Race In The Bluest Eye

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Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eyes addresses the ideas of beauty and race throughout the story. She then explains and show how these ideas can burden and corrupt people she projects those ideas of beauty and race amongst the character where the effects are usually are fatal.Focusing on Morrison’s idea of race, Racism is portrayed as one class being oppressed by another class and in this book Racism can be seen as one classes characteristics oppressing another class.The way this is approached is the characters in the novel are somewhat forced to internalize a set of values that are basically...broken. The black community in the novel has accepted white standards or values which were cleanliness,beauty, purity and innocence. Constantly throughout…show more content…
Geraldine is motivated by the “ugly side” of blackness, something that her and others around her have been shown all their lives. Geraldine believes that in order to be respectable, she must be clean, and her obsession with multiple forms of cleanliness takes over her life. A incident that occurs is when Geraldine,“saw the torn dress, the plaits had come undone, the muddy shoes with the wad of gum peeping out from between the cheap soles, the soiled socks…” and immediately classifies Pecola as a nigger a person who is nothing more than pure trash. her classifying her as trash shows you the mindset of Geraldine, she thinks “ Colored people were neat and quiet; niggers were dirty and loud. (page 87)” Due to her obsession she develops this way of being ashamed of her own physical appearance. As a result she tries to separate herself and her family from appearing black by straightening her hair, using lotion on Junior's skin to keep it from “becoming ashen”, and keeping her home unnaturally clean. Also, sex becomes something that she must endure because she is married. In the book sex seems to be something that could be categorized as dirty and clean and can lead to the despise of some characters. To unwrap the idea of Geraldine not liking sexual intercourse it represents another kind of experience. Her sense of worth as a woman still comes through her relationship with her husband. The husbands of women like Geraldine marry them because they cook, clean, and take care of the house, which is the natural thing a women should do and could be classified as the stereotypes for a white wife. Although sex for her wasn't physically painful, she is unable to enjoy sex because it is seen as a burden that she must endure because she is married and could be considered as something dirty and as said before dirtiness is related to blackness and in no

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