Review by nelle_mrl - The Bluest Eye

nelle_mrl 's review for:

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

4.0

dark sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

The story behind Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye could be summarised as such:

A little black girl yearns for the blue eyes of a little white girl, and the horror at the heart of her yearning is exceeded only by the evil of fulfillment.

One major element in the plot is revealed by children at the very beginning of the novel, casting doubt on their discourse as children. The narrative follows three black girls, Claudia, Frieda, and Pecola. The latter becomes the source of their questioning around beauty. Pecola is portrayed as lacking conventional beauty and, when she looks around her, she comes to believe that beauty is defined by having blue eyes. Their absence denies her any recognition:

She looks up at him and sees the vacuum where curiosity ought to lodge. And something more. The total absence of human recognition— the glazed separateness.

The novel deconstructs this idealisation of blue eyes by presenting characters who possess them, yet whose behaviour is disturbing. It is associated with cruelty and leads to Pecola's tragic descent. Geraldine, for instance, has internalised standards of femininity and consequently suppresses her black identity. She makes a classist difference between 'colored people' and 'negroes'.

Here they learn the rest of the lesson begun in those soft houses with porch swings and pots of bleeding heart: how to behave. The careful development of thrift, patience, high morals, and good manners. In short, how to get rid of the funkiness. The dreadful funkiness of passion, the funkiness of nature, the funkiness of the wide range of human emotions.

Later on, the novel focuses also on Soaphead Church, whose nickname alludes to his desire for both physical as well as moral cleanliness. His family history is marked by efforts to 'whiten' the bloodline:

They were industrious, orderly, and energetic, hoping to prove beyond a doubt De Gobineau’s hypothesis that "all civilizations derive from the white race, that none can exist without its help, and that a society is great and brilliant only so far as it preserves the blood of the noble group that created it."

All in all, I was deeply engaged in Morrison's exploration of beauty standards shaped by racist ideologies. I applaud her ability to portray morally disturbing characters that angered me, namely Cholly and Soaphead Church (whose inner thoughts as pedophiles are revealed to the reader). Her prose is equally compelling, shifting between registers with remarquable ease.

Content Warnings