The larger issue of the relationship between theory, fiction and experience provides the backdrop for a study of constructions of home in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Beloved. Feminist standpoint theory contends that knowledge is socially and historically constructed. Using the home as a category of analysis, I show how Morrison's constructions of home are located within specific socio-economic, racial, and political contexts which mold the novels' characters. Both feminist standpoint theory and the novels develop a notion of "positionality"--one's location within a larger social and historical network. Differences in focus do exist, however, which stem from their respective developmental and experiential contexts--one being primarily theoretical and scholarly, and the other being the complex literary and fictional mediation of a political experience. Unlike the theoretical articulation of concepts of the standpoint, fiction offers a complex perspective that may, in turn, be used to inform discussions of political and epistemological concepts.

Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye from 1970, shows how the upbringing and society's norms can affect a young girl in an African-American society, where racism and a feeling of inferiority is the standards. Pecola's wishes for blue eyes since that may make her part of a world where she has never belonged. Her wish is not only a futile attempt to be looking differently but also a wish for a better life.

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To Carry History in One’s Body – Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome in Toni Morrison’s Novel The Bluest Eye. The world in which we live in is dominated by ideology. This essay will explore the ideology of racism and investigates how it operated during and after the slave trade in the USA. The main focus is how the racist ideology has affected the black community in the USA during the first decades of the twentieth century. When the traumatic events of the slave trade ended the black community never got the chance to heal from the several hundred years long trauma. Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye depicts a community in pain due to the racist society that surrounds them. It is set in a time after the First World War when black families aimed to establish a stable life but were hindered due to various reasons. Therefore, this essay uses Joy DeGruy’s thoughts on the matter of trauma in the black community in the USA. By using her book Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy Of Enduring Injury and Healing along with Frantz Fanon’s iconic text Black Skin, White Masks this essay investigates how the legacy of slavery has affected the black community after the slave trade. This essay looks into the following behavioral patterns, formulated by DeGruy: Vacant Esteem, Ever Present Anger and Racist Socialization. / Världen domineras av ideologier. Denna uppsats utforskar rasismens ideologi både under och efter slavhandeln i USA. Uppsatsens huvudfokus är hur den rasistiska ideologin har påverkat den svarta befolkningen i USA under nittonhundratalets första årtionden. När slaveriets trauma tog slut fick det svarta samhället aldrig chansen att bearbeta och läka det flera hundra år långa traumat. Toni Morrisons roman The Bluest Eye skildrar ett samhälle som präglas av smärta till följd av en rasistisk omgivning. Romanen utspelar sig efter första världskriget, en tid då svarta familjer ämnade etablera ett stabilt liv men som av olika anledningar hindrades. Denna uppsats använder Joy DeGruys tankar om trauma hos det svarta samhället i USA. Hennes bok Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy Of Enduring Injury and Healing tillsammans med Frantz Fanons nyckeltext Black Skin, White Masks används i denna uppsats för att undersöka hur slaveriet påverkat det svarta samhället efter dess avskaffande. Uppsatsen tittar närmare på följande beteendemönster, som formulerats av DeGruy: Vacant Esteem, Ever Present Anger och Racist Socialization.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:45:33Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Luciana Duenha Dimitrov.pdf: 2042178 bytes, checksum: fc578e0ab9aa394548d39d8a17c560d8 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-01-30 / In this study, racial prejudice is the basis of Toni Morrison s The bluest eye, despite not being the only aspect evidenced in the novel. What should be spotlighted as well is how the time is deconstructed; the evident presence of several discourses that can rise racism up, or bring it down; and the strong influence of colors in the conception of scenes that, in some of the narrative moments, can be associated with pictorial images. When the facets mentioned among many others are put together, there is the achievement of a great result in the novel s aesthetics. The main goal of this study is to exploit those aspects, looking forward to establishing those inseparable relations between the novel s main theme and its form, in order to consolidate their relevance both to the romance s construction and constitution. / Neste trabalho, o preconceito racial que fundamenta The bluest eye, de Toni Morrison, não é o único aspecto em destaque no romance; merece ser ressaltada igualmente a forma como se desconstrói o tempo, a coexistência de discursos que ora enaltecem, ora abominam o racismo, a forte influência de cores na concepção de cenas que, em muitos momentos, podem ser associadas a imagens pictóricas. A confluência desses e de outros tantos aspectos sem dúvida contribui para o excelente resultado estilístico alcançado na narrativa. O objetivo, aqui, é explorar tais aspectos, buscando essas relações indissociáveis entre o tema central e a forma, no intuíto de comprovar sua relevância para construção e constituição do romance.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Secrets and silence appear frequently in the work of Toni Morrison. In three novels, The Bluest Eye, Jazz, and Paradise, she repeats a specific phrase that acts as a signal to the reader. Morrison three times writes, “Quiet as it’s kept” in her novels to alert readers to the particular significance secrets and silence play in these novels. Morrison portrays this secrecy and silence as a barrier to building strong communities and even a strong self-identity. While the phrase appears in the same form, with each subsequent appearance, Morrison takes the idea a step further. In each novel she demonstrates how breaking the silence and refusing to keep quiet is an act of healing or salvation and she expands this healing to be increasingly inclusive. What begins as a single voice breaking the silence in The Bluest Eye becomes a group of people sharing their secrets in Jazz, and finally an entire town coming to terms with the power of speaking up. This thesis looks at the secrets and their impact on characters in each novel and explores the progression of the power in refusing to keep quiet.

Coffins, Closets, Kitchens, and Convents uses anthropologist Liz Kenyon's categories of home, Gaston Bachelard's theories on the importance of imagination and metaphor in home building, as well as literary criticism, sociology, and feminist theory to examine values of "home" in various literary works of the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. This dissertation's focus on the struggles within traditional home spheres highlights the female characters' need of a protected space. Yet these characters realize they must allow for connections with various individuals to bring about such a safe space. Through the creative act of writing, Mary Leapor's Mira in the poem, "Crumble Hall," Samuel Richardson's title character in Clarissa, and Toni Morrison's Claudia MacTeer in The Bluest Eye and the convent women in Paradise, each oppressed within the home sphere, gain full access to all that the idealized home entails in constructing their individual homes; they rewrite space into a home of their own. The chapters herein are organized from lower-class to higher-class female characters beginning in the eighteenth century with Leapor's servant narrator and moving up to Richardson's higher-class character, followed by Morrison's twentieth century impoverished youth in The Bluest Eye and variety of women both impoverished and well-off residing together in a convent in Paradise.

This essay focuses on the way in which three narrative devices expand upon three types of love depicted in Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye. The three narrative devices examined in this essay are narrator, paratext and the irony of the Breedlove family name. These devices all serve the purpose of conveying different types of love in Morrison’s novel and how these types of love affect the characters of the novel, especially the protagonist Pecola Breedlove. Narrator plays an important role because the narrative voice changes throughout the novel, shifting between Claudia MacTeer and a third-person omniscient narrator. This shifting perspective shows the reader how the types of love affect Pecola both through a child’s perspective and as well as through third-person narration. The Dick and Jane paratext contrasts the Breedlove family to white American ideals of familial love and happiness. Finally, the lack of familial love within the Breedlove family truly shows the irony of the Breedlove family name. The lack of love forces Pecola to internalize her self-hatred while the destructive, distant and judgmental relationship between Mrs. Breedlove and Pecola causes both characters to become delusional and dissatisfied with their sense of self. Friendship is the only place where Pecola finds love, shown to her by Claudia and Frieda; however, Pecola has already descended too far into madness for their love to help her. Although Pecola should find solace in the three types of love that are presented through the novel’s narrative devices, they all contribute to her disillusionment and, ultimately, her descent into madness.

Stereotypes and myths are created by media to simplify and mystify reality. The two are used to form negative stereotypical images that are used as tools of social oppression in today’s white patriarchy. This essay will focus on how Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye depicts black womanhood and motherhood and resists the reductive images of black women through the narrative technique. In the text we find the stereotypical images of the Mammy and the Matriarch in the character Pauline "Polly" Breedlove, both simplifying and mystifying black motherhood but also condescending towards African-American family constellations. The text resists these images by making readers inhabit Polly who at first fits in to the two archetypes, only to then give us additional information and use an engaging narrative technique that invites the reader to decide if Polly really is the Mammy and the Matriarch.

This study examines intersectionality, white privilege and essentialism in Toni Morrison’s stories The Bluest Eye and “Recitatif”. Moreover, intersectional markers are taken into consideration to analyze how the characters are advantaged or disadvantaged in the white dominant society of the two novels. Additionally, white privilege is compared to the lack of privilege that the black characters experience and how that further affects them is discussed. Furthermore, the issues that critical race theorists acknowledge with the essentialized approach in movements for social justice will be connected to Morrison’s stories. More specifically, the tendency to overlook intersectionality when essentializing women’s experiences will be connected to how the realities of Morrison’s multidimensional female characters cannot be generalized. In addition, the negative effects white standards of beauty have on the black female characters in The Bluest Eye are examined. It is concluded that black female subjectivity makes the reader better understand the intersectional experiences of the characters and this subjectivity also makes white privilege visible in the stories. Additionally, in “Recitatif”, where the reader does not know the specific race of the characters, conclusions can be made about how race and class intersect by considering historical aspects and how signs of white privilege show up in the story. Although, more important than deciding the race of Morrison’s characters, is for the reader to acknowledge the challenge she creates of considering intersectionality in the story.