The Destiny of Pecola: Racism and Sexism in Toni Morrison''s The Bluest Eye

• Main Authors: Nien-Tzu Hsu, 徐念慈
• Other Authors: Yauling Hsieh
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2001
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/65540816907486247940

碩士 === 淡江大學 === 西洋語文研究所 === 89 === Being a black female writer profoundly concerned with the plight of black women, Toni Morrison sensitively exposes the impact of sexism and racism on black women in her novel The Bluest Eye, with a view of making the world aware of sexual and racial inequality and finding a voice that belongs to black women. By applying the theories of radical feminists such as Kate Millet, Marilyn Frye and Susan Brownmiller; and black feminists such as Patricia Hill Collins, Mae Gwedolyn Henderson and Frances Beale, the present study proposes to investigate how Morrison subverts the social and literary conventions and, through the omniscient narrator, Claudia, emphasizes the importance of their own culture belonging to the blacks themselves. The first chapter deals with the invasion of the dominant white culture and the myth of the white beauty that lead to self-denial and self-hatred of many black women in The Bluest Eye. Morrison condemns those blacks who blindly conform to the white values. Chapter Two examines the gender issue in the novel. Some of the black men who suffered from childhood traumatic experiences inflicted by the white sexually violate or insult their women (black) to gain self-assertion. Thus black women have to cope with not just racial but also sexual discrimination. Chapter Three explores how patriarchy and racism lead to the silence of black females and pose a threat to the formation of self-identity. The implied power behind women’s silence is also analyzed in this chapter. Morrison seems to take use of the passive role, Pecola, whose story is described by a rebellious character, Claudia, to voice for all the black females, to help them to assert their self identity and find their cultural identity back.