly. She is religious in a vindictive and vengeful way, hoping that the Lord will help her in her war against Cholly.

Cholly Breedlove

Cholly is a violent drunk, an unfaithful husband, and an abusive father. Cholly was humiliated by white hunters when a young boy, and the shame stuck with him. Abandoned by both of his parents, he has no concept of parenting. He rapes Pecola, skipping town when she becomes pregnant.

Mrs. MacTeer

Mrs. MacTeer is the mother of Frieda and Claudia. She is not an indulgent mother, but she is fiercely protective and loving. Her word is law with the two girls; ‹at several points the girls attempt to decide what to do based on literal interpretations of things Mrs. MacTeer has said.

Mr. MacTeer

He is Frieda and Claudia's father. Like his wife, he is a harsh but loving parent.

Sammy Breedlove

Sammy is an unhappy and young teenage boy, constantly in trouble, constantly running away from home for months at a time. Unlike Pecola, he has freedom, as a male, to escape the Breedloves' miserable home life.

Soaphead Church (aka Elihu Whitcomb)

Soaphead is a man of mixed white and black ancestry from the Caribbean. He is the town fortuneteller, in addition to being megalomaniacal pedophile who plays God. His "magic" is the final snap that breaks Pecola's sanity.

Bertha Reese

Bertha is an old, religious woman from whom Soaphead Church rents his room. She is the owner of Bob, the dog that Soaphead Church loathes.

Mr. Henry Washington

Mr. Henry is the middle-aged boarder taken in by the MacTeers near the beginning of the novel. Mr. Henry is charming but is somewhat lecherous. He invites prostitutes under the MacTeer's roof when the MacTeers are gone, and later he makes sexual advances at eleven-year-old Frieda

China, Poland, and Marie ( the Maginot Line)

These are the three prostitutes who live upstairs from Pecola. Pecola seeks refuge in their company when her family is too unbearable. All three women are long past their prime, but fat Marie is the most despised by Mrs. MacTeer and the most feared by Frieda and Claudia. Their names are heavily symbolic, as all three refer to countries where are occupied or facing invasion by fascist armies in 1939.

Themes

Poverty

We first learn of Pecola because her family is “outdoors,” and the county decides to place her in the MacTeer household until her parents can find their feet again. Outdoors, the colloquial term Claudia and her community use for homelessness, “was the real terror of life,” and a threat that “surfaced frequently in those days” (Morrison 10). The Bluest Eye is set in 1941, a few years after the end of the Great Depression; at this time, poverty was a real looming threat for most American families. Being black only compounded the issue, and families like the Breedloves buckled under the strain. Their poverty fuels the fights and arguments between Cholly and Mrs. Breedlove, fights that result in an actual fire the day that Cholly decides to burn their house down. This fire and her family’s poverty do land Pecola onto the paths of Claudia and Frieda, who become her only friends of her age group, but we wonder what Pecola could have been had her family been wealthy, or even just well-off. We see a potential answer in Maureen Peal, whose “high-yellow” skin color, light eyes, and obvious wealth afford her a smooth path through life.

Beauty

Beauty is one of the most powerful forces and themes in The Bluest Eye. When the Breedloves are introduced as a family, we are told that they’ve remained stagnantly poor through the years because they believe they are ugly. Thus begins a two hundred page long treatise on beauty’s pervasive power. For the Breedloves, poverty and ugliness are linked, whereas success and beauty are linked. They’ve reconciled themselves to lives of failure and impoverishment because their outward appearances require it. In this way, beauty becomes a type of currency, and the Breedloves are poor because they don’t possess it.

At the root of Pecola’s personal despair and self-loathing is the idea that because she isn’t beautiful according to societal standards of conventional beauty, she deserves the ridicule, negligence, and violence meted out to her. Rather than hope for society to change, Pecola prays that she will change and one day wake up with blue eyes, an ultimate marker of beauty. Pecola inherits these destructive ideas and beliefs from her mother. As a young woman, Pauline Breedlove often goes to the movies and encounters very distinct images of physical beauty. Beauty is in the white skin, blue eyes, and blonde hair of the actors and actresses on the silver screen. Taking those benchmarks, Pauline makes a scale of beauty, and every face she encounters she assigns to some category on her scale, including her own and her family’s. She then in turn equates physical beauty with virtue and ugliness with sin, resulting in the development of self-contempt. This is the legacy that Pecola inherits.

The ideas about beauty that the Breedloves and other members of Lorain’s black community subscribe to are rooted in the doctrine of colorism, which is discussed in the “Themes” and “A Brief Overview of Colorism” sections of this ClassicNote. The character of Claudia is intended to represent the part of the black community that doesn't “buy into” colorism or hold whiteness up as a beauty ideal. We see this when Claudia refuses to ogle over the Shirley Temple cup with Frieda and Pecola, and her confusion at receiving a blue-eyed and yellow-haired Baby Doll for Christmas. She doesn’t understand why the world around her believes the Baby Doll is something to wish for and treasure. Later on in life, this confusion morphs into a realization of society’s biased and “universal love of white baby dolls, Shirley Temples, and Maureen Peals” (Morrison 145). Claudia begins to wish for someone to say out loud that they want Pecola’s black and incestuous baby to live, just to counteract this overwhelming love of white beauty. Sadly, aside from her and Frieda, no one does, not even Pecola’s own mother. Again, we witness the force of beauty’s power.

Female Sexuality

Female sexuality is explored and displayed in a myriad of ways in The Bluest Eye. The first is the undeveloped and confused sexuality of the young girls, Claudia, Pecola, and Frieda. When Pecola has her first menstruation, she has no idea what’s happening and asks if she’s going to die. This demonstrates that her mother, the first source of information for young girls about their bodies and sexuality, has not talked to her or prepared her for the developments her body will eventually experience. This is juxtaposed with Frieda, who immediately knows what’s happening because her mother did take the time and effort to educate and teach her daughter about her body. Though Mrs. MacTeer does subscribe to the belief that young girls shouldn’t know of sex and sensuality, as evidenced by her rage when Rosemary Villanucci accuses her daughters of “playing nasty,” she does recognize that her daughters need to know about female sex development.

Pecola’s budding sexuality is violently and tragically stunted near the end of the novel when her father rapes her. But she’s not the only female in the novel to have a complicated relationship to her own sexuality. Women like Geraldine, who Morrison highlights in “winter,” regard sexuality and sex clinically, like an uncomfortable doctor’s visit they wish would end. Fearful of passion and funkiness, these women endure sex because it’s one of their duties as a wife, but don’t seek sexual gratification from their husbands. Instead, like Geraldine, they may stumble upon it in unlikely places, like a sanitary napkin or cat that happens to graze against their private areas. These women don’t demonstrate ignorance of their sexuality like the young girls do. Rather, they demonstrate a lack of desire to even learn or explore their sexuality. Their desire for cleanliness and orderliness trumps whatever desire they have for their sexuality.

This is in sharp contrast to the sex workers China, Poland, and Marie (Marginot Line). These women exemplify female sexuality in its rawest form. They are unapologetic in their use of their sexuality and bodies as currencies and a means of making a livelihood for themselves. They don’t lament their loss of innocence, or see sex as something they owe the men in their lives without any thought of their own pleasure or satisfaction. If Geraldine represents one end of the sexuality spectrum, China, Poland, and Marie represent the other, and a woman like Pauline, who did find sexual fulfillment and pleasure with her husband in the early days of their marriage, falls somewhere in the middle.

Violence

Violence takes various forms in the novel. The most obvious form is physical violence, such as the brutal altercations Cholly and Mrs. Breedlove regularly have. Pecola is also a recipient of physical violence, first at the hands of her classmates when they throw rocks at her, and again when her father rapes her. This is a type of sexual violence that she cannot recover from, especially once her mother blames her for the rape and beats her in punishment. A second, less obvious, but more powerful form of violence is the verbal abuse and social ostracizing Pecola receives from her community. This is a pernicious violence that occurs in a series of micro-aggressions, such as no one sitting next to her at school, boys calling her black and accusing her of seeing her father naked, and Geraldine speaking hatefully towards her. Eventually these micro-aggressions swell into an overwhelming tide that Pecola can’t swim against, and when combined with the physical violence she has received from her parents, her mind cracks.

Eyes

Eyes occupy a privileged place and play a critical role in the novel. Pecola of course views blue eyes as a panacea for her problems, and pays close attention to the eyes of everyone she encounters. For example, when looking into Mr. Yacobowski’s blue eyes, she sees his disgust and anger for her reflected in them. With her own eyes, she can’t see herself clearly because she’s so preoccupied by what she believes everyone else sees when they look at her. It becomes a vicious circle—Pecola carries herself in an ugly and awkward way because she believes that’s what people see when they gaze at her, and so that’s what people do see when they look at her. As Morrison attests, Pecola “is not seen by herself until she hallucinates a self,” which happens only once she believes she’s acquired blue eyes. At that point, she needs someone, a self, to marvel at her new beautiful eyes.

Unfortunately for Pecola, her new eyes are merely a symptom of her fragmented mind and undoing. For the other characters of the novel, eyes are a means of seeing and perceiving the world around them. Though characters may see the same things, they perceive them in radically different ways, which testifies to the subjectivity of seeing. For example, when Mrs. MacTeer sees a disheveled and frantic Pecola, she sees a young girl in need of a mother’s comfort and love. However, when Geraldine sees the same thing, she sees a “nasty little black bitch” (Morrison 70). Thus, the trite saying “beauty is in the eyes of the beholder” gets a fresh take in The Bluest Eye.

Colorism and Racial Self-Loathing

The prejudice and treatment that Pecola receives because of her skin color is called "colorism," a sister type of discrimination that has only recently been studied and researched. In colorism, those with lighter skin are given preferential treatment while those with darker skin are often treated harshly. We see this exhibited in the differing treatment Maureen Peal and Pecola receive. Implicit in colorism is love and preference for whiteness, and dislike and rejection of blackness. When Black Americans practice colorism, they display something Morrison calls “racial self-loathing,” or “the damaging internalization of assumptions of immutable inferiority originating in an outside gaze” (Morrison 157). Put simply, Black Americans, like Pecola, her family, Geraldine, and the rest of their community, took the racism meted out by American society and turned it inwards. They began to hate themselves and their blackness because society told them to. The young boys who insult Pecola by chanting “black e mo” at her are a prime example of this, as is Geraldine calling Pecola a “nasty little black bitch” (Morrison 48 and 70). They themselves are black, and yet use blackness as vitriol. Subliminally, they are agreeing with society’s condemnation of black as ugly, and in The Bluest Eye Morrison attempts to uncover how a child reaches this point of racial self-loathing.

Cycle of Suffering

In her writings about The Bluest Eye Morrison makes it clear that her goal was not to demonize or blame the people in Pecola’s life for her undoing. Yes, Cholly and Mrs. Breedlove are agents of their daughter’s collapse, but they themselves suffered from many of the same feelings and insecurities Pecola struggles with. In the text, Morrison offers a view of Cholly and Mrs. Breedlove’s formative years to illustrate how oppression, suffering, and poverty are cyclical, and can transcend generations. Cholly, for example, is abandoned by his mother and father, and so abandons his own children emotionally and psychologically because he never learns how to be a father. Mrs. Breedlove also demonstrates this theme, because she takes the colorism and racial self-loathing she developed as a young woman and passes it down to her children. We’ll never know if Pecola would have broken this cycle of suffering, but since Sammy runs away from home like his father did when he was a young man, all signs point to this cycle continuing.