The Bluest Eye By Toni Morrison

Humans, individually, are not evil things, but as they join society, they are dirtied and they corrupt each other. This is the Jean Jacques Rousseau style of looking at humanity. Toni Morrison’s writing in her novel, The Bluest Eye, mirrors this perspective. In The Bluest Eye, one of the main subjects discussed in the book is the matter of beauty. Beauty as a whole, Morrison argues, is one of “...the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought”(122). Morrison pursues this idea by having the lonely Pauline Breedlove become obsessed with attaining the physical beauty the sees in the movies. Pauline is morphed by the messages that society circulates about what true beauty is. Before her cinematic education, Pauline was unaware
These three women befriend Pecola and are some of the only positive influences on the young girl. One of the women in particular seems to go against every commonly held standard of beauty, femininity, and what a prostitute is. Miss Marie, also known as the “Maginot Line,” is almost brutish in her lack of care for the societal conventions regarding women. Marie is arguably the most kindhearted and content character in the book; it is implied strongly that this is as a result of her disregard for stereotypes. “Marie sat shelling peanuts and popping them into her mouth. Pecola looked and looked at the women. Were they real? Marie belched, softly, purringly, lovingly” (58). A prostitute is expected to be anything but a warm, overweight, good-humored friend of little Pecola. The naturalness of Marie’s existence speaks to the idea of beauty not being a biological principle. Marie was brought up in a world that had already been introduced to the horrors of “ideal” appearances, but she, being of a strong mentality simply chose to ignore it. Miss Marie does what she wishes, and loves whom she wants without taking social conventions to heart. For her, beauty does not exist, or at least not enough to influence her life or choices. Pecola’s questioning of the existence of the prostitutes lies in the idea of breaking their mold. Pecola wonders if these people who she has been taught to despise and degrade could be real for treating her well. She has not experienced kindness and when it is thrust upon her, it takes her by surprise. Pecola connects to the idea of being an outcast, but identifies the ways that Miss Marie and her coworkers present themselves as effective. While Pecola struggles with how to move past society’s oppression on every group of people she associates with, Marie has moved beyond that. Pecola ruminates the legitimacy of her life style because she doubts the possibility of