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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL Of ACADEMIC RESEARCH Vol. 3. No. 2. March, 2011, Part IV
A STUDY OF BLACK FEMINISM AND WOMANISM
IN TONI MORRISON’S THE BLUEST EYE FROM THE VIEWPOINT
OF ALICE WALKER
Hamedreza Kohzadi, Fatemeh Azizmohammadi, Shahram Afrougheh
Islamic Azad University, Arak Branch (IRI)
E-mail: hamedreza_kohzadi_usa@yahoo.com
ABSTRACT
Both Toni Morrison and Alice Walker as well-known pioneers of Black Feminism in their writings frequently
stimulate black women to love themselves, their race, and their culture and not to trap in white superiority or white
beauty standards. Alice Walker in her theory called Womanism just like Toni Morrison believes that survival of black
women in a white racist society greatly depends upon their emphasis on loving their own race, their own culture,
and loving themselves and not on engrossing themselves in white culture or white beauty standards. As both
Morrison and Walker have a lot of black feminist views in common, the present article deals with a study of Black
Feminism and Womanism in Morrison‟s The Bluest Eye from the viewpoint of Walker. The present article attempts
to examine major character‟s ways of forming self-concept in the face of sexism and racism. In addition, it attempts
to show that those black female characters who follow Alice Walker‟s womanistic ideals manage to cope with their
problems and eventually survive. In contrast, those who defy Walker‟s womanistic ideals do not survive.
Key words: The Bluest Eye; sexism; internalized racism; cultural ideals; cultural influence.
1. INTRODUCTION
Set in Toni Morrison‟s hometown of Lorain, Ohio, Morrison‟s first novel, The Bluest Eye was published in
1970. The novel is the story of a young African American girl and her family who are driven in every direction by the
white dominant culture that says to them “You aren‟t beautiful, you aren‟t relevant, you‟re invisible”. In the novel,
Pecola Breedlove as the protagonist of the novel because of her blackness and her darker skin is doubly pressed
and victimized. On the one hand, she in pressed by a white racist society due to her black race, but on the other
hand, she is victimized within her own black community due to her darker skin. Thus the blackness of her skin
gradually disgusts her and leads her to embrace white beauty standards. She traps in white culture and white
superiority. She believes that if she had blue eyes, she would be loved and her life would be transformed. More
than anything she wants to be loved because she is constantly abused and tormented by her family and an abusive
community available to her. But eventually her total submission to white beauty standards has a disastrous
outcome for her and it is nothing but her insanity.
Black women and Sexism
Alice Walker in her collection of essays, In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens (1984) writes innumerable
passages about the situation of black women in particular. First of all, Walker clearly recognizes the bipartite
identity of black women. As she says, “it is the black woman‟s words that have the most meaning for us, her
daughters, because she, like us, has experienced life not only as a black person, but as a woman”(Walker, 1984:
275). Secondly, Walker makes clear that because of their double identity, black women are the victims of both
sexism (sexual discrimination) and racism (racial discrimination). This leads her to say that the black woman is
“oppressed almost beyond recognition – oppressed by everyone” (p.149). Expressing it with a folkloristic image,
she says:
Black women are called, in the folklore that so aptly identifies one‟s status in society, “the mule of the
world,” because we have been handed the burdens that everyone else-everyone else- refused to carry (p.237).
It is evident that Toni Morrison‟s The Bluest Eye reveals discrimination on the basis of gender. Her
characters candidly make known their lived experiences of sexism. In Morrison‟s The Bluest Eye, Pauline (Pecola‟s
mother) recalls how she was treated by the doctors at the hospital where she gave birth to one of her children. One
of the doctors was instructing other student doctors: “When he got to me he said now these here women you don‟t
have any trouble with. They deliver right away and with no pain. Just like horses” (Morrison, 1970: 97). Thus, to the
white doctor, as to the white community at large, the black woman has less worth than other humans; her
oppression is even greater than the white woman‟s: “I seed them talking to them white women: „How you feel?
Gonna have twins? Just shucking them, of course, but nice talk” (p. 97). About the sexism among blacks Alice
Walker writes:
I tell [Coretta King] how important I feel this is: that black men not take out their anger and frustration on
their wives and children. A temptation that is all too obvious. Coretta‟s face is thoughtful as she says, Maybe I
shouldn‟t say this, because I don‟t know it, it‟s just a feeling I have… but few black men seem to feel secure enough
as men that they can make women feel like women (Walker, 1984: 151-152).
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It is clear that Toni Morrison‟s The Bluest Eye clearly represents that Cholly as an abusive and alcoholic
man takes out his past and present frustrations on his wife, Pauline, and his children, Pecola and Sammy. On the
one hand Cholly‟s past frustrations caused by orphanhood and the encounter of the two white hunters making fun
of him and his girl friend Darlene in making love, leaves Cholly a traumatic bruise, on the other hand, Cholly‟s
present frustration caused by unemployment in the North by which Cholly and Pauline are forced into a role
reversal in which the wife is the primary breadwinner remind cholly of his weakness and impotence and originate
self-hatred and hatred toward his family members, especially toward Pauline and Pecola.
As a militant writer who is engaged in liberation struggles, Alice Walker feels that the cause of black
male/female gender conflicts can be revealed if she focuses on the violent reality of what can be termed as the
inhuman conditions of black women. In her insightful essay, In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens (1983) she
explains the reasons behind her emphasis on black male/female gender conflicts as:
Of course, the whites oppress us; they oppress the world? The white man, the rich man. But we also
oppress each other and we oppress ourselves. I think that one of the traditions we have in Black Women‟s literature
is a tradition of trying to fight all the oppression (p.14)
And then, she adds:
If someone is beating you at home, you don‟t then just sit in the room afterwards and write a novel about
the white man‟s rule. I mean to deal with the guy who beat you up in your house and then see who‟s beating you up
on the street (p.14)
In Toni Morrison‟s The Bluest Eye, black male/female gender conflicts are clear. `With constant quarrelling
and fighting over the material issues, Cholly and Pauline‟s loving relationship turns sour that Pauline starts
considering herself a “Christian woman, burdened with a no-count man, whom God wanted her to punish” (
Morrison, 1970: 30). Cholly as well turns to “Pour out on her the sum of his inarticulate fury and aborted
desires”(p.30). Such hated marriage, of course, has great impact on family, or more specifically their children,
Sammy, who has “ run away from home no less than twenty seven times”(p.32) and Pecola, who endures it with “ a
profound wish that she herself could die”(p.32). Except being a man of financial impotence, cholly‟s childhood
trauma that accompanies to his adulthood altogether makes him a powerless yet dangerous man. Impotence and
violence are the two sides of his character. After failing to appeal to and make the connection with his father Cholly
becomes a free man, and is “dangerously free” with destructive power piled up with the repressed pang and anger
of being raped by the white (p.125). In indicating Cholly‟s freedom, the narrator (Claudia McTeer) hints that he is
free enough to once defy against the white sirs and “killed three white men” (p.125). Yet, to be rid of his past
childhood memories and frustrations, it seems that he needs to repeat the same pattern of sexuality abusing a
person with lower social status, such as a girl like Darlene, as what he did as a helpless boy. The girl he chooses is
no one else but a more distressed being, Pecola. In Morrison‟s The Bluest Eye both Pauline and Pecola are victims
of Cholly‟s abuse. They are both victims of discrimination based on gender. Alice Walker not only points the finger
at black men. She also says: “It was at the Radcliffe symposium that I saw that black women are more loyal to
black men than they are to themselves, a dangerous state of affairs that has its logical end in self-destructive
behavior”(Walker, 1984: 318). In Morrison‟s The Bluest Eye, Pauline is more loyal to Cholly than she is to herself
and this more royalty as well as self-hatred eventually ends in her own and her daughter‟s destruction. She endures
Cholly‟s wildly and abusive behaviors despite the fact that she is often beat up and abused by him. Religion
becomes Pauline‟s means of controlling and using her family to boost her faltering self-esteem. Embracing the role
of “martyr,” Pauline resorts to Christian beliefs to justify her neglect of her own family “Holding Cholly as a model of
sin and failure, she bore him like a crown of thorns, and her children like a cross” ( Morrison, 1970:126-127). “She
needed Cholly‟s sin desperately. The lower he sank, the wilder and more irresponsible he became, the more
splendid she and her task became. In the name of Jesus” (p. 42) One of instances which reveal Pauline‟s more
royalty to Cholly is when Pauline gets angry with the first white woman she works for as a servant. The white
woman is determined to require Pauline to leave Cholly. Upon the dilemma of leaving her abusive and alcoholic
husband or leaving the white family that offers employment on the condition of Pauline‟s divorce, Pauline chooses
to give up the job. Pauline contemplates on Mrs. Fisher and Cholly “She said she would let me stay if I left him. I
thought about that, but later on it didn‟t seem none too bright for a black woman to leave black man for a white
woman” (p.94). In Toni Morrison‟s The Bluest Eye, Pecola Breedlove as the protagonist undergoes a remarkable
personal change. She evolves from an innocent little girl to becoming insane. An incident at Mrs. Breedlove‟s
workplace starts Pecola‟s journey from being an innocent, troubled little girl to becoming insane. While Pauline is
downstairs collecting, the laundry Pecola accidentally knocks over a blueberry cobbler. Instead of comforting
Pecola, Mrs.Breedlove scolds her. She hits Pecola and calls her a crazy fool before she walks over and comforts
the Fisher girl. Even the fact that the white girl can call her Polly while Pecola has to call her Mrs. Breedlove signals
her mother‟s preference for the white girl. Furthermore Pauline does not seem to want to acknowledge that Pecola
is her daughter.
Pick up that wash and get on out of here, so I can get this mess cleaned up” … As Pecola put the laundry
bag in the wagon we could hear Mrs Breedlove hushing and soothing the tears of the little pink-and-yellow girl…
“Who were they, Polly?” “Don‟t worry none, baby.” She whispered, and the honey in her words complemented the
sundown spilling on the lake” (p.85).
An already troubled girl once again gets proof that she is not loved and not wanted. To be rejected by the
person who should love Pecola the most must have had a detrimental affect on her already frail self-esteem. As a
result of Pauline‟s indifference to Pecola, she aligns herself with white beauty standards to be loved by her parents
and by black community, but What finally drives Pecola to insanity is being raped by her father and becoming
pregnant by him. His rape of his daughter (twice) is linked with his childhood trauma, with being raped culturally by
two white hunters. He takes out his childhood trauma on her daughter who is absolutely helpless and weaker than
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him. When Pecola has gone mad we learn that Mrs. Breedlove‟s betrayal may be equal to Mr. Breedlove‟s abuse.
Pecola told her about the rape and Mrs. Breedlove did not believe her. Instead of helping, Pauline beat her and
almost killed her. The audience realizes that Pecola was not just raped once, but that it happened twice. Pauline
allowed the abuse to continue because she did not possess the ability to break away from her husband. She had
no one to turn to and nowhere to go. Because of Pauline‟s compulsory loyalty to Cholly, Pecola speaks to her
imaginary friend about it after she has gone insane:
“I wonder what it would be like. Horrible. Really? Yes. horrible. Then why didn’t you tell Mrs. Breedlove? I
did tell her! I don’t mean the first time. I mean the second time when you were sleeping on the couch. I wasn‟t
sleeping! I was reading! You don’t have to shout. You don‟t understand anything do you? She didn‟t even believe
me when I told her. So why didn’t you tell her about the second time? She wouldn‟t have believed me then either.
You’re right. No use in telling her when she wouldn’t believe you” (p.158).
Black women and Racism
Racism is defined as discrimination or prejudice against a person or group based on their race. In
Morrison‟s The Bluest Eye, Pecola Breedlove as the protagonist of the novel is pressed and victimized by different
types of racism. In general sense of racism she is pressed by white community due to her black race. For instance,
when Pecola walks to the grocery store to buy Mary Janes candy, she encounters “the total absence of human
recognition, the glazed separateness” (Morrison 1970: 36). Mr. Yacobowski cannot acknowledge Pecola‟s
presence as a subject because he simply cannot look at her, “How can a fifty-two-year old white immigrant
storekeeper… see a little black girl?” (p.36). Pecola is also pressed by Internalized racism which results from the
psychological programming by which a racist society indoctrinates people of color to believe in white superiority. In
Morrison‟s The Bluest Eye Pecola Breedlove as a young black girl who can‟t see her own beauty is trapped in this
kind of racism. She believes she would be pretty, happy, and loved if only she had blue eyes.
“Each night with out fail, she prayed for blue eyes. Fervently, for a year she had prayed. Although
somewhat discouraged, she was not without hope. To have something as wonderful as that happen would take a
long, long time. Thrown in this way, into the biding conviction that only a miracle could relieve her, she would never
know her beauty. She would only see what there was to see: the eyes of other people” (p.35).
One of the points Morrison is making The Bluest Eye is that the self-contempt and self- hatred cannot end
until African-Americans view themselves differently. As long as Pecola only achieves her value through the
judgements of others she will feel like she is not beautiful and worthy. Toni Morrison‟s acclaimed novel, The Bluest
Eye demonstrates a remarkable attempt to tackle the complex symbolism behind this ritualized valuing of blue eyes
and blond hair. Through the tragic narrative of protagonist Pecola Breedlove and her quest for blue eyes, Morrison
explores damaging assumptions of immutable inferiority forcibly imposed upon the Black female body.
Alice Walker, acclaimed Black feminist and poet in reaction to idealizing and valuing white beauty
standards such as blond hair, blue eyes and straight hair says: “once you dred your hair, everything falls into place.
I could not have written The Temple of My Familiar with straight hair, what I call „oppressed hair‟… I would like to
say to other Black women looking at me and my hair… You don„t have to be afraid… you can just be free” (Byrd &
Tharps, 2001: 127). As prior to the popularization of the afro, Black women were expected to straighten their hair as
a measure of white modernity and cleanliness, Alice Walker in her statement motivates black women to love
themselves and their cultures and not to trap in white beauty standards.
In Toni Morrison‟s The Bluest Eye, Pecola starts a process of enchantment with white beauty when she
spends a short time in Claudia‟s family. She lives with the McTeers after her father sets fire on their house. At
Claudia‟s house, Pecola‟s association with white supremacist aethetic values and capitalist society‟s ideals begins
with her admiration of young white artist Shirley Temple, whose beauty and blue eyes become extremely appealing
to her. Claudia tells that “we knew she was fond of the Shirley Temple cup and took every opportunity to drink milk
out of it just to handle and see sweet Shirley‟s face”( Morrison, 1970: 23). Pecola‟s identification with Shirley
Temple‟s beauty and blue eyes leads her to reach to dangerous conclusions that she and her family are ugly and
that if she had blue eyes her life and her family would be different, that is, beautiful and love deserving. She feels
so miserable that, in order to cease that distressing feeling, she will have to find a way to possess blue eyes.
Claudia tells that it occurs to Pecola, from time to time, that if her eyes were different, beautiful,
“she herself would be different [...] If she looked different, beautiful, maybe Cholly – her father – would be
different, and Mrs. Breedlove too. Maybe they‟d say, why, look at pretty-eyed Pecola. We mustn‟t do bad things in
front of those pretty eyes” (p.46)
She takes solace in eating the candy, but more importantly, in symbolically digesting the smiling picture of
the blue eyed, blond-hair little girl on the wrapper, “She eats the candy, and its sweetness is good. To eat the candy
is somehow to eat the eyes, eat Mary Jane. Love Mary Jane. Be Mary Jane”(p.38). In this process, Pecola chooses
and internalizes within herself the values of white superiority values. To Pecola, blue eyes, blond hair and white
skin equals beauty, which leads to happiness. Thus she consequently lives a life of self-hatred, and inevitable
destruction. It is difficult to fault a young girl for this misinterpretation. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison presents the
whole community as having taken the white criteria of beauty for their own.
“Adult, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, windows‟ signs, all the world had agreed that a blue-
eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured” (p.14).
Pecola is not alone in the internalization of the white-defined standard of female beauty. This phenomenon
is also tangible in Pauline‟s preference for the little white girl she cares to her own daughter, Pecola.
Pauline gives up on her own family and takes refuge in the soft beauty surrounding the Fishers‟ home.
When she speaks to Pecola and her friends, her voice is like “rotten pieces of apple, but when she speaks to the
white girl, her voice is like honey” (p.78).
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Internalized racism often results in intra-racial racism, which refers to discrimination within the black
community against those with darker skin and more African features. We see this phenomenon illustrated in The
Bluest Eye when Pecola is treated unfairly by other black children and even by her own mother for having darker
skin, while another black child, the light-skinned Maureen Peal, is treated by the same black youngsters as if she
were superior to them. Pecola‟s victimization stems from the interracial and intra-racial racism she has to face with
in her black community. Pecola‟s existence becomes severely complex because, on the one hand, she in
oppressed by the white world and, on the other, the conflicting black community does not help her overcome her
identity crisis. Pressed by the two cultures, especially by the concept of beauty subscribed by the black
neighborhood, Pecola‟s uncritical encounter with the two worlds intensifies her identity crisis. The instances of
intensification in Pecola‟s identity, self and humanity crisis will be related to the intraracial conflicts she has to deal
with in her own black community. These problems derive from the wrong views these black people have of beauty,
by means of which they judge others. For instance, at school, classmates and teachers ignore Pecola and
antagonize her simply because she is ugly. Teachers do not look at her and, when schoolmates want to be
particularly offensive to a boy, they say: “Bobby loves Pecola Breedlove” (p.46). On the street, Pecola is also
insulted because she is not beautiful. For instance, beautiful young mulatto Maureen Peal cries at her: “and you
ugly! Black and ugly e mos, I am cute” (p.73) Later, at Louis Junior‟s house, light-skinned Geraldine finds Pecola
playing with her son and insults her because of her darker skin. “You nasty little black bitch. Get out of my house,”
(p.92). Geraldine yells. These light or dark-skinned blacks, the teachers, the boys, Maureen, and Geraldine are also
influenced by Anglo- American values and therefore, victimize Pecola and make fun of her ugliness, from the
experience they have with white beauty. Thus, oppressed by the beauty conflicts she has to deal with in the black
community, Pecola, later, re-addresses her search for identity, self and humanity and naively aligns herself with the
white world. As she does not find sensitive and civilized living within the black community she embraces the white
world, hoping she will find it there. In her mind, she wants something only the white world can give her: blue eyes,
and the elimination of her ugliness. She believes that this sort of trade is possible, but this is not as simple as that.
Pecola‟s submission to the Anglo-American ideals of beauty is neither a simplistic attempt to get rid of her ugliness,
nor an emancipatory way to buy sensitive and civilized living, but is the way she trades identity, self and humanity
for beauty. Finally, impressed by both interracial racism and intraracial racism, she goes mad believing that she
possesses blue eyes.
Negro double-consciousness and Womanism
Du Bois defines „double consciousness‟ as a dual positioning – as a Negro and as an American –a
duplicated awareness loaded with the angst of living in the American world which “yields him no true self-
consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world”(Du Bois, 1993: 364). He
characterizes the Negro two-ness as: “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 asunder” (p.364-365)]. The
central point in Du Bois words is that the American Negro wants to exist completely and live fully, as a Negro and
as an American, with no unbeatable constraints to professional gains, personal self-realization and emotional
affirmation.
In the African-American literary tradition, writers in general, and women writers in particular, create special
strategies to deal with the American Negro‟s double-consciousness. In their works, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker
associate the Negro two-ness with womanism and its conceptual and practical implications. In her insightful essay
In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens (1983), Alice Walker defines “womanism” as the way black women draw
attention to their racial selfhood, identity and energies. She explains that “womanism” has to do with the black
woman who displays “outrageous, audacious, courageous or willful behavior”, wants “to know more and in greater
depth than is considered „good‟ for one” and is “interested in grown up doings” (Walker, 1983: 11). Walker also
reminds us that a womanist is “a woman who loves other women, sexually and/or non-sexually. Appreciates and
prefers women‟s culture, women‟s emotional flexibility, and women‟s strength”, “Committed to survival and
wholeness of entire people, male and female”. “Loves struggle, Loves the Folk, Loves herself. Regardless” (p.11).
In this section, the article argues that whether or not in their specific moments of their lives, female
Negroes, in their quest for self-realization behave as different stances of Alice Walker‟s womanistic ideals. In
Morrison‟s novel The Bluest Eye (1970), Pecola Breedlove represents the combination of womanistic two-ness with
a personal search for identity, self and humanity. During her search, she develops an uncritical submission to the
values of white beauty and abandons black culture. Her naive attitudes toward the ideals of the white world echoes
the intellectual Negro‟s deferential disposition toward the Western parent, the attitude West claims to be inadequate
for a Negro. Pecola aligns herself with whiteness and unwisely associates her search for identity, self and humanity
with the aesthetic values of Anglo- American culture. She innocently believes that she can fuse white beauty with
her black body and life simply through a strong desire to possess blue eyes. The result of her wrong aesthetic
investment are the devastating consequences of her dream, which make her succumb to the her succumb to the
damaging effects of the white values, which systematically deny black identity, self and humanity. In her quest for
the ideals of the beauty sponsored by the white world, Pecola goes through a psychological imbalance and her
madness defers her dream of building her own sort of identity, self and humanity. Though deferred and symbolized
in a naïve womanistic “outrageous, audacious, courageous or willful behavior”, (Walker, 1983: 11) to use Walker‟s
words, Pecola‟s dream of sensitive and civilized living, associated with an uncritical quest for beauty, does not
seem to have been in vain, or useless, for those who know her in the black community, as Claudia wishes to tell 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 simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with
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health, her awkwardness made us think we had some sense of humor. Her inarticulateness made us believe we
were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous ” ( Morrison, 1970: 205).
What Claudia seems to be telling us is crucial: that Pecola‟s search for identity, self and humanity, the
madness resulting from her tragic plight, and uncritical submission to the standards of beauty valued in black and
white worlds, allow black community to reelaborate a conscious evaluation of both Pecola‟s experiences and its
own black image. Pecola Breedlove strategically aligned herself with white supremacist ideals of beauty, assumed
the spell of the blue eyes, was unable to integrate the black and white worlds and was used by her community as a
tragic instance of black self-image. Different from Pecola who perished under the enchantment of whiteness,
Claudia and Frieda MacTeer strongly allied themselves with their Black culture and theology, sacrificed their
insertion in the white world and, therefore, consciously refused to integrate the two worlds. In Morrison‟s novel The
Bluest Eye, Claudia and Frieda MacTeer as Pecola‟s intimate friends, in their quest for self-realization behave as
different stances of Alice Walker‟s womanistic ideals. Claudia and Frieda MacTeer have impulsive characters. They
assert their beliefs rather than fawning upon others‟ fixed ideas. Claudia felt discomfort when she was given a blue-
eyed Baby Doll because if she tried to take the role as a mother of the doll, it was so hard, sharp, and cold to hug or
sleep with. However, she knew that all the other people believed that the doll was exactly what she wanted. So she
was bewildered, frustrated, and tried to “examine it to see what it was that all the world say was lovable” (p.21). She
broke the doll apart to discover why everyone says, “pretty” to the doll or white girls but not to her. In other word,
she dismembered the white baby dolls which represented not only the white standard of beauty but also the white
domination of society over the black community. When Claudia and Frieda see that Pecola is bullied by nasty boys,
they fight against the boys without fear in a hand-to-hand battle, and then when they see Maureen harass Pecola,
they join forces against her. Even though they are astonished by Maureen‟s devastating confidence in her own
predominance, their self-esteem does not waver. On seeing that Pecola herself is just folding into herself and doing
nothing, Claudia and Frieda become irritated with her. While they grasp Pecola‟s grief, her pain antagonizes them
and they “wanted to open her up, crisp her edges, ram a stick down that hunched and curving spine, force her to
stand erect and spit the misery out on the streets” (p.73). Claudia and Frieda‟s anger stem from their self-love or
self-affirmation and they believe these concepts should be equal among their folks. They believe in their value
standards, and their own worth, so they try to analyze and fight against the absurd value standards of beauty and
justice. They do not like Saturdays because they feel miserable when they have to take a bath. They were still in
love withthemselves at that time. “We felt comfortable in our skins, admired our dirt, and could not understand this
unworthiness. Jealousy we understood and thought natural --- a desire to have what somebody else had; but envy
was a strange, new feeling for us” (p.4). In the novel, When Pecola‟s pregnancy reveals the cruelty and
irresponsibility of the black community, Claudia and Frieda listen for any adult to express compassion or sorrow for
Pecola,
They were disgusted, amused, shocked, outraged, or even excited by the story. But we listened for the
one who would say, "Poor little girl," or, "Poor baby," but there was only head-wagging where those words should
have been. We looked for eyes creased with concern, but saw only veils (p.190).
In their innocence, an innocence which they will lose, Claudia and Frieda decide to help Pecola. They are
unaware of their powerlessness, “Our limitations were not known to us--not then” (p.191). They have developed
strategies to deal with and defend themselves against the adult world, “we had become headstrong, devious and
arrogant. Nobody paid us any attention, so we paid very good attention to ourselves” (p.191). They are also
unaware that in helping Pecola and preserving her baby they are asserting their own value and their own beauty.
To help Pecola and her baby, they agree to sacrifice something important to them, so they plant the money they
collected and the marigold seeds, thereby giving up their hopes of getting a bicycle.
Claudia and Frieda can be considered as perfect examples of womanistic characters, as successful
characters in following different instances of Walker‟s womanistic ideals. For example, the dismemberment of the
white doll by Claudia, Claudia and Frieda‟s reactions to nasty boys as well as Maureen who bully Pecola, display
this Walker‟s womanistic ideal that both are “outrageous, audacious, courageous and willful” in their behaviors.
Their anger at Pecola‟s grief, their insistence on forcing her to erect as well as their insistence on feeling
comfortable in their skins represent these Walker‟s womanistic ideals that both “love other women sexually or non-
sexually” as well as both “Love the Folk, Love themselves”. Their innocent act of burying the marigold seeds and
money to save Pecola‟s baby denotes this Walker‟s womanistic ideal that they are both “committed to survival and
wholeness of entire people male and female”.
In opposition to Claudia and Frieda who were successful in following Walker‟s womanistic ideals to love
both themselves and Pecola, Pauline Breedlove failed to follow Walker‟s womanistic ideals because Pauline
Breedlove found no way to fight against the impoverishment and loneliness given by her idle and drunken husband,
by her white hostess, who owed her eleven dollars, by the community member‟s unfriendliness, and by the white
ideal she could never attain. Thus she could only hate herself, her husband and children. Pecola did not possess a
mother who taught her self-love because the mother was also the victim of her immediate environment, which
finally pushed her to disguise her blackness by taking refuge in the white master‟s home. In short, Both Pauline and
Pecola were victimized by racist and sexist crises in the novel for defying Walker‟s womanistic ideals. In contrast
both Claudia and Frieda managed to survive the racist crises through their womanistic behaviors.
2. CONCLUSION
In Morrison‟s The Bluest Eye Pecola, the protagonist, aligns herself with whiteness and unwisely
associates her search for identity, self and humanity with the aesthetic values of Anglo-American culture. She
defies the Walker‟s womanistic ideals and naively gives up her black body and life simply through a strong desire to
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possess blue eyes. The result of her wrong aesthetic investment are the devastating consequences of her dream,
which make her succumb to the damaging effects of the white values, which systematically deny black identity, self
and humanity. In contrast, Claudia and Frieda MacTeer in their quest for self-realization behave as different
stances of Alice Walker‟s womanistic ideals. Claudia and Frieda MacTeer have impulsive characters. They assert
their beliefs rather than fawning upon others‟ fixed ideas. Thus they can cope with problems and eventually survive.
REFERENCES
1. Byrd, A. D., Tharps L. L (2001). Untangling the roots of black hair in America, New York: St.
Martin‟s Griffin Press.
2. Du Bois, W. E. B (1993). “The Souls of Black Folk”. In Krumholtz.
3. Morrison, Toni (1970). The Bluest Eye, New York: Plume, 1994.
4. Walker, Alice (1984). In Search of Our Mothers‟ Gardens. Womanist Prose by Alice Walker. San
Diego, New York, London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
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