The Bluest Eye 2

Toni Morrison captures the experience of the African-American woman situated at the crossroads of domestic issues, class disparities, and racial injustices.  The following is an excerpt from W.E.B. Dubois’s The Souls of Black Folk,  in which he so eloquently describes the experience of the African-American male in a racist society:

“After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”

The Souls of Black Folk
http://susannahpollvogt.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/w-e-b-du-bois.jpg?w=400&h=319

In my African Diaspora class last semester, we discussed how African-American women, by virtue of fighting racial and gender oppression, have a triple consciousness.  This double-consciousness, “veil,” of racial oppression is depicted as a curse somewhat akin to the curse of being a woman unable to penetrate a glass ceiling of oppression.  Toni Morrison depicts this veil as both internal and external—at once dictated by society and internalized as indisputable truth: the idea of blackness as ugliness. 

A few words on the power and privilege of whiteness…  Pauline finds power, happiness, and comfort in the privileges she enjoys by loving and appropriating whiteness.  “Power, praise, and luxury were hers in this household.” (128)  Her bosses say: ‘Really, she is the ideal servant.” Why is she ideal? Because she does not mind—in fact she loves—serving a family that allows her the luxury of living an illusion.  People do not respect her for her own merit, for her intrinsic value.  People respect her because of her associations: “The creditors and service people who humiliated her when she went to them on her own behalf respected her, were even intimidated by her, when she spoke for the Fishers.” (128). 

Internalized oppression: racism, sexism, classism.
http://www.tcrecord.org/Html/39_12724.htm_g/00002.jpg

Pauline internalizes and perpetuates classism and racism.  When Pauline cognitively enters the white world, which she romanticizes as “this order, this beauty,” she denies her blackness and mirrors white racist and elitist behavior.  This is evidenced par excellence when she gets meat and enjoys the pleasure of being a snob.  Blackness for Pauline is tantamount to “sin and failure” and evokes negativity and hatred.  Perhaps largely because of her experience with Cholly, “into her son she beat a loud desire to run away.” (128)  It is as if she wants her son to “run away” from his blackness.   And into Pecola, she “beat a fear of growing up, fear of other people, fear of life.” (128).  Even the way she describes her baby mirrors the degeneracy and dehumanization of black people on the part of white society: repeatedly she refers to her baby as “it” and once, as “thing” (125).  How can she think of her black baby--what she herself calls "ugly"--as something beautiful if she doesn't accept her own beauty?  Having internalized the societal ideal of beauty as indelibly connected to whiteness and power, she is driven to "neglect" everything connected with blackness: "her house, her children, her man" (127).  She equates blackness with stigmata: “Holding Cholly as a model of sin and failure, she bore him like a crown of thorns, and her children like a cross.” (127) This is Morrison's idea of "the veil" with religious undertones.  Frankly the idea of equating one's family, one's blood with a burden, a scarlet letter, a crown of thorns, enrages me.  Sometimes, like now reading The Bluest Eye, I am reminded of the irony of my childhood: I was always complimented on my blue eyes when I was so very intrigued by and jealous of people with dark skin.  Life is so poetically ironic sometimes.

“Only thing I miss sometimes is that rainbow.” (131) Superficially, she misses orgasms.  But perhaps also, she misses loving herself, someone loving her, feeling beauty inside and feeling beautiful.  When Cholly “comes first”— commits first—Pauline says: “I feel a power.”  I wonder about the difference in power that she feels when the power comes from within, literally and figuratively, and the power she gains by association with the Fishers.  One is an externally sanctioned power, while the other is bound to her core.  The latter power gives her an inner strength: “I be strong, I be pretty, I be young.” (130).