This essay examines Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye as a study in how institutionalized racism shapes definitions of beauty and, by extension, personal identity. Focusing on the characters of Pecola and her mother Pauline, the paper traces how mainstream cultural standards — reinforced through literature, employment, and social institutions — denied African-American women any model of beauty that included themselves. Drawing on scholarly commentary by Gibson, Klotman, and Rosenberg, the essay argues that the racism depicted in the novel is both external and internalized, creating a self-perpetuating cycle in which African-American women are denied worth from without and, ultimately, from within.
The nineteenth century was not a great time to be dark-skinned and living in America. Slavery was legal in much of the country throughout the majority of the century, and as the institution of slavery grew ever more threatened during its progress, the treatment of slaves and even of free African-Americans became increasingly extreme and hostile in many instances. While obviously a major social problem that negatively impacted a large population of people, the position of African-Americans during the nineteenth century also necessarily caused deep-seated personal dilemmas.
The end of slavery that came as a result of the Union's victory in the Civil War did not exactly fix things for African-Americans, however. Despite their new political and economic opportunities, there were still a great many legal as well as cultural barriers facing African-Americans attempting to better their positions in United States society. In addition, African-American individuals had to contend with a world that viewed them in several different and often conflicting ways, leading to problems in constructing both personal and community identities. The African-American identities that grew out of this period were thus fragmented and indistinct, and individuals had to struggle against many disparate forces in order to carve out their own sense of self — one that was not dependent on others' constructs, beliefs, and prejudices. This problem persists in the African-American community to this day.
Much of the literature of the twentieth century deals with similar issues of fragmentation and the ultimately constructed nature of identity, and African-American literature of the period reflected this larger trend from a very particular perspective. Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye deals with issues of racism and identity through the eyes of a young African-American girl watching her friend Pecola grow into a woman and attempt to find beauty and a sense of self. This is made incredibly difficult for the young woman, as she has very little in the way of positive guidance and reinforcement in any area of her life. Her mother's continued insistence on white and Anglo features as definitive of beauty is especially prominent throughout the book, making it difficult for Pecola to achieve a stable sense of self. Through systematic and institutionalized racism, beauty is very selectively defined in a manner that places it out of reach for many — just as many opportunities were closed to African-Americans during the time of the book's setting, and arguably today.
The relationship between racism and definitions of beauty and possibility that are so prevalent throughout the book represents a wider dichotomy between the definitions of the white world and the potentials and actualities of African-American existence. The entire social and cultural system, as well as the official avenues of power, are closed to African-Americans precisely because they do not meet the specified standards of the dominant culture. This can be seen very early on in the novel, even in the first pieces of text Morrison incorporates.
Three different versions of a "Dick and Jane" text are given at the novel's outset, and these represent the breakdown of traditional white culture that Pecola and the other children in the novel find themselves facing (Klotman 1979). The ideals of beauty and propriety are presented in the first version, which is standard in its use of language and mechanics. The subsequent versions, however, remove punctuation and then spacing, making the language less discernible and at once less imbued with meaning — yet paradoxically more open to possibilities. This is in some ways akin to the experiences of the characters in the novel: they are given the standards of beauty and cultural coherence in a manner that seems quite clear, yet the closer they attempt to approach those standards the more difficult and incomprehensible they become (Klotman 1979). The increasingly garbled language of the second and third versions of the "Dick and Jane" text is thus more representative of the African-American experience.
Interestingly, the idea that beauty could be objectively defined — and more so, that the white race would unequivocally be considered the most beautiful by such an objective definition — actually has a long tradition in sociological and cultural thought (Gibson 1990). Many scholars and scientists truly believed that physical beauty and grace were indicative of internal traits, and that the "less beautiful" races (that is, all non-whites, though gradients were established in this regard) were of poorer moral quality and intelligence and possessed other undesirable internal characteristics as well (Gibson 1990). This means that the concepts of beauty expressed in the book carry both direct and symbolic implications.
"Pauline transmits self-hatred and racist beauty ideals to Pecola"
"Lack of Black role models erases concept of Black beauty"
The sense of identity that many of the characters in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye develop — or attempt to develop — is very much tied to their external sense of identity and attractiveness. Beauty, in this schema, is intimately associated with a sense of worth, and thus the same racism that tells African-American women they are not beautiful also tells them they are lacking in individual and personal worth. Pecola receives her sense of being "unbeautiful" not only from society at large, but also from her mother: the institutional nature of racism has fully indoctrinated Pauline, and this perpetuates both the racism and the sense of worthlessness that accompanies it. Beauty is at once personal and a cultural label, and Pecola does not feel beautiful in either sense.
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