A Gender Studies’ Eye for The Bluest Eye
陳瑞欣
文本與論述理論課
Text
Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. Penguin
Group Publishing, 1994.
Her First Novel. (First published in 1970)
Thesis
To discuss how African American females
perceive themselves in this novel toward the
dominance through the viewpoint of gender
studies.
The compare and contrast between two main
characters, Claudia MacTeer and Pecola
Breedlove.
The dominance of white Western culture
The ideal family image in the prologue of the novel.
The white baby doll Claudia received on Christmas.
Mr. Yacobowski (the candy shop keeper)
The new classmate Maureen Peal, a light-skinned
wealthy girl.
Geraldine
The Fishers’ house (Pauline’s work place)
The Power
“Adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers,
window signs---all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed,
yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child
treasured”(20) .
“I-never-had-a-baby-doll-in-my-whole-life-and used-tocry-my-eyes-out-for-them.Now-you-got-one-a-beautifulone-and-you-tear-it-up-what’s-the-matter-with-you”(21).
The Power (Geraldine & Pauline)
Irigaray: “Feminine mimicry” means that
[female] is supposed to mimic the role of the
feminine in order to shore up a masculine
identity that does not recognize female
difference.
“Female mimicry in The Bluest Eye has to do with
the construction of a gendered and racialized
class hierarchy.
The Power
Jill Matus: This kind of “culture of shame"
displaces the focus on external causes or forces.
As a means of producing self-regulating and
conforming subjects, the inculcation of shame
secures dominant interests, converting and
perverting anger in other eventually to breed
false loves and desires (45).
Claudia MacTeer
Independence & confidence
Undergo the transformation of “the conversion
from pristine sadism to fabricated hatred, to
fraudulent love.”
Realize the function of ideology that “dolls, little
white girls, or even' high yellow' girls in [her]
community are not the ‘Enemy’ because they are
not the sources of power; they are only vessels
into which power flows”(43).
The Breedloves
“They lived there because they were poor and
black, and they stayed there because they
believed they were ugly”(38).
“[The ugliness] came from conviction, their
conviction”(39).
“They took the ugliness in their hands, threw it
as a mantle over them, and went about the world
with it”(39).
Pecola Breedlove
Otten: “on the verge of self-awareness, Pecola is
dangerously naïve and fully capable of accepting the
idea that a socially defined beauty alone merits
love”(12).
She hides behind her ugliness, “concealed, veiled,
eclipsed---peeping out from behind the shroud very
seldom, and then only to yearn for the return of her
mask”(39).
Pecola Breedlove
Otten: “Morrison depicts Pecola more as victim than
as genuinely tragic figure. Unable to commit a
saving sin or protect herself against the prolonged
self-hate of Cholly or Pauline or Geraldine, she falls
prey to an evil beyond herself”(23).
“Her violent passage from innocence to experience
ironically results in the perpetual innocence of
insanity that alone can grant her the blue eyes which
assure her acceptance”(9).
Conclusion
Morrison, in her afterward of the novel, speaks of
how she chooses a unique situation like Pecola to
“dramatize the devastation that even casual racial
contempt can cause”(211).
Through the contrast between Claudia and
Pecola, the significance to perceive the
beautifulness of oneself by self-judgment is
acutely brought out.
Thank you for your listening!
References
1. Otten, Terry. “The Crime of Innocence in the Fiction of Toni Morrison.”
University of Missouri Press, 1989.
2. Matus, Jill. “Toni Morrison.” Manchester University Press, 1998.
3. Furman, Jan. “Toni Morrison’s Fiction.” University of South Carolina Press, 1996.
4. Grewal, Gurleen. “Circles of Sorrow, Lines of Struggle: The Novels of Toni
Morrison.” Louisiana State University Press, 1998. Netlibrary. Louisiana State
University Press. January 7, 2010. < http://www.netlibrary.com.nthuliboc.nthu.edu.tw/Reader/ >
5. Tally, Justine. "Toni Morrison’s fiction." The Cambridge Companion to Toni
Morrison. Cambridge University Press, 2007. Cambridge Collections Online.
Cambridge University Press. 31 December
2009.<http://cco.cambridge.org.nthuliboc.nthu.edu.tw/uid=6245/extract?id=ccol052186111x_CCOLCCOL052186111XA00
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