Our envy of others devours us most of all. ~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn
At one point in Toni Morrison’s 1970 debut novel The Bluest Eye, a character reflects on jealousy and envy. As a child, she was familiar with jealousy — that feeling that someone else has gotten something that rightfully belongs to you. Envy, when it comes, is a new and unsettling feeling, a perception that somehow, one is lacking something. In The Bluest Eye, that something is beauty, beauty as defined by others, beauty as defined by a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed world. Morrison writes in her foreword that her intent in writing this novel was to create a “bleak narrative of psychological murder” wherein a character’s racial self loathing is fed by the community surrounding her and destroys her. She, Pecola Breedlove, is an 11-year-old Black girl whose father has impregnated her. We know this from the first pages of the novel. Morrison then takes us back in time to show us how this horrible situation came about and forward to show how it ends. This relatively short novel (200 pages) examines the ways in which white cultural norms and adult indifference toward children, especially toward girls, can cause desperation and destruction.
Morrison begins chapters with headings noting the season and sometimes with an excerpt from a “Dick and Jane” type story. As readers would already know, the Dick and Jane stories exemplified a simple, perfect white world with happy children and parents, fine homes and playful pets. The contrast to the world of 1941 Lorain, Ohio, could not be more stark. Morrison’s characters are Black; some are living on the edge economically and/or socially (such as the three prostitutes). The children are not having a “Dick and Jane” childhood. More than one Black girl is molested at the hands of a Black man. Toys and entertainments are limited. In fact, Claudia, one of our narrators, makes it clear that she loathes the white dolls that are offered her, and she hates Shirley Temple. In one of Morrison’s examples of jealousy and envy, Claudia is jealous of Shirley because she gets to dance with Mr. Bojangles when Claudia feels that that should be her right. Pecola envies Shirley’s blue eyes. Pecola thinks of herself as ugly, and that opinion is reinforced by most of the people around her — teachers, other children, even adults. She thinks that if she were beautiful, if she had blue eyes, then her life would change; her parents would love her better and become better people.
From this point in 1941, before Pecola becomes pregnant, Morrison goes back in time to tell the stories of Pecola’s parents Cholly and Pauline. Cholly, the violent alcoholic who beats his wife, has set their home on fire and impregnated his daughter, was himself an abandoned child who struck out on his own at the age of 14. He seems to have had genuine tender feelings for Pauline and showed promise as a husband at first. Pauline, due to a lame foot, was always treated differently as a child, not as one of the pack. Abetted by frequent forays to the movies, Pauline entertained dreamy and dangerous ideas of romantic love and beauty.
Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thoughts. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion.
Pauline’s dreams end rather abruptly, and she goes to work as a maid and cook for a white family. She gives up on physical beauty and instead retreats into her work: organizing, cleaning and cooking. The family praises her work and gives her a nickname, which she loves. All her attentions and hard work are devoted to that family rather than her own. Cholly and Pauline’s son Sammy has tried to run away from home more times than anyone can count. Pecola just tries to make herself invisible and prays for a miracle — that God will turn her eyes blue.
The rape of Pecola is tragic and disturbing to read, and the community’s reaction to her pregnancy is just as awful. Claudia and her older sister Frieda are the only people who seem to have any pity for the child Pecola and her unborn baby. Children themselves, they pray for a miracle, too, because as has been shown throughout the narrative, the children cannot rely on the adults to ask them questions or listen to their concerns. The “miracle” that occurs is no miracle. It is a tragedy, and an avoidable one at that. As Morrison says through Claudia,
…when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live. We are wrong….
While reading this novel I was reminded of the adage that it takes a village to raise a child. What happens when the village absolves itself of that responsibility? Abuse, self-hatred, destruction of a person’s psyche and possibly her body. Morrison’s message about beauty and how it’s defined, about raising children, especially children of color, especially girls, is as timely today as it was 45 years ago when the novel was published. It’s a powerful and heartbreaking novel.