Literary Essay
I received second place at USC’s Undergraduate Writers’ Conference for this paper
on the formation of identity in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye
How to Plant Marigolds
“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.” Confucius said this regarding internal beauty, which is often overshadowed by outward appearances. In other words, it is common for humans to define someone’s beauty based on their arbitrary physical attributes. He argues that there is beauty in everyone, it just takes a keener eye and a more profound willingness to find it. But what results or occurs when people lack this willingness and place a higher value on external beauty? What detrimental effects can occur when people reveal, and continuously reinforce, their prejudices? In The Bluest Eye, these questions are explored, and readers are urged to confront the complexities of identity formation within a captious and judgmental environment. The character of Pecola Breedlove adeptly navigates the tension between the individual and collective identity. Throughout The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison illuminates how growing up in a society that idealizes conventional beauty standards and whiteness and implements group oppression can negatively impact an individual’s personal experience and the development of their identity–more specifically, Pecola’s.
Morrison begins The Bluest Eye by introducing her readers to the town of Lorain, Ohio in the 1940s. We see within the first chapter that the little black girls living in this small community are hyper-fixated on conventional beauty standards and the idealization of whiteness. The novel begins from the perspective of Claudia MacTeer. Morrison spends multiple pages detailing Claudia’s childhood disdain for baby dolls. While other girls her age loved the dolls, Claudia’s only desire was to dismember hers; she wanted to, “see of what it was made, to discover the dearness, to find the beauty, the desirability that had escaped me, but apparently only me,” (Morrison, 20). Claudia has a difficult time grasping why these white, blue-eyed dolls were so fascinating to people–she desperately wanted to understand why these dolls are the ones that people deem the most beautiful. Morrison explores Claudia’s relationship with this beauty standard by writing, “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” (Morrsion, 20). Here, Claudia is describing what everyone around her seems to believe is the ultimate standard for beauty: white skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes–none of which are traits belonging to Claudia and her friends. However, she notes that not only is this standard perpetuated by advertisements, but also by the members of her own family, the older girls she looks up to, and the community she lives in. Even though these dolls do not align with her community, Claudia notes that her friend, Pecola, and sister, Frieda, love playing with them and heavily admire girls on TV like Shirly Temple. Claudia’s narration shows how these little black girls were ingrained, from a very early age, to accept whiteness as the defining characteristic of beauty. Morrison uses this moment to emphasize how growing up in a society that idealizes conventional beauty standards and whiteness can negatively impact an individual’s personal experience and the development of their identity. Pecola and Freida do not question whether other attributes or skin colors can be beautiful; they simply accept that, because they do not meet these standards, they are not beautiful.
Morrison juxtaposes this portrayal of the beauty standard in the following chapter when she introduces readers to the Breedlove family. The Breedloves are described as an ugly family. Their appearances are said to not be objectively ugly, “You looked closely and could not find the source,” but rather their ugliness comes from their own deep-seated belief that they are ugly, “No one could have convinced them that they were not relentlessly and aggressively ugly,” (Morrison, 38). It is as if this belief became a self-fulfilling prophecy; this conviction seems to alter their appearance. As previously discussed, people like the Breedloves equate whiteness to beauty. Thus, they believe that because they are black, they will never be beautiful:
The master had said, 'You are ugly people.' They had looked about themselves and saw nothing to contradict the statement; saw, in fact, support for it leaning at them from every billboard, every movie, every glance (Morrison, 39).
While Claudia spent the first chapter of the novel questioning why this beauty standard is upheld in their society, the Breedloves have fallen victim to it. Pecola internalizes societal messages that tell her she is ugly because of her kinky hair and dark skin. She longs for blue eyes because she is constantly seeking validation through the lens of the dominant cultural beauty standard. This development of her and her family’s identities, this ugliness, was not something they were born with, but rather what they saw on billboards and in movies. Societal standards have made them this way; these things reinforced the idea that they are ugly, and they accepted it.
While we can see that Pecola and her family deeply internalize society’s beauty standards, I believe that it is the group oppression that resides within her disparaging community that most heavily contributes to Pecola’s downfall. We can see the backlash that Pecola endures from the people around her when we are introduced to Maureen Peal. Maureen is mixed race and lighter skinned than other girls, thus, people hold her in high regard. Although Maureen begins by being kind to Pecola and buying her ice cream, they ultimately get into a tiff that results in Maureen shouting, “I am cute! And you ugly! Black and ugly,” (Morrison, 73). This is a quintessential example of Pecola’s identity being defined and shaped by the people around her. The ugliness that she associates with herself is not of her own volition. First, adults at school and children in her class hold Maureen in higher regard than Pecola because she is closer to the Eurocentric beauty standard. As if this isn’t enough, Maureen flat-out tells Pecola that she is not cute because she is black. It is this form of group oppression that has an enormous negative impact on Pecola’s personal experience and the development of her identity.
Towards the end of the novel, Claudia takes on the narrating role again as she further expands on this group's oppression towards Pecola:
All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed. And all of our beauty, which was hers first and which she gave to us. All of us–all who knew her–felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness...her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor...And she let us, and thereby deserved our contempt (Morrison, 205).
The society that surrounds Pecola used her to feel better about themselves. Whether it be Maureen basing her beauty off Pecola’s lack thereof, or Cholly, Pecola’s father, raping her and in turn teaching her that girls who look like her do not deserve real, gentle love, but instead pain and abuse. By contrasting what her community gained from her “ugly” attributes, Morrison is showing just how influential group oppression can be. Pecola’s peers bestowed these negative characteristics onto her to convince themselves that they do not have them. They reinforced them repeatedly and, eventually, they became Pecola’s entire identity.
In the final stages of Pecola’s undoing, she begins to hallucinate an imaginary friend–an extension of herself–and has conversations with her. At this point, Pecola is under the impression that a member of her community, Soaphead Church, has successfully fulfilled her wish for blue eyes; she believes that he had granted them to her. It is here that we finally see just how much Pecola values outside validation. Morrison writes: “If there is somebody with bluer eyes than mine, then maybe there is somebody with the bluest eyes. The bluest eyes in the whole world,” she then goes on to say to her imaginary friend, “Please help me look,” (Morrison, 203). Even though Pecola believes that she has received the one trait she has always dreamed of, she is now not sure how her new eyes measure up to other blue eyes. She is trying to solicit her other self to help her find the bluest eyes in the world. This shows how her community’s oppression has instilled a piece in Pecola that will perpetually desire and search for the unattainable.
The true ending of the novel is where, I believe, Morrison shows just how impactful outside forces were on Pecola. Claudia is narrating once more; she is older now and trying to grapple with Pecola’s demise. Claudia not so subtly compares Pecola to Marigolds and says, “This soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers...and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live,” (Morrison, 206). When it comes to certain, rare flowers, the environment is a powerful influence on their growth. Similarly, the environment in which Pecola grew up had a huge effect on the construction of herself. But since the soil–the community–was poor, the flowers–Pecola–did not grow; since her environment was hostile, she did not survive.
Claudia, Freida, and Pecola all grew up in a society that idealized conventional beauty standards and whiteness. They were taught early on to base their self-worth on their physical appearance. However, it was Pecola who took this understanding and internalized it the most. These standards made her believe that she was ugly. Additionally, her community’s group oppression is what developed her identity the most. The people around her transferred their own self-hatred onto her. As readers, we learn that outside sources, like societal beauty standards and oppressive treatment, can have a detrimental effect on one’s sense of self. Pecola was let down by society, her community, and even her own family. It is through her mistreatment that we learn that things will be beautiful and grow only if we love them and nurture them in the right way.