Winter
Pages 61-80
Isn't the MacTeer family a functioning traditional family? The
mother stays home and takes care of the children; the father is
breadwinner
and protector, "a wolf killer turned hawk fighter" (p. 61). Does the
imagery
Claudia uses to describe him in the first paragraph stress the gentle,
soft
aspects of nature or its harshness? Why does Morrison describe him in
the
winter section, rather than summer or spring? Is there love in his
concern
about his children's well being, which is expressed in his advice about
heating
and teaching them to control the fire? He protects Frieda when Mr.
Henry
sexually molests her; the novel contrasts Mr. MacTeer's protectiveness
with
Cholly Breedlove's treatment of Pecola and with the apathy of Junior's
father.
Maureen Peal is a "dream child" (p. 62); she embodies the
ideals by which the other girls are judged and found lacking. She fits
the standard
of beauty and dress which the black adults in this novel admire in
little
white girls. She is admired by everyone except Frieda and Claudia. The
other
girls feel and become inferior when compared to her. Claudia and Frieda
take refuge in anger and contempt, making up names about her, to
maintain
some sense of their self-worth; they refuse to bow down to her
superiority.
Almost every woman has known a Maureen Peal, whose perfections
eclipse
all the other girls and who is held up as the standard for them by
adults
and classmates. For example, my Maureen Peal was a blond-haired,
blue-eyed
beauty named Shirley Elias who suddenly appeared in the sixth grade and
instantly,
it seemed to me, became the most popular girl in our grade. I still
remember
my feelings of inferiority, jealousy, and resentment.
Morrison doesn't like Maureen or the Maureens of the world
either. In an interview with Gloria Naylor, Morrison explains that love
for her
characters is unmistakable in her writing except for Maureen Peal.
I mean we all know who she is. And everybody has one
of those in his or her life, but I was unfair to her. I did not in that
book
look at anything from her point of view inside. I only showed the
facade.
. . . And I never got in her because I didn't want to go there. I
didn't
like her. I never have done that since. I've always regretted the speed
with which I executed that girl. She worked well structurally for the
girls
and this and that, but if I were doing that book now, I would write her
section
or talk about her that way plus from inside.
Naylor comments, "Because a Maureen Peal suffered as much as a Pecola
Breedlove
in this society." Morrison fails to show the humanity of Maureen by
giving
her a voice in the novel, so that we can see how she feels and what
pains
she has experienced.
It is "a false spring day, which, like Maureen, had pierced
the shell
of a deadening winter" (p. 64). Is there a suggestion that Maureen is
in
some way false? Morrison describes Maureen's braids as looking like
"two
lynch ropes" (p. 62). Why is this image ironic as a description of a little
black
girl, however light-skinned? Her skin is a "high yellow," meaning that
she
is light-skinned. One form which the internalization of white values
took
in the black community is to judge light skin as more desirable than
dark
skin. The boys taunt Pecola by calling her "black"-- another irony,
since
they too are black. In a further ironic twist, they put her down in
this
way because of their scorn for their own blackness, "It was their
contempt
for their own blackness that gave the first insult its teeth" (p. 65).
Would it be appropriate to call Pecola a scapegoat in this
scene? A scapegoat is a person who bears the blame for the
sins, crimes,
mistakes, or misfortunes of other people. Or a scapegoat may be
someone
who suffers in the place of others. The term comes from the Bible; in a
ceremony on the Day of Atonement, the high priest symbolically laid the
sins
of the Jews on the head of a goat; the goat was freed afterward.
Morrison clearly identifies the self-hatred that motivates the
attack
on Pecola
They seemed to have taken all of their smoothly
cultivated
ignorance, their exquisitely learned self-hatred, their elaborately
designed
hopelessness and sucked it all up into a fiery cone of scorn that had
burned
for ages in the hollows of their minds--cooled--and spilled over lips
of outrage,
consuming whatever was in its path. (p. 65)
They circle Pecola, "whom, for their own sake, they were prepared to
sacrifice
to the flaming pit" (p. 65). How does sacrificing her help to save the
boys?
This way of treating Pecola is a key idea in The Bluest Eye. As
you
read, watch for ways in which others use Pecola.
Morrison uses a striking simile,
to describe the boys dancing around Pecola; they are "like a necklace
of
semiprecious stones" (p. 65). They have inherent value but a limited
value
("semiprecious") because of their harassment of Pecola and their
contempt
for themselves.
Frieda and then Claudia defy the boys. The fact that Frieda's
eyes
have their mother's expression suggests that their mother serves as a
role
model and is a source of strength for the sisters. The sisters also
have
a close relationship and support each other as allies, however often
they may quarrel. Contrast
Pecola's
relationship with her mother and her brother. Does Pecola have any
source
of strength in or support from her family?
Not to look bad in Maureen's eyes, the boys leave. Initially
the
sisters think Maureen is befriending Pecola and is going to treat them
to
ice cream cones and are revising their estimate of her. Actually,
Maureen
wants to know more about Pecola's seeing her father naked. The sisters
have
seen their father naked without any sexual implications, because of
their relationship with their father. He is their protector, the man
who loves
his children. They find his naked presence "friendly-like" (p. 72). The
process
of losing innocence can be seen in their shame "brought on by the
absence
of shame" (p. 71). In other words, they felt no shame during the
experience;
it is society that expects them to feel shame; they are ashamed because
of
their knowledge of what they should be feeling and aren't. Sociologists
call this process of accepting and internalizing society's values socialization.
The girls have a falling out, with Maureen asserting that she
is
cute and that they are ugly; she varies the boys' chant, "Black and
ugly
black e mos," to assert her own cuteness. Nature images graphically
describe
their falling out; Maureen's green knee socks look "like wild dandelion
stems"
as she runs away, and the angry sisters have faces "knotted like dark
cauliflowers"
(p. 73).
Pecola collapses inward. Her reaction angers Claudia, who
"wanted
to open her up, crisp her edges, ram a stick down the hunched and
curving
spine, force her to stand erect and spit the misery out on the streets"
(pp.
73-4). The difference in the girls is clear: Frieda and Claudia can
assert
themselves, express anger, and fight back. Pecola can't.
Because of the near-universal adoration of Maureen, which
confirms
that Maureen is cute, Claudia wonders what makes her and her sister
inferior. Thus, the sisters perceive society's view of Maureen and
accept society's
judgment and values. Claudia muses,
We were lesser, nicer, brighter, but still lesser.
Dolls
we could destroy, but we could not destroy the honey voices of parents
and
aunts, the obedience in the eyes of our peers, the slippery
light in
the eyes of our teachers when they encountered the Maureen
Peals of
the world. What was the secret? What did we lack? Why was it important?
And so what? (p. 74)
This passage shows the importance of seeing/perceiving
in the development of a sense of identity or the essential self. To
emphasize
the references to eyes, I have added italics to the above quotation.
Society's values are destructive; when the children
internalize those
values, their sense of self-worth is damaged and their sense of
identity
diminished,
Guileless and without vanity, we were still in love
with
ourselves then. We felt comfortable in our skins, enjoyed the news that
our senses released to us, admired our dirt, cultivated our scars, and
could
not comprehend this unworthiness. . . . And all the time we knew that
Maureen
Peal was not the Enemy and not worthy of such intense hatred. The Thing
to fear was the Thing that made her beautiful, and not
us. (p.
74)
The impact of the white culture and its values appears in the numerous
references to the movies and to beautiful white movie stars. Pecola
summarizes
the plot of Imitation of Life, in which "this mulatto girl
hates her
mother cause she is black and ugly" (p. 67). They pass the Dreamland
Theater
(is this an appropriate name?) and discuss their "love" of Betty Grable
and
Hedy Lamarr. Maureen tells the story of Audrey, who asked the
beautician
to fix her hair "like Hedy Lamarr's" (p. 70). Mr. Henry greets the
sisters
as Greta Garbo and Ginger Rogers.
Is there the suggestion of sexuality in Mr. Henry's hiding the
coin
and having the children pat his body to find it? If so, would this help
to
prepare for his later action in molesting Frieda?
Pages 81-93
The plain brown girls from Mobile, etc. have totally accepted
white
values, white lifestyles, and identify with white interests. They look
down
on blacks who lead a freer life or have obviously black features;
Geraldine,
for instance, distinguishes between colored people and niggers:
Colored people were neat and quiet; niggers were
dirty
and loud.... The line between colored and nigger was not always clear;
subtle
and telltale signs threatened to erode it, and the watch had to be
constant
(p. 87).
The plain brown girls reject funk, which Stephanie Demetrakopoulos
defines
as "spontaneity, sensuality, sexuality, and passion." Lacking these,
they
are not capable of loving other human beings. The black yearning to own
a home reaches obsessive proportions with these women. Because of their
sense
of place, Morrison identifies them with their home towns--Mobile, etc.
Geraldine forces her son into gentility and inhibition. His
resentment
against his mother and his anger at being controlled come out in sadism
and
in bullying girls, "It was easy making them scream and run. How he
laughed
when they fell down and their bloomers showed. When they got up, their
faces
red and crinkled, it made him feel good" (p. 87).
Morrison starts this chapter with an excerpt from the primer;
the
children play happily with the cat. In Pecola's life, the cat of the
primer
becomes the cat that Junior throws at her and that he kills. Is his
blaming
Pecola for killing the cat scapegoating her?
Geraldine sees Pecola as a type, not as an individual, not as
a needy,
innocent child. For her, Pecola represents poverty, slovenliness,
wordless
suffering, and hopelessness, "The end of the world lay in their eyes,
and
the beginning, and all the waste in between" (p. 92). Is she
scapegoating
Pecola?
What is the irony in Geraldine's ordering Pecola out of the
house
and Pecola's seeing a picture of "Jesus looking down at her with sad
and
unsurprised eyes" (p. 92)? What are the implications of "unsurprised"?
Nature imagery: Geraldine associates girls like Pecola with
grass
not growing around their homes and flowers dying. This image is
ironic,
because of the marigolds which did not grow anywhere in Loraine, Ohio,
in
1941. Pecola's psychological state is reflected in the snowflakes
"dying
on the pavement" (p. 93). She too is dying emotionally.
The chapter is narrated by the omniscient author. Morrison
uses the alignment of the margins to indicate the shift in narrator. Printers call the alignment of text at the margin justification.
Except for the introduction and last few pages of the conclusion,
Claudia's text is only left justified; this means that the left margin
is even and
that the right margin is not. The omniscient author's sections have
full
justification; this means that both the right and the left margins are
even.
Spring
Claudia sees friendliness and naturalness in the Maginot Line
(aka
Miss Marie), qualities expressed in a nature image, "Those rain-soaked
eyes
lit up, and her smile was full, not like the pinched and holding-back
smile
of other grown-ups" (p. 103). Frieda, however, being older and
terrified
of being "ruined," expresses the values of her mother and society; they
aren't
allowed in the whores' house. Why does the Maginot Line laugh and throw
the pop bottle at the children?
The affluence and order of the white section of town contrast
with
the poverty of the black neighborhood. Claudia and Frieda know not to
linger
by the park which blacks are not allowed to enter and to go to the back
door
of the house where Mrs. Breedlove works.
When Pecola tips the pie and gets burned, all Mrs. Breedlove's
concern
and reassurances are focused on the little yellow haired child, to whom
she
speaks in words of honey; to Pecola, she spits out words "like rotten
pieces
of apple" (p. 109). (Note the nature images.) The little white girl is
connected to Maureen Peel, Shirley Temple, and white baby dolls, as a
type; the connection is reflected in adults speaking to the Maureen
Peels of the world in "honey voices" (p. 74) and in the little white
girl's not having
a name. Though Maureen is black (a light-skinned black, of course), she
conforms
to white standards of appearance and behavior. Pecola, the black child
who
does not fit white standards, is rejected by her own mother for a white
child; her mother ignores the pain her burns cause her, just as
everyone
except Claudia and Frieda ignores her emotional pain.
Morrison Syllabus
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