Black Girl Magic in The Bluest Eye: A Book Analysis
Black Girl Magic in The Bluest Eye (by Toni Morrison)
Long before the wave of Black Girl Magic, in 1962, Toni Morrison began to pen The Bluest Eye, a novel that makes clear that assertion. In the Afterword of the 1993 edition she admits that “[w]ith very few exceptions, the initial publication of The Bluest Eye was like Pecola’s life: dismissed, trivialized, misread. And it has taken twenty-five years to gain for her the respectful publication this edition is.” This text is a political statement published at a time when black folx in the United States were engaged in a revolution of thought, culture, and political ideology. Morrison interrogates the interconnectedness of beauty and class; and the impact of the intersection of race, gender and class on black girls, children and families.
In the 1960s and 70s black people in the United States were experiencing a cultural shift, beginning to see and uplift black as beautiful and taking a stand against oppressive government forces, especially state sanctioned violence. Readers first meet the narrator Claudia, and her older sister Frieda as they witness their neighbor, a white Italian woman Rosemary Villanucci exerting her self perceived superiority over them, telling them they cannot come in, in reference to her 1939 Buick that she sits eating bread and butter in. Claudia admits that while they did not want to join Rosemary in her vehicle, they did want her bread. As Claudia, admits to the reader they didn’t want her bread and that she wanted to “poke the arrogance out of her eyes and smash the pride of ownership that curls her chewing mouth” (Morrison 9). Here the major theme of the text, race and class, are introduced through the lens of two little black girls who simply want some bread and butter. Many black folx at this time in the United States were struggling with the same realization and, much like Claudia felt, they were ready to take action to defend themselves against the ever present and pervasive systems of white supremacy.
Claudia goes on to recall a short time during which Pecola Breedlove, the protagonist, stays with her family. Although their families are both poor, it is obvious that Pecola’s family is broken in ways that Claudia and Frieda can’t fathom. Pecola’s parents were abusive and fought each other physically, constantly. In addition to witnessing that abuse, Pecola faced physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her own parents, as revealed in the prologue with the harsh news that Pecola is having her father’s baby. Although not all black people in America experienced this harsh reality, this novel tells a grim tale, and one of the harshest realities black Americans face, and that is gender based violence that black women and girls face.
The 1950s and 60s marked a time of many legal and political upheavals, and progress, for black people including Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, the Montgomery bus boycott, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This novel was written in the 60s, and published in 1970; no doubt making it a creative narrative that wove the impacts of racism and oppression with the realities that little black girls face in a white supremacist, misogynistic world. When readers witness the girls in school, they continue to learn more about how Claudia perceives the world and herself, and she is much more loud and fearless and how she conducts herself.
Claudia and Frieda witness Pecola being teased and they fight back against the boys teasing her, and extend a lifeline to her. It would seem that most girls in school with them at that time (in 1941) would not have done the same for Pecola, instead opting to protect themselves. It is revealed, in the end of the novel, that Claudia and Frieda, in spite of the horrid commentary they hear from the grown women all around them, decide that they are going to take a stand for Pecola by praying to God that she and her child survive. They decide to plant seeds and care for the flowers in exchange, to prove to God that they truly mean what they are praying for.
Claudia stood up for herself and Pecola, not so much because of the realization of white supremacy and racism, but because when given a choice between shrinking herself or speaking up, she chose the latter. Many of the women in the movement for black liberation did, and do, the same. Angela Davis was arrested in 1970 for kidnapping, and conspiracy to commit murder. The resounding link here is that black women and girls are the least protected in a world that seeks to continually use and abuse them.
The novel takes place in seasons, beginning in Autumn and ending in the Summer. Each season is a symbol for what the characters are experiencing. In Autumn, readers learn of what’s to come for Pecola; Morrison introduces Claudia, her older sister Frieda, and their family. It is quickly revealed that Pecola is obsessed with blonde hair and blue eyes, but mainly blue eyes. They are a symbol of beauty and purity that these little black girls don’t have access to. Claudia shares that she, however, is not obsessed with little blonde haired, blue-eyed white girls like Pecola. She recalls when adults would gift them with dolls for Christmas, they were always “big, blue-eyed Baby Dolls” (Morrison 20). Her words seem almost bitter when she ponders to the reader, “What was I supposed to do with it? Pretend I was its mother? I had no interest in babies or the concept of motherhood” (Morrison 20). The expectation that a little girl should already feel the nurturing call to mother a baby doll at a young age repulses Claudia, and it shows us very early on in the story that she is different from our protagonist, Pecola, in that way. The idea of what a girl, and woman, should be, is set from here on. Black girls should start young in honing their skills at becoming caretakers, and nurturing mothers. Morrison goes on to venture into Claudia’s thoughts about not just the baby dolls themselves, but the way that black adults spoke about the dolls (in contrast to the way they spoke about each other, and Pecola at the end of the book). “‘Here,’ they said, ‘this is beautiful, and if you are on this day ‘worthy’ you may have it’” (Morrison 21). To that Claudia thinks to herself how could she possibly live this yellow haired doll with glassy blue eyeballs. The way she examines, pokes and prods at the doll makes it evident that the beauty standards black people have come to accept, embrace, and pass down to their children, was not something to take lightly; but instead it was something to question.
Readers later come to know that everyone in their small town in Lorain, Ohio knows Pecola is the ugliest girl they have ever seen, in the denouement it is made clear. Although throughout the story Pecola’s condition isn’t the focal point, in the introduction it is revealed that her father impregnated her, thus it is obvious that he raped her. The harrowing account of the moment she was actually raped is traumatizing yet needed to be written. Pecola winds up losing her baby and her mind and in the closing scene she talks to herself, trying to come to grips with the trauma she experienced.
I think this is a book everyone should read, but especially activists and black women and girls. As a survivor of sexual assault by a family member myself, I feel sadness but also strength in how I relate to both Pecola and Claudia.
Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. Vintage, 1999.