In The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, there is a conceptualized ideal of beauty which, throughout the novel, is used to illustrate the impact of this concept on the protagonists. With each of his characters, Morrison takes innocent elements of childhood and taints them through the overuse, both blatantly aggressive and disarming, of his African-American characters from their earliest years. Here, beauty lies in pale hair, light skin, light eyes, a picket fence in an upscale neighborhood supported by income from an upper-middle class job to support a lifestyle of the same description. Beauty here is therefore what the black protagonists of the story will find inaccessible. They do not have the status they want and cannot obtain it because their position in society is fixed. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"? Get an original essay The best illustration of this concept would be Dick and Jane, the once-popular children's books so famous for their colorful pictures and simplistic grammar but deeply educational. – a pun in itself on the way the majority of Morrison's characters speak (i.e. lacking proper grammar and pronunciation). The stories are named after the characters, the brother-sister duo Dick and Jane. In the little picture books, Dick does decidedly masculine things, like running, jumping, and playing ball, while his sister, Jane, participates in particularly feminine behaviors that mostly consist of pulling his wagon, playing with her doll or watch the activity. surrounding him and emphasizing his interest in them. Despite being of the same age group, family, and sharing similar strengths in perceived beauty, the children are separated by gender. Even Jane, who is a rich white girl, is oppressed by her gender from a young age. These positions make the characters the opposite of the dark and poor disbelieving protagonists that the novel covers. Morrison's characters, unlike the rich white people she alludes to, are of an inferior race in the eyes of society, and therefore of a lower class. Claudia, Frieda and their family are almost the opposite of Dick and Jane. Claudia, who narrates parts of the novel, and her older sister, Frieda, do not live in a particularly well-off neighborhood, but they have a home and two parents who seem to provide them with a stable living environment, making them a sort of family. control group among the mess of other characters throughout the novel. Yet the girls are wary and even defensive about their stature, and a classic example of unfulfilled childish jealousy is used to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with their societal roles to the little mixed-race girl, Maureen Peal. Claudia describes her as “…rich, at least by our standards, as rich as the richest white girl, swaddled in comfort and care (62).” Completely ignoring the fact that Claudia herself and Frieda have a home and some security and are not unloved, Claudia focuses on Maureen's childhood jealousies and exaltation that seem to wrap themselves around her skin. mocha and her spring eyes. Claudia's malevolence toward Maureen, of course, has a lot to do with that white part of her—which is telling in the early descriptions of what Claudia does with her little white dolls. Even though toys are meant to be held, loved and pampered, Claudia can bring herself to love them. She nourishes “…only one desire: to dismember him. See what she was made of, discover tenderness, rediscover the beauty, the desirability thathad escaped me… (20)”. The doll is entirely representative of a state of life that Claudia does not welcome and fully resists – the prospect of motherhood. In doing so, she resists her own place in society, where women are raised to have children and run the house. By hating her for her whiteness and directly linking the doll to Shirley Temple, whom Claudia hates for being so perfect, she puts herself in the position of hating everything about the white upper-middle class status that she cannot achieve. Next, the protagonist Pecola Breedlove possesses an unhealthy admiration for her misinterpreted ideal of beauty, personified by blue eyes. “. . . if her eyes were different, that is, beautiful, she herself would be different” (Morrison 46). Throughout the novel, Pecola's hatred of her self-identified ugliness stagnates, belittling her value to herself and radiating out to those around her, encouraging disgust, aversion, and even the slightest pang of regret in some cases. During her visit to the small grocery store where she buys candy, she is almost ignored by the store's owner, Mr. Yacobowski, who "feels like he doesn't need to waste the effort all at once." eye (48)”. Pecola, upon entering the store, has closed in on herself, pointing to her selections in the display, opening her hand to present her money and shaking her head to communicate without a word because she senses his detachment. She assumes this is based entirely on her darkness, which she is sure constructs her ugliness, and so acts as discreetly as she can think. She doesn't speak and wants to make herself small and rare when she receives her Mary Janes. The pale yellow paper which highlights the blond hair of the idyllic little white girl presented on the packaging and her little eyes painted blue are what appeals to Pecola because "Eating the candies is in a way eating the eyes, eat Mary Jane. I love Mary Jane. Be Mary Jane (50 years old). » Playing into the idolatry of upper-middle-class white society that Pecola, with her abusive and loveless family, is perpetually craving are her visits to the whores who live above her family's storefront. The whores, whom she admires for their kindness towards her in terms of gifts and gentle companionship, are on a level of contempt comparable to Pecola's, even if she does not realize it. The “ruined” woman she calls Miss Marie, all the others despise her under the name “Maginot Line”. She finds her sociable and loving where others, like Frieda and Claudia, see her as obnoxious. Ruined and ugly, the symmetry between the whore and the loveless little girl is clear. This relationship with the whore might even give Pecola a sense of fearlessness toward her own gender, given that whores retain a sense of freedom that structured women who cook, clean, and raise babies do not have. And indeed, the paternal rape she suffers could be a punishment for this fearlessness – the consequences of a woman's thoughtless actions in a dominant male society. In keeping with the class and gender oppressions of the time, Pauline – the young Mrs. Breedlove – stayed home to cook and clean her family's home while her father worked a blue-collar job and her mother cared for a white pastor's house during the day. After meeting Cholly, who knocks the girl lame, she marries young, which is a common practice at the time. Not knowing what to do with women's work, she depends entirely on her husband to provide for her needs. Young, naive and in love, she has no idea of ​​the dangers that await their relationship. Social caste, including lack of education, set Pauline apart from other women after she and Cholly moved to..