The Bluest Eye

There are times when a book appears that makes the reader look not only at his own views but also at the society of which he is a part. Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye may be considered one of them. Told in splintered perspectives of multiple characters, the book delves into taboo subjects such as menstruation, prostitution, incest, and racism.
Set in Lorain, Ohio in 1941, the story tells of the perils of (among others) three little girls. Pecola, the displaced daughter of an abusive alcoholic father and Frieda and Claudia, two sisters whose family takes Pecola in. Pecola and her mother are enamored with white beauty, Pecola with Shirley Temple and her mother with older screen actresses. While Frieda and Pecola share a mutual admiration for Temple, Claudia loathes her, citing jealousy: “…I hated Shirley. Not because she was cute, but because she danced with Bojangles, who was my friend, my uncle, my daddy, and who ought to have been soft-shoeing it and chuckling with me. Instead he was enjoying, sharing…with…white girls whose socks never slid down under their heels.”
Additionally, she hated white baby dolls and would rip them apart to look for the reason why they were pretty. She disliked the fact that everyone assumed without asking her that a baby doll is what she wanted for Christmas.
A disparity is drawn between the Breedloves (Pecola’s family) and the MacTeers (Claudia and Frieda’s family) by setting the former in an old storefront that had furniture that had no personal memories on the part of the owners and the latter in a clean, well-kept house. Also, the Breedloves did not provide a good atmosphere for children to grow up in, while the MacTeers, while strict, tried to.
One particularly jarring aspect of the book was the Breedlove’s self-induced “cloak of ugliness.” They believed they were ugly and inferior, hence their infatuation with white movie stars and other celebrities. Morrison describes them in the opening part of the novel using adjectives that are not necessarily considered ugly when used in a different context. The idea that people can place a “cloak of ugliness” upon themselves is alien to many.
Also, the book dealt with incest and other sexual taboos. Mensruation (“ministratin’”) is discussed in one of the book’s earlier segments. Pecola experiences menstruation and the girls try to hide it from their mother, resulting in alerting a neightbor girl, who in turn tells on them.
One chapter, headed by a Dick and Jane mantra that characterizes the book’s chapter titles, involves the history of Cholly (Charlie) Breedlove and the subsequent rape of Pecola. Both the history and the description of the rape bring up strong feelings about sexuality, incest, and child abuse. A similar episode occurs with the MacTeer’s houseguest, Mr. Henry. In fact, throughout the book sexual incidents are depicted in lucid detail, a subject some are not comfortable reading about.
Morrison’s work is not, however, about comfort. She does her best to make the reader feel empathy for the main characters specifically and the effects of racism in general. Reading her work may well open the reader’s eyes about a number of subjects.