Pecola's Ugliness

Morrison’s point is not that the social construction of white beauty uncovered by the Clarks’ study doesn’t exist, and that it doesn’t exert an overwhelming pressure on girls of any race but, rather, that the application of this phenomenon is bumpy, incomplete, complicated, and resisted (Douglas). People did not want to face the truth and wanted to keep it covered for the benefit of themselves. As a result those such as Claudia begin to grow anger and hate within themselves. Anger and hatred are not enough to fight racism because they are secondary emotions driven by shame and fear that was brought onto them by society! Claudia and her sister Frieda were not ashamed of their blackness and resist the temptation to fall for the standards of white …show more content…
Pecola would for, “...long hours she sat looking in the mirror, trying to discover the secret of her ugliness, the ugliness that made her ignored or despised at school, by teachers and classmates alike…” (Morrison 1990, 34). The impossibility of Pecola’s wish for blue eyes un-dermines her self worth. The intensity of her feelings of shame is profound indeed. That subjec-tive infringement of one’s self-respect, which stems from the imposed sense of inferiority, con-tributes to her giving in to the cultural disregard for her own race (Zebialowicz). By Pecola in-ternalizing the white standards of beauty, it lead her to a state in which she inhabits invisibility and worthlessness. Pecola does not resist to the humiliation yet she accepts the judgment, sub-mitting herself to destructive humiliation unlike Claudia and Freida. We, as readers, can suspect that Pecola blames herself not others, for not being white, but remains convinced that the social contempt for black people will not change over time and thinks that this contempt would show up in all aspects of her life (Zebialowicz). Pecola believes that all the suffering and rejection she experiences can be attributed to how she is perceived by others. As she is only able to see through the eyes of other people, she gradually loses …show more content…
Readers rec-ognize that Morrison changes the text of the family by paralleling it with the narrative. The story of the Dick and Jane family turns into chaos with the disappearance of punctuation and then spacing as the chaos in the novel continues. “However, readers are so preoccupied with stereo-types of the family, readers have not consciously acknowledged that no family members respond to the question of who will play with Jane yet this is the picture of the ideal American family which is held up as a model in the schools, magazines, televisions, posters, etc” (Bump). But in Morrison’s version, Jane is abandoned by her family.Whether or not they have the time, which there is no indication that they do, Jane’s mother and father do not play with her; nor does the dog; even “the kitten will not play.” (Morrison 1972, 3). There is a different reality behind the very happy smiling faces that are depicted within this family. Like Pecola, Jane may be an orphan within her own family. After all, the only one who will respond to Morrison’s Jane is a friend from outside the family and that is how Pecola’s story also ends, her having an imaginary