Not only did she not see the point of being a mother to it or finding it fun to sleep with, “I could not love it. Not only does she despise Shirley Temple, she is unable to see the beauty in the white and blue-eyed dolls she is given at Christmas. Upon seeing this, Claudia launches into a stream of thoughts that probe her feelings that are so opposite Pecola’s. For instance, the reader is offered a clear distinction between Claudia and the other women when Pecola first moves in with the family and gazes adoringly at Shirley Temple on the milk cup. She is such a beacon of hope because she is able to cast aside the notion of self-hatred, although this seems to be more because it’s in her character to do so than for any other reason. In her revelations, particularly when she reminisces, she offers a shining ray of hope in an otherwise bleak novel as far as the topic of festering black self-hatred is concerned. She is working through the culturally-confirmed ideas of white superiority as it exists in images of blond, blue-eyed, and white-skinned people as lacking substance.Ĭlaudia, particularly since she is often a child as a narrator in “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, is relatively unconcerned about adult interactions and, more importantly, not yet a part of the seething self-hatred that has crept into the lives of older girls. Morrison is offering readers a complex understanding of this self-hatred that perpetuates many of the problems characters have by first offering a solution by non-color, only to show that this leads to blindness and insanity as in itself, it is nothingness. On another level, by wishing to change her eyes and thinking that this change will allow her to see things differently, Pecola is wishing that she could blind herself from the self-hatred in her family and community. On the one hand, there is the more obvious idea that blue eyes, which are associated with whiteness (which is, in itself, a non-color) means that she will be racially accepted. By thinking that having blue eyes will make people love her, Pecola is expressing a wish that has double-significance to the main ideas Morrison is presenting for readers.
Aside from her good treatment by Claudia and Frieda, Pecola is ostracized in her community and even by her mother, who prefers cleanliness and the orderly life of the white family she works for or the simplicity of beautiful women and men on film to her real life in the storefront. The inherent sense of being ugly and unworthy is a main part of Pecola’s character as she spends “Long hours she sat looking in the mirror, trying to discover the secret of the ugliness, the ugliness that made her ignored or despised at school, by teachers and classmates alike" (45).
By the end of the novel, she exchanged her mind for the blue eyes she thought would make her loved and is even further ostracized by the community that failed to see its part in what happened. Pecola represents the most complex case of the destructive idealization of white culture and subsequent denial and obliteration of black identity and is the tragic symbol in Morrison’s attempt to detail this legacy of racism. While her mother repeatedly engaged with the notion of white superiority and neglected herself and her daughter as well as engaged in self-hatred, her case pales in comparison to that of her daughter.
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