Source: www.anglistika.webnode.cz
. (b. 1931).
. (1970).
The short opening chapter introduces a happy family described in the simple language of a child. The account is repeated in the second paragraph without punctuation and in the third paragraph where not only punctuation but also spaces between printed words are omitted. The device suggests the fluency and the merging of experience.
Autumn
The first-person narrator recalls that in the fall of 1941 she and her sister planted marigolds in unyielding earth and the seeds did not grow. They thought it was because Pecola was pregnant with her father's child. Pecola's father planted his seeds in unyielding earth too, both literary and figuratively, for his and his daughter's child died. The narrator contemplates the situation retrospectively. She is about to give an account of how it happened; as to the reason why, she is at loss to find out. This whole passage is printed in italics.
The story proper begins in autumn 1939. The first-person narrator Claudia MacTeer is nine, her sister Frieda is ten.
They are of working-class background and they are coloured. The story is told from the point of view of young
Claudia, who is together with her sister excluded from adult conversation. She often cannot understand the matters discussed by adults, but she can feel the emotions expressed together with the words. She has loving parents, they however fail to show their feelings. Claudia is not pitied but scolded when she falls ill, but she realizes her mother's scolding is not an expression of hatred, but rather of fear for her and love.
Claudia is different from her neighbours in that she does not seek to possess things. Those neighbours who can afford buying a house spend all their lives overdecorating it, taking pride in their possession. Claudia's parents rent a house. For Christmas Claudia does not wish things but feelings of an affectionate family atmosphere. She keeps on getting blue-eyed fair-haired white dolls. She cannot help herself from dismembering the dolls for whose cold and stiff bodies she feels no affection. She shifts her hatred to white girls who at least cry in pain at her violence.
She envies white girls the admiration they receive.
The MacTeers accommodate the black girl Pecola Breedlove whose father put the family outdoors so that they have nowhere to go. Pecola's brother Sammy is accommodated in another family, her mother stays with her employer, and the father is in prison. Claudia is different from both Frieda and Pecola in that she hates white girls, who are symbolically represented by a cup with the picture of the white child actress Shirley Temple on it. Pecola loves to drink milk from the cup, here again milk represents the white colour. Claudia prefers Jane Withers, the girl who plays central role in the idyllic family image which opens the book. Pecola experiences her first menstruation and learns that she can now have a baby.
"HEREISTHEHOUSEITISGREENANDWHITEITHASAREDDO
ORITISVERYPRETTYITISVERYPRETTYPRETTYPRETTYP"
The next chapter is introduced by a two-line fragment from the novel's introductory image of the pretty green and white house with a red door and the happy family in it. It is printed without spaces between the words, in bold capitals, and seems to serve as a title for the chapter. In the chapter the narrator gives the history of an abandoned decaying store and its changing inhabitants. The place is Lorain, Ohio. The narrator returns in memory to the time when the house was occupied by the Breedloves, a poor coloured family. Furnishings of the house are described as impersonal, the furniture evokes no memories, especially not pleasant ones. The only piece of furniture charged with emotions is the sofa. It was bought new but delivered damaged and the seller did not accept responsibility.
"HEREISTHEFAMILYMOTHERFATHERDICKANDJANETHE
YLIVEINTHEGREENANDWHITEHOUSETHEYAREVERYH"
The following chapter is introduced with another fragment, this time the emphasis is not on the pretty house but on the happy family. In any case the effect is rather ironic. The Breedloves are described as suffering from a sense of their ugliness, though an ugliness more imagined than real. Cholly copes with his ugliness with heavy drinking and fighting with his wife Polly. Mrs Breedlove, as her children call her, copes by assuming the position of a righteous
Christian woman struggling with her neglecting husband. Their son Sammy, aged fourteen, copes by running away from home periodically. Their daughter Pecola, aged eleven, copes with wishing that she disappeared.
The point of view shifts to Pecola. She is consistently praying for blue eyes, for she believes that beautiful blue eyes would render her more likeable. Pecola is generally avoided, both by adults and children, and people find it difficult even to look at her. Pecola loves to eat sweets called Mary Jane for the white girl who is pictured on their wrappings. She feels tiny and humiliated when buying the sweets in a white man's shop. The shop keeper never looks at her, he hardly deciphers her wish, and hesitates to touch her hand when she reaches him the money.
Having left the shop, Pecola no more thinks the dandelions she had admired before beautiful. People take them for weeds and think them ugly and so does Pecola now. She possibly relates her own ugliness to that of the dandelions,
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and the supposed ugliness of both is a social product rather than an objectively founded observation. Pecola's only friends are the prostitutes China, Poland, and Marie, for whom she runs errands and they in turn do not hate her.
These prostitutes approach men with the same disinterested scorn which marked Claudia's attitude to white girls described earlier in the book.
Winter
The point of view shifts to Claudia. She compares her father's appearance and manner to the winter season. Winter is tough and harsh and the father works hard to keep the preying wolves of poverty from their door. The monotony of winter is briefly enlightened by the coming of a new girl to school. Maureen Peel is a daughter of parents who seem to be well-off for the reason that they are not afraid to sue people. Maureen is the most perfect girl idolized by everyone but Claudia and Frieda. The sisters hate Maureen for her flawlessness and try to find faults with her.
The three girls happen to be together when they witness Pecola being surrounded and tortured by boys. The boys laugh at her for the colour of her skin, even those boys who are as black as Pecola. Their hatred for their own blackness finds its focus in the black girl. The other reason for which they deride her is that her father sleeps naked, which is considered indecent and offensive. Both reasons for the boys' derision are based on facts, but Pecola can obviously influence neither of them. Claudia is surprised when Frieda gathers courage and delivers Pecola from her torturers. Maureen immediately starts acting to Pecola as if the two were best friends. She asks her embarrassing questions, as whether she already menstruates or whether she has seen a naked man. Claudia and Frieda interrupt the questioning, recalling their own painful sensation when they accidentally happened to see their own father naked. There is a quarrel. Timid Pecola remains a passive observer. The three other girls fight and Maureen makes her escape, shouting back in pride that she is cute. Claudia and Frieda are painfully aware that Maureen indeed is pretty and they are not. They wonder what the thing is that makes this difference. Apparently it is the colour.
The MacTeers have a paying lodger, a kind man called Henry Washington. Claudia and Frieda like him because, unlike other adults, he pays attention to them and jokes with them. Their feelings to Mr Henry are challenged when they happen to see him with prostitutes. Mr Henry bribed them with some little money to make them leave the house and go to buy some sweets. The girls returned sooner than they were meant to and saw Mr Henry with China and Marie, nicknamed Maginot Line. They know that her mother deeply disapproves of such women and would not let them into her house. They promise Mr Henry not to tell their mother and decide to keep their promise so as not to make their mother angry.
"SEETHECATITGOESMEOWMEOWCOMEANDPLAYCOMEPL
AYWITHJANETHEKITTENWILLNOTPLAYPLAYPLAYPLA"
The chapter is introduced with another, slightly modified fragment from the novel's beginning. The innocent image of the cat as it initially seemed is here developed into an ambiguous, multifaceted symbol. The chapter opens with a detailed characteristics of a new class of black girls. They are clean, humble, and obedient, they make good housewives and profitable employees. They are better off, but they suppress in themselves all natural, passionate, and emotional. A representative of this class is the new neighbour Geraldine with her husband Henry and son
Henry Junior.
The description of Geraldine dwells especially on two aspects, namely the suppression of blackness and the suppression of sexual impulses. Geraldine, as other women of her class, is exceptionally fastidious, as if their constant washing, bleaching, and ironing should banish the colour of their own skin. She distinguishes between her own class, that she calls coloured people, and the other class of the dirty, noisy, and bad-smelling blacks that she calls niggers. She associates sexuality with dirt and sweat and only suffers her husband's need for physical contact.
She preserves her affection and her caresses for her tom-cat, her relationship with the cat is sexually charged.
Henry junior is jealous of the cat and keeps on torturing him. He is being brought up according to the model of his mother. He is not allowed to play with niggers, though he would wish to roll with them in mud and swear curses.
Henry tyrannizes not only the cat but also picks Pecola as the target of his mischievous amusement. He lures Pecola into his house under the pretence that he will show her kitten. When she is in, he throws the large adult cat against her face and closes the door behind her so that Pecola cannot escape. Pecola is frightened but the cat comes to her and Pecola sees that the cat has beautiful bluish green eyes, such that she prayed for to have herself. She starts caressing the cat. Henry snatches the cat from her arms, there is a fight and the cat is accidentally thrown against a window. The cat is dead or dying. Geraldine appears. Henry blames Pecola for the cat and Geraldine bids the girl out of the house. When leaving, Pecola notices a picture of Jesus on the wall who follows the injustice with unsurprised eyes.
Spring
Claudia associates spring with whipping. Whipping is different in spring because it is done with fresh long twigs.
There is an incident with Mr Henry and Frieda. Mr Henry touched Frieda's breasts, on which she ran away to the garden and told her parents. Her father beat Mr Henry up and shot at him but missed. Frieda's mother fears what
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happened between Mr Henry and her daughter and fears that Frieda might be ruined. So does Frieda who lacks verified information on sexuality. Frieda and Claudia are often told by their mother that the prostitutes they know are ruined. The girls associate the quality of being ruined with being pregnant and they think that the prostitutes are not with babies because they drink whiskey. The girls set out to get whiskey for Frieda from Pecola whose father they know to drink it. They look for Pecola at the house where her mother works. The house is by Lake Erie and next to it there is a park where blacks are not allowed. This part of the town accommodates richer people and the girls feel strangers here. In the house Pecola accidentally destroys a cake baked for the white girl who lives there, and the girls are expelled by Pecola's mother.
"SEEMOTHERMOTHERISVERYNICEMOTHERWILLYOUPLA
YWITHJANEMOTHERLAUGHSLAUGHMOTHERLAUGHLA"
As the title of the chapter suggests, the story shifts to Pecola's mother Pauline Williams. It is narrated in third person with several inserted passages in italics told in first person by Pauline herself. Pauline is the ninth out of the eleven children of Ada and Fowler Williams. She is brought up in Kentucky. At the age of two she hurts her foot by stepping on a nail and she incurs a limp. She suffers by a sense of seclusion because of this defect. Everyone pretends that her limp does not exist, nobody mentions it but everyone behaves differently to her. Pauline hopes that something or someone comes and changes her life. It is Cholly Breedlove who appears and for the first time mentions her foot and endears it. They are married.
The couple moves to the North where Cholly can get a better job. Pauline is happy as long as she is in love. In
Lorain, Ohio, the old sense of being excluded returns. There are more white people than in the South and both whites and blacks keep on making her feel that she is inferior because she is black. Pauline gets a job as a housekeeper to divert herself and earn money of her own. She is happy for some time but when Cholly comes to her employer drunk and begs Pauline for money, she is dismissed. She starts going to films and succumbs into dreaming. Her standards of beauty change according to what she is presented in the films. Her marriage deteriorates.
She suffers another loss when her front tooth falls out. She misses her tooth terribly and attributes to the loss a larger meaning. She gives birth to two children. The first child comes unexpected but she tries to get pregnant for the second time. She is self-consciously determined to love her second child. She goes to the hospital to deliver and she is humiliated by a doctor. The doctor explains to medical students that black women have no difficulties in delivery and suffer no pain. Pauline knows that though black women make no fuss, they suffer as much as white women do when giving birth to children and even more in other situations. The difference is not in sensation but in the attitude to pain. When the girl is born Pauline sees that she is not lovely as she imagined her, but ugly.
Pauline finds a permanent job in the household of the Fishers. She becomes the ideal servant when working for the rich people but she resigns at keeping her own house. When serving for the Fishers, she feels to be a master of the situation. For the first time she earns a nickname here, she is called Polly. When at home, she cannot help herself from fighting with Cholly and vice versa. Their marriage degrades into what it is now.
"SEEFATHERHEISBIGANDSTRONGFATHERWILLYOUPLAY
WITHJANEFATHERISSMILINGSMILEFATHERSMILESMILE"
The chapter tells the history of Pecola's father. Cholly was born and grew up in Georgia. After his birth his mother wrapped him up and placed him on a heap of junk near the railway. His great aunt Jimmy knew that his mother was mentally ill and came in time to save the child. His mother ran away and Cholly was brought up by the aunt. He left school as soon as he was old enough to do so and found himself a job. There he met his best friend, an old black man nicknamed Blue Jack.
Cholly's aunt falls gravely ill and is about to die. Old women gather around her bed and reminisce about their youth of beauty, their adulthood of abuse, and their old age of resignation. The aunt dies and receives a proper Christian funeral. Cholly is fourteen. At the following banquet Cholly comes to know his elder cousins. Following their example, he picks a girl and takes her for a walk. They run in the fields, eat grapes of muscadine, and enjoy themselves. Evening falls and Darlene, Cholly's companion, seduces him. They are in the act when they are surprised by two white armed men. One of the men points his torch at the couple and orders Cholly to continue in what he was doing. Cholly obeys and the men laugh at him. Cholly does not hate the men, for he knows that he could not find release for hatred of men who are white and armed. He focuses his hatred on Darlene instead.
After the incident Cholly fears that Darlene might be with a child. He also does not wish to live with his uncle. He recalls that his aunt told him that his father, who abandoned his mother on finding out she was pregnant, is named
Samson Fuller and lives in Macon. Cholly runs away, heading for Macon. He manages to find his father but is rejected by him. Cholly gradually learns how to survive on his own. He feels himself free for the first time, he acts as he wishes for he has nothing to lose.
The feeling of freedom is diminished by his marriage to Pauline. He is depressed by the marital routine and finds
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relief and oblivion in drinking only. One day on coming home drunk he finds his timid eleven-year old daughter bent over the kitchen sink and doing dishes. Being brought up by an aunt who could not effectively supply him with father and mother roles, Cholly realizes that he does not know how to behave to his daughter. He suddenly feels love and tenderness towards her, but he does not know how to express it and what to tell her. Pecola scratches her calf with the toe of her other leg, the same gesture that Pauline made when Cholly first saw her. Pecola reminds
Cholly of Pauline. Cholly rapes Pecola who is paralysed by the violence and fails to defend herself.
"SEETHEDOGBOWBOWGOESTHEDOGDOYOUWANTTOPL
AYDOYOUWANTTOPLAYWITHJANESEETHEDOGRUNR"
The chapter describes the history of Elihue Micah Whitcomb, called Soaphead Church in Lorain. He is a West
Indian, born in the Caribbean area, of mixed racial origin. His ancestors deliberately cultivated what they considered characteristically white qualities in themselves, but they chose their most wicked features for cultivation. Soaphead Church has early developed a strong misanthropy. Instead of forming attachments to human beings, he delights in hoarding things that people were using. Shrinking from people, he still has to come to terms with his periodical sexual cravings. He focuses on young girls, considering them the most clean and least offensive.
He marries Velma, a cheerful woman who thinks she will reform him. She fails and leaves him.
In Lorain, Soaphead Church acts as a dream interpreter and a self-appointed fulfiller of human wishes. He lodges with an elderly woman who keeps an old dog named Bob. Soaphead Church sees the dog as a disgusting creature;
Bob sleeps on a porch next to his door, so he must always pass by him when going in or out of doors. He buys some poison but fails to give it to the dog for fear of having to come so near to him.
One day an ugly girl, Pecola, asks him for help. She wishes to have blue eyes and for the first time Soaphead
Church wishes he were able to help her. He sees her simple wish for beauty as one which most deserves fulfilment.
He gives Pecola the poison and sends her to Bob, claiming that if Bob behaves strangely on eating it, her wish will be fulfilled. Pecola poisons the dog. Soaphead Church writes an angry letter to God, blaming him for creating an imperfect world. He claims he has assumed the role of God by granting Pecola her wish. Nobody will see her blue eyes but she will believe she has them.
Summer
Claudia associates summer with storms. That summer they received packets of seeds which they were to sell in households. They were promised a new bicycle for the money they would earn. In the households they visited they overheard fragments of a story which they realized was about Pecola. Pecola was pregnant with her father and everyone wished the baby to die. Claudia and Frieda were the only who pitied Pecola and wished her baby to live.
They prayed for the life of the baby and to give an offering, they buried the money they earned and planted the rest of the seeds in the back of their house. They thought that if the seeds grow, Pecola's baby will survive.
"LOOKLOOKHERECOMESAFRIENDTHEFRIENDWILLPLAY
WITHJANETHEYWILLPLAYAGOODGAMEPLAYJANEPLA"
A dialogue of two girls is presented. One of them is Pecola who believes she has got her blue eyes. The eyes become an obsession for her. She is anxious that someone else in the world may have eyes bluer than hers. She wonders who has the bluest eyes in the world and wishes it was her. The other girl patiently praises Pecola's eyes for Pecola can think of nothing else.
Pecola's baby is born too soon and dies. Cholly dies in a workhouse. Sammy is gone. Mrs Breedlove is the sole breadwinner for herself and Pecola. Pecola deteriorates and gets mad. She spends all the time looking for something unknown in garbage. Everyone avoids her, even Claudia and Frieda. The seeds the girls planted did not grow. It was not their fault but the fault of the land that killed its seeds. Both literary and symbolically.
Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye . (1970). London: Vintage, 1999.
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