The Bluest Eye: Driven to Madness by Dick and Jane

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he Bluest Eye, written by Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, was inspired by a conversation with a childhood friend just as the two young Black girls were entering elementary school. With sorrow in her voice, Morrison’s friend wished to have blue eyes rather than the brown ones she was born with.[1]

Morrison came to realize that “implicit in her [friend’s] desire was racial self-loathing.”[2] And, as she explicitly states in the book’s forward, the focus of The Bluest Eye is:

How something as grotesque as the demonization of an entire race could take root inside the most delicate member of society: a child; the most vulnerable member: a female.[3]

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The Bluest Eye is a veritable case study in why books about diverse characters (like those that continue to be targeted for banning) are so important. And, why making sure they remain available is vital to a healthy society.

During her speech at the Nobel Banquet, Morrison spoke of future laureates. And how their “voices bespeak civilizations gone and yet to be; the precipice from which their imaginations gaze will rivet us; they do not blink nor turn away.”[4]

Morrison doesn’t blink or turn away either in her examination of the potentially disabling effects that result from racial self-loathing, from “accepting rejection as legitimate, as self-evident.”[5]

In exploring the social and domestic aggression that could destroy a child psychologically, Morrison formulated a series of rejections – some routine, some exceptional, and some downright monstrous.[6]

And, it’s these scenarios, and the language Morrison uses to communicate how damaging internalized racism can be that are cited as reasons for the book’s frequent bannings.[7]

In an effort to dramatize the devastation that even casual racial contempt can cause, Morrison chose a unique and extreme situation rather than a representative one.

Despite the singular nature of Pecola’s life, however, Morrison considered aspects of her “woundability” to be lodged in all young girls.[8]

As Morrison also notes, centering the novel on such a vulnerable and fragile character as Pecola required a delicate balance. Otherwise, readers would be led into “the comfort of pitying her, rather than into an interrogation of themselves” regarding the racial climate and demonization that ultimately crushes her.[9]

The first words uttered by Morrison’s narrator Claudia MacTeer in her telling of Pecola’s story are, “quiet as it’s kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941.” This opening statement is significant because marigolds are associated with optimism, joy, and good luck. They often appear in literature as symbols of “growth, resilience, and the ability to thrive in adversity.”[10]

At first, Claudia and her sister Freida thought their seeds were the only ones that didn’t sprout. Planting them was their attempt at a form of “magic,” in the hope of manifesting a positive outcome for the circumstances Pecola found herself in as a result of the abusive and unnatural nature of her situation.[11]

Claudia blamed herself for the seeds’ failure to grow. Like Frieda said, she must have planted them too deep. But such was not the case – nobody’s seeds germinated. As Claudia also notes, it never occurred to them “that the earth itself might have been unyielding.”[12] 

It speaks volumes that The Bluest Eye’s main character is named for the daughter in the film Imitation of Life, a film that addresses the cultural bias of whiteness as the standard for beauty and acceptability.

Significantly, the origin of Pecola’s name is brought to the reader’s attention by Maureen Peal, a light-skinned classmate – one Claudia describes as “a high-yellow dream child.”[14]

Maureen embodies the colorism that occurs within the Black community, the result of a prevalent “whiter is better” cultural bias.

She enchanted the entire school. When teachers called on her, they smiled encouragingly. Black boys didn’t trip her in the halls; white boys didn’t stone her, white girls didn’t suck their teeth when she was assigned to be their work partners; black girls stepped aside when she wanted to use the sink in the girls’ toilet, and their eyes genuflected under sliding lids.[15]

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And Maureen was aware that she was at the privileged end of this artificial beauty spectrum. When Claudia confronts her with the phrase, “you think you so cute” during a clash revolving around stereotypes of blackness and acceptability, Maureen responds with:

I am cute!

And you ugly! Black and ugly black e mos. I am cute! [16]

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Claudia describes the effect such colorism has on a young psyche:

We were sinking under the wisdom, accuracy, and relevance of Maureen’s last words. If she was cute—and if anything could be believed, she was—then we were not. And what did that mean? We were lesser. Nicer, brighter, but still lesser.[17]

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Lesser…  like the dandelions that lined Garden Avenue on Pecola’s way to the grocery store. She recognized the beauty in their bright yellow heads, however, wondering why people call them weeds, and see them as something to be eradicated from a “nice” yard.

There’s science confirming the negative psychological effects on Black children when “society says it is better to be white,” as Dr. Kenneth B. Clark put it. It’s a form of minority stress, psycho-social stress caused by chronic exposure to the social stresses minority individuals face due to their stigmatized status. Minority stress differs from general stress – the kind all of us may experience – because it is born of stigma and prejudice.[18] Those like the emotions Claudia endures, embodied in her experience with Maureen.

In the 1930’s, social and developmental psychologists Dr. Clark and his wife Mamie Phipps Clark conducted a series of techniques designed to “investigate the development of racial identification and preference” in African-American children.[19] Among them, was the iconic “Doll Study,” which was cited in the Supreme Court’s decision to end school segregation.[20]

As the Clarks’ published study indicates, 253 African-American children between the ages of three and seven were:

presented with four dolls identical in every respect save skin color. Two of these dolls were brown with black hair and two were white with yellow hair. In the experimental situation these dolls were unclothed except for white diapers. The position of the head, hands, and legs on all the dolls was the same. [21]

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The children were asked to respond to a series of questions by choosing one of the dolls and giving it to the experimenter. Approximately two-thirds of the children indicated they liked the white doll “best,” or that they would prefer to play with the white doll. And that the white doll is a “nice doll.”[22]

The other side of the proverbial coin reveals an accompanying negative attitude toward the brown doll. Less than forty percent of the children thought the brown doll had a “nice color.” With a significant majority indicating that the brown doll “looks bad.”[23]

Claudia’s observation about her Christmas gift is clearly an allusion to the Clarks’ Doll Study, remarking that “adults, older girls, shops, magazines, newspapers, window signs—all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured.”[24]

In addition to the doll technique, the children in the Clarks’s study were given a Coloring test. Each child was given a sheet of paper with the “outline drawings of a leaf, an apple, an orange, a mouse, a boy, and a girl.”[25]  They also received a box of crayons containing the usual assortment, which included “brown, black, white, and tan.”[26]

To establish that there was a stable concept of the relationship of color to object, the children were first asked to color the objects and the mouse. If the child passed this portion of the test, they were directed to color the figure of the child the same gender as were, the one that represented them. And, they should color the figure the same color they were.

The children were then asked to color the remaining figure the color that they like little boys (or girls) to be.

Like the Doll Study, this test revealed patterns indicating the racial preferences and identification of these children. In the main, responses fell into three categories: “reality responses, phantasy responses, and irrelevant or escape responses.”[27]

Reality responses are precisely what it sounds like. These children colored the outline figure of a child with a color very similar to their own. Phantasy responses were those where the child colored their representation in a color significantly different from their own skin color.

Then there’s the irrelevant or escape responses. These occurred when a child (who had colored the leaf, apple, orange, and mouse in realistic colors) colored their own representation or preference “in a bizarre fashion” – purple, green, or red, for example.[28]

And, unlike the children in the realistic and phantasy categories who colored themselves with painstaking care, those with escape responses engaged in “marked random scribbling” when asked to color themselves.[29]

Pecola’s “madness” at the end of the book, her belief that she had attained blue eyes is  obviously an escape response of the utmost degree.[30]

Though Pecola’s situation was intentionally extreme, as Morrison states in the book’s forward, she didn’t want to “dehumanize the characters who trashed Pecola and contributed to her collapse.”[31] Bearing this in mind, The Bluest Eye is clearly more than a story of how internalized racism affected a single child. It’s a study of the damaging effects internalized racism has on entire communities.

We’ve already met Maureen— who is light-skinned, and as such, benefits from the “whiteness is better” system.

Then there are people like Geraldine, “thin brown girls who have looked long at hollyhocks in the backyards… and like hollyhocks they are narrow, tall, and still.”[32]

It’s significant to note that hollyhocks represent ambition, fertility, and abundance.[33] And, unlike the marigolds, they are blooming.

The defining characteristic of such girls is their careful efforts to, as Morrison puts it:

Get rid of the funkiness. The dreadful funkiness of passion, the funkiness of nature, the funkiness of the wide range of human emotions. Wherever it erupts, this Funk, they wipe it away; where it crusts, they dissolve it; wherever it drips, flowers, or clings, they find it and fight it until it dies. They fight this battle all the way to the grave. The laugh that is a little too loud; the enunciation a little too round; the gesture a little too generous. They hold their behind in for fear of a sway too free; when they wear lipstick, they never cover the entire mouth for fear of lips too thick, and they worry, worry, worry about the edges of their [straightened] hair.[34]

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This response to internalized racism is what Dr. Ibram X Kendi refers to as Assimilation –Black individuals (in this case) who strive to keep their blackness in check and conform to white society’s notion of beauty and acceptability.

This “dueling consciousness” may seem to nourish Black pride by demonstrating that Black people are capable of achieving this standard. But, it also cultivates a shame with its implication that there is something behaviorally wrong with Black people… at lease those other Black people.[35]

Such denial of one’s body and culture, attempting to modify nature and one’s heritage, results in Geraldine’s vicious son Junior. He has grown up absorbing his mother’s white upper-middle-class values.[36]

This includes the distinction we continue to hear regarding the difference between “colored people” and “n—-rs.”[37] Morrison undoubtedly chose both words carefully and  intentionally, to make a point about the negative effects of racism.

Geraldine made it clear to Junior in no uncertain terms that he “belonged to the former group.” And by implication, his superiority to and therefore right to bully, the latter group – those she deemed “dirty and loud.”[38]

Morrison describes the Breedloves’ poverty as “traditional and stultifying,” though not unique.[39] Their inability to break out of their situation, however, was ultimately a result of their unshakable belief that they were “relentlessly and aggressively ugly.”[40] In other words, they had completely internalized the anti-Black bias prevalent in society, and accepted the rejection as legitimate, resulting in a powerful sense of self-loathing.

It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question. The master had said, “You are ugly people.” They had looked about themselves and saw nothing to contradict the statement; saw, in fact, support for it leaning at them from every billboard, every movie, every glance. “Yes,” they had said. “You are right.” And they took the ugliness in their hands, threw it as a mantle over them, and went about the world with it. Dealing with it each according to his way.[41]

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Mrs. Breedlove’s internalized ugliness and self-loathing played a fundamental role in her sense of martyrdom. She held her husband Cholly as a model of failure and sin – endured him “like a crown of thorns, and her children like a cross.”[42]

Like a lot of victims of self-loathing, Cholly was violent, and dangerous. His ugliness manifested in behavior, violence directed toward petty things and weak people. As well as a self-indulgence and depravity that “surprised himself – but only himself.”[43]

Pauline was one of the few things abhorrent to Cholly that he could actually touch, and therefore hurt. So, he poured out all his inarticulate rage and thwarted desires on her. By hating Pauline, he could leave himself intact.[44]

Pauline and Cholly started out as a young, loving couple. And, Cholly seemed to relish her company.  They were full of energy when they agreed to marry and go “‘way up north, where Cholly said steel mills were begging for workers.”[45]

As Pauline explains, after they landed in Lorain, Ohio:

Me and Cholly was getting along good then. We come up north; supposed to be more jobs and all. We moved into two rooms up over a furniture store, and I set about housekeeping. Cholly was working at the steel plant, and everything was looking good. I don’t know what all happened. Everything changed. [46]

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But, Pauline’s happiness started to fade as she began to feel lonely and trapped in their two-room apartment. Not only had she lost contact with her roots, she wasn’t used to having so many white people around. And, she goes on to say:

Colored folks few and far between. Northern colored folk was different too. Dicty-like.  No better than whites for meanness. They could make you feel just as no-count, ’cept I didn’t expect it from them. That was the lonesomest time of my life. I ’member looking out them front windows just waiting for Cholly to come home at three o’clock.[47]

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Cholly began to resent her complete dependence on him. They began quarreling about money, and Cholly started to drink:

Cholly commenced to getting meaner and meaner and wanted to fight me all of the time. I give him as good as I got.[48]

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During this period, the only time Pauline was happy was when she was at the movies. But one day as she took a bite of candy from the concession stand, she pulled out a front tooth. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back, as the expression goes, and Pauline Breedlove “settled down to just being ugly” – metaphorically as well as literally.[49] And, the meanness got worse.

Cholly Breedlove:

Unlike Pauline, Cholly had never experienced, or learned to develop, meaningful and healthy relationships. At four days old, his mother abandoned him in a junk heap. And when Cholly was old enough to seek out his father, the rejection came instantly and in no uncertain terms.[50]

His life was shaped by genuine suffering. The result of a myriad of defeats, emasculations, and humiliations like the one exemplified by the white men who forced him to perform sexually for their amusement – during his first teenage sexual experience, no less.[51]

Cholly embodies the sense of anger and reckless abandon that emerges when someone is unable to love or experience dignity. He does whatever makes him feel alive, including sexually abusing his own daughter. This state of mind never ends well, and leaves nothing but devastation in its wake. Though unfortunate, it’s no surprise that Cholly died alone in a workhouse.[52]

He didn’t know how to respond to Pauline’s loneliness. And her complete dependence on him pushed him over the proverbial edge, ever-further into the “model of sin” that facilitated her identity as martyr. This untenable dichotomy resulted in the brutal, physical fights that became the center of their relationship, a pattern of abuse that spilled over onto their children.

Pauline and Cholly Breedlove were among the roughly 8 million African Americans who migrated from the rural South to the urban North and West between the years of approximately 1910 and 1980 in what has come to be known as The Great Migration.

Those who migrated, as Pauline and Cholly had hoped, experienced notable economic benefits. Even after accounting for the higher cost of living in the north, migrators typically increased their earnings by 56% moving Northward. [53]

According to a recent study, however, migrators’ health outcomes typically followed a very different trajectory. Especially concerning mental health disorders, including anxiety, mood, and substance abuse disorders. A recent study indicates that approximately 35% of those who migrated to the North had a lifetime mental health disorder.[54]

Not surprisingly, one explanation for worsened mental health outcomes is a mismatch between the expectations of those who migrated and the reality of living in the North. [55]

The deterioration of the Breedlove’s relationship certainly reflects this scenario.

Pauline is not only uncomfortable being around so many white people, “northern colored folk” were different from the Black people she grew up in the South. They made her feel “no-count” as much as white people did. But, what made it even worse was that she didn’t expect such treatment from other Black people.

Though Pauline and Cholly experienced racism in the South, as indicated above, in the North they faced it pervasively. Not only from the white people she was seeing in overwhelming numbers, but from Black people like Geraldine as well.

Relocating across great distances ruptures the social support systems that were the moderating forces in their lives (although it’s safe to say that Cholly never had much of a support system).

Such a breach also contributes to deteriorating mental health.[56] Pauline was never the gregarious sort. And, due to a deformity in her foot – the result of a rusty nail “that punched clear through” it when she was two years old – she had been insulated in a “cocoon of her family’s spinning.”[57]

When she was old enough, Pauline took over the care of her family’s house. Not only was she good at housekeeping, she enjoyed it. The cleaning and daily chores provided a rhythm to her life and gave it purpose, simultaneously calming and energizing her.[58]

But in the North, when their two-room apartment wasn’t enough to feel like she was making a home, and she began feeling out of place and “no count,” Pauline no longer had the support system she did before.

Pauline describes this period as the “lonesomest” time of her life, without even a cat to talk to. All too often, she found herself sitting in front of the windows just waiting for Cholly to come home from work.[59] And, her dependence on Cholly became too much for him.

We aren’t told how Cholly died in the workhouse. But, studies have also revealed that there was a 62% increase in the rate of cirrhosis among men who relocated to the North during The Great Migration.[60] Bearing this statistic in mind, it’s very likely that cirrhosis was the cause of Cholly’s death.  It’s certainly consistent with his abuse of alcohol – which began as he felt the pressure of Pauline’s dependence, and continued to spiral out of control.

As noted above, The Bluest Eye isn’t simply the story of how internalized racism affected a single child. But, it’s also more than a study of the damaging effects internalized racism has on entire communities.

It’s important to realize that Morrison’s work also documents Claudia’s effective resistance to the racism surrounding her. As well as the development of her understanding of the forces that have destroyed Pecola .[61]

Pecola’s story, and the previously examined scenarios embodied by Pauline, Cholly, and Geraldine are merely the first stage in a framework of progression, of consciousness development. One that echoes the model envisaged by Frantz Fanon that dominated communities undergo in their relationship to the dominant culture.[62]

In the initial stage, as addressed above, the dominated community (in this case Black people) experiences a period of imitating the dominant (in this case white) culture and internalizing its views on social roles and societal standards.[63]

The second phase in this progression occurs when the minority community comes to value the unique characteristics of their identity. And, they protest the societal standards and views that have been imposed upon them by the dominant culture.[64]

Claudia’s reaction to receiving a blue-eyed Baby Doll as a gift for Christmas was a desire “to dismember it.”[65] Her visceral response is clearly a protest against the “whiteness is better” bias that has been imposed upon the Black community.

I could not love it. But I could examine it to see what it was that all the world said was lovable. Break off the tiny fingers, bend the flat feet, loosen the hair, twist the head around, and the thing made one sound—a sound they said was the sweet and plaintive cry “Mama,” but which sounded to me like the bleat of a dying lamb, or, more precisely, our icebox door opening on rusty hinges in July. Remove the cold and stupid eyeball, it would bleat still, “Ahhhhhh,” take off the head, shake out the sawdust, crack the back against the brass bed rail, it would bleat still. The gauze back would split, and I could see the disk with six holes, the secret of the sound. A mere metal roundness.[66]
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What Claudia actually wanted for Christmas wasn’t a tangible item at all. She wished for an experience, one steeped in her heritage and its traditions, a desire consistent with this stage of progression:

‘I want to sit on the low stool in Big Mama’s kitchen with my lap full of lilacs [a symbol of renewal] and listen to Big Papa play his violin for me alone.’ The lowness of the stool made for my body, the security and warmth of Big Mama’s kitchen, the smell of the lilacs, the sound of the music, and, since it would be good to have all of my senses engaged, the taste of a peach, perhaps, afterward.[67]

The final stage in this evolution is one of freedom from internalized racism. It’s grounded in self-discovery, and accompanied by a critical analysis of the dominated community’s own culture.[68]

And the closing pages of The Bluest Eye are precisely that, the now-adult Claudia’s critical analysis of the forces that destroyed Pecola – including the role that the Black community played in that destruction.

Claudia begins this self-reflection by acknowledging that she and Frieda had failed Pecola. And, by recognizing the fact that what they, and the larger Black community generally, had done was to make Pecola their scape goat:

All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed. And all of our beauty, which was hers first and which she gave to 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 health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor. Her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous. Even her waking dreams we used—to silence our own nightmares. And she let us, and thereby deserved our contempt. We honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty, and yawned in the fantasy of our strength.[69]
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She came to understand that scapegoating isn’t the answer. It didn’t change the fact that internalized racism was still at work within the psyches of the Black community:

And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life. We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth.[70]
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Claudia points out that the proverbial soil had indeed been unyielding, and finally understands that the typical response has been to “acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live.” And, that this is the wrong response.

Her most significant revelation, however, is that Pecola had possessed a beauty of her own all along. But, it was “assassinated” by internalized racism, Pecola’s own as well as that of the larger Black community.[71]

The proverbial light bulb began to flicker. And she seemed to ask herself, as Morrison had done during the 1960s’ reclamation of racial beauty, “why shouldn’t this beauty be taken for granted within the Black community, despite being reviled by others?”[72]

Claudia came to understand that this self-affirming racial beauty is what should be internalized rather than the racism that continues to oppress the Black community. And that is the most productive form of protest and resistance.

As Morrison asserted, this novel sets out to hit the raw nerve of racial contempt. Expose it. Then soothe it, with language that denotes agency.

And, her work does precisely that. As mentioned above, Morrison doesn’t blink or turn away in her examination of the potentially disabling effects that result from racial self-loathing.

The fact that a young girl like Pecola is the victim of this self-loathing, who bears deep psychological scars from the severe nature of her victimization, hits a very raw nerve indeed.

The back-stories Morrison provides for those most responsible for Pecola’s destruction exposes and addresses just how insidious racial contempt and self-loathing is. Not to mention how destructive it is to the larger Black community.

Claudia’s critical analysis of the forces that destroyed Pecola ultimately acts as a balm to soothe the raw nerve of racial contempt and self-loathing. Because in doing so, she discovers a sense of agency.

She realizes that the best form of protest and resistance to a “whiteness is better” culture is to internalize a sense of racial beauty, rather than the self-loathing that has been drilled into the Black community’s heads by a dominating white culture.

Just as Pecola recognizes the beauty in dandelions despite some people seeing them as weeds to be eradicated from “nice” yards.

Beauty, however, as Morrison points out is not simply something to behold; it is something one can do. The Bluest Eye is her effort toward that end, to dispel assumptions of immutable inferiority. But, beauty as an action is something we can all do.

It begins by understanding that the world is a heterogeneous place. Seeing the humanity and beauty in people of all heritages, ethnicities and traditions. And, realizing how destructive it is for the whole of society when one culture establishes itself as the standard for beauty and acceptability.

That’s why The Bluest Eye is such an important and consequential book. Reading it makes us aware of the insidious nature of racial self-loathing. Morrison’s work helps us understand the devastating consequences of homogenous, racially exclusivist representation in our culture. And, it calls upon all of us to self-reflect.

In doing so, Morrison makes it exceedingly clear why books about diverse characters, like the ones that continue to be targeted for banning, are so important. And, why making sure they remain available is vital to a healthy society.

That’s my take on The Bluest Eye, what’s yours?
Check out this Discussion Guide to get you started!
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Pair this with: 
The Picture of Dorian Gray: The Story of a Closeted Psyche.

Endnotes:

[1] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg XI

[2] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg XI

[3] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg XI.

[4] Toni Morrison. Nobel Prize Banquet Speech. December 10, 1993.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1993/morrison/speech/

[5] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg X

[6] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg XII

[7]  “Banned: The Bluest Eye.” American Experience. PBS.org
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/banned-bluest-eye/

[8] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg XII

[9] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg XII

[10] Gaumond, Andrew. “Marigold Flower Meaning, Symbolism, and Folklore.”  Petal Republic. September 11, 2024.
https://www.petalrepublic.com/marigold-flower-meaning/

[11] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 5

[12] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 6.

[13] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 3-4.

[14] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 62.

[15] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 62.

[16] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 73.

[17] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 74.

[18] “Black is Beautiful: The Doll Study and Racial Preferences and Perceptions.” The Legacy of Dr. Kenneth B. Clark. CUNY Academic Commons. https://kennethclark.commons.gc.cuny.edu/the-doll-study/

“Minority stress.” APA Dictionary of Psychology. American Psychology Association.

[19] Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie P. Clark. “Emotional Factors in Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children.” The Journal of Negro Education. Volume 19, Number 3 (Summer, 1950), Pg 341.

“Kenneth and Mamie Clark Doll.” Brown v Board of Education. National Historical Park Kansas.
https://www.nps.gov/brvb/learn/historyculture/clarkdoll.htm

[20] “Kenneth Bancroft Clark.” Library of Congress.
https://guides.loc.gov/african-american-innovation/kenneth-bancroft-clark

“Black is Beautiful: The Doll Study and Racial Preferences and Perceptions.” The Legacy of Dr. Kenneth B. Clark. City University of New York Academic Commons. https://kennethclark.commons.gc.cuny.edu/the-doll-study/

[21] Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie P. Clark. “Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children.” Readings in Social Psychology. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Edited by E. L. Hartley.

[22] Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie P. Clark. “Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children.” Readings in Social Psychology. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Edited by E. L. Hartley. Pg 169.

[23] Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie P. Clark. “Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children.” Readings in Social Psychology. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Edited by E. L. Hartley. Pg 175.

[24] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 19-20

[25] Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie P. Clark. “Emotional Factors in Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children.” The Journal of Negro Education Volume 19, Number 3. Pg 342.

[26] Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie P. Clark. “Emotional Factors in Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children.” The Journal of Negro Education Volume 19, Number 3. Pg 342.

[27] Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie P. Clark. “Emotional Factors in Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children.” The Journal of Negro Education Volume 19, Number 3. Pg 342.

[28] Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie P. Clark. “Emotional Factors in Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children.” The Journal of Negro Education Volume 19, Number 3. Pg 342.

[29] Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie P. Clark. “Emotional Factors in Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children.” The Journal of Negro Education Volume 19, Number 3. Pg 343.

[30] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 206.

[31] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg XI.

[32] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 82.

[33] Gaumond, Andrew. “The Story of Hollyhock Flowers: Symbolism and Folklore.” Petal Republic.
https://www.petalrepublic.com/hollyhock-flower-meaning/

[34] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 83.

[35] Kendi, Ibram X. How to be an Antiracist. New York: One World, 2003. Pg 37.

[36] Nardi,, Paola A. “’They Lived There because They Were Poor and Black’: Spatial Injustice in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.” Journal of African American Studies. Published online November 4, 2022. Pg 409.

[37] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 87.

[38] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 87.

[39] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 38.

[40] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 39.

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[42] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 127.

[43] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 38, 42.

[44] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 42.

[45] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 116.

[46] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 117.

[47] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 117.

[48] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 117.

[49] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 123.

[50] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 157.

[51]  Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 42.

[52] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 205.

[53] Ecilia Vu, et al. “The mental health toll of the Great Migration: a comparison of mental health outcomes among descendants of African American migrators.” Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology. Volume 59 (2024), Pg 1497.

[54] Ecilia Vu, et al. “The mental health toll of the Great Migration: a comparison of mental health outcomes among descendants of African American migrators.” Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology. Volume 59 (2024), Pg 1500.

[55] Ecilia Vu, et al. “The mental health toll of the Great Migration: a comparison of mental health outcomes among descendants of African American migrators.” Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology. Volume 59 (2024), Pg 1502

[56] Ecilia Vu, et al. “The mental health toll of the Great Migration: a comparison of mental health outcomes among descendants of African American migrators.” Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology. Volume 59 (2024), Pg 1502.

Dan A. Black, et al. “The Impact of the Great Migration on Mortality of African Americans: Evidence from the Deep South.” American Economic Review.

[57] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 111

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[59] Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Random House, 1970. Pg 117

[60] “Dan A. Black, et al. “The Impact of the Great Migration on Mortality of African Americans: Evidence from the Deep South.” American Economic Review.

[61] “White Oppression and Black Resistance in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.” International Journal of English and Cultural Studies
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[62] White Oppression and Black Resistance in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.” International Journal of English and Cultural Studies
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https://dn790007.ca.archive.org/0/items/the-wretched-of-the-earth/The%20Wretched%20Of%20The%20Earth.pdf

[63] Showalter, Elaine. “The Female Tradition.” A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1977. Pg 13

[64] Showalter, Elaine. “The Female Tradition.” A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1977. Pg 13

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“Lilac Flower – meaning, Symbolism, and colors.” Flower Meanings.
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[68] Showalter, Elaine. “The Female Tradition.” A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1977. Pg 13

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Images:

The Bluest Eye cover.

Pecola’s woundability is lodged in all young girls: Photo by Melanie Wasser on Unsplash

There were no marigolds in the fall of 1941: Photo by Nadiia Shuran on Unsplash

Why is the earth unyielding: The Ultimate Dick and Jane Storybook collection. Chicago: Scott, Foresman, 1940-1956. Pg 318-319.

The significance of Pecola ‘s name: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025301/mediaviewer/rm1077772290/

The Doll Study:  Parks, Gordon. Dr. Clark observing child with black and white dolls. (Courtesy of the Library Congress)
https://kennethclark.commons.gc.cuny.edu/the-doll-study/

The Coloring Test: Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

So as not to dehumanize the characters who contributed to Pecola’s collapse: “Late 1930s dresses.” 1930s Black Fashion, African American Clothing Photos. Vintage Dancer. https://vintagedancer.com/1930s/1930s-black-fashion-african-american-clothing-photos/

The biggest culprits are Pecola’s family: Photo by Savannah B. on Unsplash

But it wasn’t always that way: “How the Great Migration Changed American History.” Vermont Humanities.

Statistics on mental health issues and the great migration: “The Great Migration.” The African American Midwest. https://africanamericanmidwest.com/history-migrations/the-great-migration/

Claudia, the embodiment of protest: Photo by Aimee Vogelsang on Unsplash

Self-Reflection and Critical Analysis: Photo by Randy Jacob on Unsplash

In Conclusion: Photo by Mieke Campbell on Unsplash