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The Bluest Eye, written by Toni Morrison, is a novel that tells the story of a young black girl named Pecola Breedlove who desperately longs for blue eyes, believing that having them will make her beautiful and more accepted by society. One of the central characters in the novel is Pauline Breedlove, Pecola's mother.
Pauline is a complex and multifaceted character who struggles with a number of issues throughout the novel. One of the most prominent themes in The Bluest Eye is the impact of internalized racism and self-hatred on black individuals, and Pauline is no exception. She has internalized the belief that white beauty standards are the only ones that matter, and as a result, she is deeply self-conscious about her own appearance. This self-hatred manifests itself in a number of ways throughout the novel, including her constant attempts to straighten her hair and her reliance on makeup and other beauty products to try to conform to white beauty standards.
In addition to her struggles with self-hatred, Pauline also struggles with a number of other issues. She is deeply unhappy in her marriage to Cholly Breedlove, Pecola's father, and her relationship with him is marked by violence, abuse, and resentment. She is also deeply traumatized by her own childhood experiences, which included sexual abuse and the loss of her mother at a young age. These experiences have left her emotionally damaged and unable to provide the love and support that Pecola desperately needs.
Despite all of these challenges, Pauline is a deeply human and sympathetic character. She is not a perfect mother, and she makes a number of mistakes throughout the novel. However, she is also a victim of the societal forces that have shaped her, and it is clear that she is doing the best she can to survive in a world that is often hostile and cruel to black women.
Overall, Pauline Breedlove is a complex and layered character who plays a central role in The Bluest Eye. Through her struggles with self-hatred, trauma, and unhappy relationships, she helps to illustrate the many challenges that black individuals face in a society that often values them less than their white counterparts.
Character Analysis Pauline
I even think now that the land of the entire country was hostile to the marigolds that year. Retrieved November 24, 2012. In The Bluest Eye, sex is associated with violence, humiliation, and immorality. Banned in the U. Her only concerns are praising her blue eyes and pushing down the image of her father raping her and her mother disbelieving her story.
Pauline Breedlove Character Analysis in The Bluest Eye
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved December 4, 2018. These women will spend time during the day with the cat, until their husbands, "the intruder", comes home expecting dinner. Men in the story use sex as a means to oppress the women in their lives. He is a religious hypocrite. This hopeless desire leads ultimately to madness, suggesting that the fulfillment of the wish for white beauty may be even more tragic than the wish impulse itself. They gave substance to the minutes and hours otherwise dim and unrecalled.
Banned in the U. It was the fault of the earth, the land, of our town. We had dropped our seeds in our own little plot of black dirt just as Pecola's father had dropped his seeds into his own plot of black dirt. They soften their skin with Jergens lotion, and straighten their hair with Dixie Peach, parting it to one side. Prologue A narrator, Claudia, explains that there were no marigolds in her community in the fall of 1941, which she believed was due to a girl named Pecola expecting her father's baby. These women, however, are bitter, tired, and accept the presence of pain.
In addition to being rejected by his father and discarded by his mother as a four-day-old baby, Cholly's first sexual encounter is ruined when it is interrupted by two white men, who force Cholly to continue while they watch and sneer. Over her shoulder she spit out words to us like rotten pieces of apple. Pecola is first portrayed as she is seen by Claudia when she comes to live with the MacTeers as a "case" for charity. She is a better taken care of child than Pecola, but only one step up. Pecola is symbolically connected to the cat, which has black fur but the blue eyes she's always desired. Love is never any better than the lover. M'Dear and other elderly women in the community experience freedom because they are no longer desired as sexual objects.
Retrieved January 16, 2018. This is the first and last time Pecola resists her oppression. Pauline, Cholly, and Sammy all demonstrate weakness in the ways in which they deal with their problems, and therefore Pecola has no healthy example of emotional strength. In a fit of anger, he picks it up by the back legs and begins swinging it around his head. He is a child molester who believes he is better than God. She adds insult to the injury of the abuse by not believing her daughter when she tells Pauline that the rapist was her father, Cholly Breedlove.
And he responds to those feelings by becoming even more hateful and superior, as that is all he has. Soaphead Church's failed marriage and hatred of women leads to the direction of his repressed sexual desire toward children. A little examination and much less melancholy would have proved to us that our seeds were not the only ones that didn't sprout; nobody's did…It had never occurred to either of us that the earth itself might have been unyielding. She does not talk to him, allow him to cry, kiss, or coo him. National Coalition Against Censorship. Because being black is associated with dirtiness and immorality, they keep obsessively clean homes and bodies.
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison: CHARACTER ANALYSIS
Did Cholly get raped in The Bluest Eye? Stories by other characters are often destructive to themselves and others. Their relationships with their families are hindered by the denial of their race and obsessive cleanliness. A common critique of her writing included her language in the novel, as it was often viewed as being made too simple for the reader. The reader is aware that her words are a recounting of the past. She is an independent, mature, and passionate nine-year-old. .
Retrieved November 15, 2016— via Access World News. He sees her scratching the back of her leg with the toe of her other foot, a gesture just like the one her mother performed which initiated his love for her. Oh, Lord, look at your dress. Retrieved January 16, 2018. She is a diligent housekeeper for a wealthy white family and the primary breadwinner for the Breedlove family. She thinks about all of the things that separate children like Pecola from "colored children", how they sleep together, six to a bed with pee mixing together as they wet their bed, and take seats in church that belonged to "colored children".
Once she loses her tooth, Pauline's preoccupation with making herself beautiful is replaced with an obsession with being the perfect servant for the Fishers. He and his wife brutally fight one another and in the first scene of his character portrait, he is knocked unconscious by his wife and wished dead by his son. In his befuddled state, he collapses his image of mother and daughter, he desires to protect and cherish her, and, at the same time, he cannot control his sexual desire for her. Students protested the ban by reading passages from the book in their school libraries. They slipped in and out of the box of peeling grey, making no stir in the neighborhood, no sound in the labor force, and no wave in the mayor's office.
