The Different Effects That Society’s Definition of Beauty Can Have on Children as Found in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Anne Sexton’s Cinderella
Although some may readily say that childhood is an enjoyable experience filled with everyday learning and laughter, Toni Morrison and Anne Sexton describe childhood as something that is unpleasant to go through. With the different effects that representations of beauty in society can have on children, found in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and Cinderella written by Anne Sexton, each protagonist is a female child who has in some form endured a hardship due to their physical appearance.
In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, the protagonist of the novel is a young child named Pecola. Pecola
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The novel expresses through Pecola’s misfortunes that inward beauty is not as beneficial in society as outward beauty is. Due to her own struggles, Pecola became so obsessed and fixated on becoming a prettier, more desired individual. She grew up becoming more and more emotionally drained by the members of her community who would use her for their source of beauty. She became so obsessed with wanting to be desired that she literally became consumed by her thoughts. In order to back up the claims of her obsession, Pecola would eat candy and would literally visualize herself as a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, pretty, wanted individual. As she would consume the candy, she would visualize the idea that she was consuming the blue eyes that she so desperately sought after. She eventually made herself believe that she had blue eyes and was beautiful, which later then made her go insane. Pecola herself thought that if she could somehow change her physical appearance, that it would make her be more desired and loved, while also changing her state of mind. “It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different.” (Chapter one)
While Pecola was not the source of envy but rather the fall guy for her community, Cinderella was the cause for the green-eyed monster to come out of her stepmother and stepsisters. This is because while Cinderella
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Each piece of writing offers the notion that it pays off to be pretty. These notions are found through Cinderella’s rise to riches as the prince initially falls for her looks and through Pecola’s twisted life as she was “ugly” and wound up living with
Pecola’s misery is so complete, so deep, that she convinces herself that her only hope for a better life rests in changing her eye color. Even more pathetically, "Each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes … Although somewhat discouraged, she was not without hope" (Morrison 46). Pecola was doubly tragic in that she placed all her hope in something which could never really happen and, despite her earnest belief, change nothing if it did.
In the aftermath, there is a dialogue presented between Pecola and an imaginary friend. The dialogue includes conflicted feelings of Pecola’s rape, and her deluded thoughts of her wish for blue eyes has been granted. She believes that the changes in behavior of the people around her are because of her new eyes, and not the news of her rape. Claudia speaks for a final time, and describes the recent phenomenon of pecola’s insanity. She also suggests that Cholly, (who had since died), may have shown Pecola the only affection he could by raping her. Claudia believed that the whole community, herself included, have used Pecola as a way to make themselves feel beautiful and happier.
In recent years, there has been a growing number of parents who refuse to get their children vaccinated. It appears this refusal to vaccinate stems from a fear over the safety of vaccines, and the effect that they will have on their child. This fear is perpetuated by opinion, false studies, and conspiracy, spread by bias media outlets as well as scientists who are incentivized to fabricate this misinformation. Unfortunately, this has led to pocketed outbreaks of diseases such as whooping cough and measles. These diseases were previously a thing of the past, that is, until recently. These outbreaks have led to the tragic, and untimely deaths of several children, and has put many other children at risk. Pediatrician, Matthew Daley, and epidemiologist,
At this time black people weren’t treated with respect and were constantly discriminated against in all types of ways. Pecola grew up in a rough environment with her dad abusing her mother constantly and constantly getting in fights “Cholly and Mrs. Breedlove fought each other with a darkly brutal formalism”(Morrison 43). Pecola decided to surround herself with people that can help her like the Macteer’s. In addition Pecola believed she was ugly and reason for this was because she didn’t have blue eyes like the Shirley Temple doll that everyone adored. Pecola never tried to persevere through the tough times and make people believe that she isn’t ugly but had just settled to believing that she was granted blue eyes and just felt sorry for herself “Here was an ugly little girl asking for beauty.
In the course of The Bluest Eye, Pecola Breedlove has shown signs of low self esteem. She would always be the one to compare herself to something she admires to be beautiful. Perhaps, sometimes problems surround her get a little too much, she has not yet realized the fog will clear up. For example in the autumn chapter, a quote has said “Thrown, in this way, into the binding conviction that only a miracle could relieve her, she would never know her beauty. She would only see what there was to see: the eyes of other people.” There is no such thing as a “Pecola’s point of view”. She lives off of people's judgements and believe physical appearance is all there is to a person. Her desire to be beautiful is not having attractive long black hair and golden skin color, but blonde hair with a white pigmentation. Which causes her to dream and want even more.
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On the opposite hand, Pecola represents non-standardized tragic hero WHO continues to be a toddler way more sinned against and full of the passiveness of her surroundings than moving it. She looks vulnerable, fallible and inert receiver all the time. a toddler in whom self-loathing, self-disgust, self-repulsion and self-degradation are planted since the start of her self-fulfillment and since the beginning of her awareness of her biased and prejudiced surroundings. Like Gregor Samsa, she thinks that each one what happens round her is natural and normal; she ne'er tries to revolt or to vary her surroundings; and in contrast to Samsa, she seeks to own her look modified, thus she goes to Soaphead Church to offer her blue eyes. rather than ever-changing
There are many themes that seem to run throughout this story. Each theme and conflict seems to always involve the character of Pecola Breedlove. There is the theme of finding an identity. There is also the theme of Pecola as a victim. Of all the characters in the story we can definitely sympathize with Pecola because of the many harsh circumstances she has had to go through in her lifetime. Perhaps her rape was the most tragic and dramatic experience Pecola had experiences, but nonetheless she continued her life. She eliminates her sense of ugliness, which lingers in the beginning of the story, and when she sees that she has blue eyes now she changes her perspective on life. She believes that these eyes have been given
Anne Sexton was a junior-college dropout who, inspired by emotional distress, became a poet. She won the Pulitzer Prize as well as three honorary doctorates. Her poems usually dealt with intensely personal, often feminist, subject matter due to her tortured relationships with gender roles and the place of women in society. The movies, women’s magazines and even some women’s schools supported the notion that decent women took naturally to homemaking and mothering (Schulman). Like others of her generation, Sexton was frustrated by this fixed feminine role society was encouraging. Her poem “Cinderella” is an example of her views, and it also introduces a new topic of how out of touch with reality fairy tales often are. In “Cinderella”, Anne Sexton uses tone and symbolism to portray her attitude towards traditional gender roles and the unrealistic life of fairy tales.
She thought that if she had blue eyes, the blue eyes of the accepted white ideal, she would be beautiful and therefore loved. The acquisition of the blue eyes she so fiercely covets signifies Pecola's step into madness. It was a safe place, where she could have her blue eyes, and where she could be accepted.
No matter how ugly, mean, pitiful one can be, the family is always meant to support, raise, guide, nurture and be a means of inspiration in anyone’s life. In the novel, this isn’t the case for Pecola, which is why she gets mentally unstable as she couldn’t bear the torture of ugliness of not having blue eyes. Blue eyes are the one and only reason she could blame as per to her ability and thought process. In fact, she doesn’t get the real ugliness of how her father rapes her, the ugliness of how the mother choose the white girl over her, the ugliness of the fights between her parents is coming from their unpleasant past. After all, she doesn’t have that mentor in her life to explain what was happening. Everybody in her family is occupied with their own mindset. She is very young to understand and analyze on her own. The narrator Claudia even gets to compare between her and Pecola and starts accepting life and feel blessed for having a supportive family, which she doesn’t feel until Pecola enters in her life. So, this shows how young kids psychology is totally built upon the type of family environment she/he gets. There is a saying that young kids are like a raw clay ready to be shaped into the different form of objects by the potter. Undoubtedly, it stands so true. Indeed, kids shape themselves according to the type of environment they grow up with. By all means, Pecola’s family is the
Pecola evaluated herself ugly, and wanted to have a pair of blue eyes so that every problem could be solved. Pecola was an African-American and lived in a family with problems. Her father ran away because of crime, her brother left because of their fighting parents, and was discriminated simply because she has dark-skin. Pecola is a passive person. She is almost destroyed because of her violent father, Cholly Breedlove, who raped her own daughter after drinking. Because of this, Pecola kept thinking about her goal- to reach the standard of beauty. However, she was never satisfied with it. Pecola believed once she become beautiful, fighting between her parents would no longer happen, her brother would come back, and her father would no long be a rapist. No problem would exist anymore.
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With some background knowledge on Pauline, the mother of Pecola, it’s easier to understand some of Pecola's core traits. There are parallelisms between Pecola and Pauline. They find their reality too harsh to deal with, so they become fixated on one thing that makes them happy, and they ignore everything else. Pecola's desire for blue eyes is more of an inheritance that she received from her mother. One of Pauline’s own obsessions was back when she was fascinated with the world of the big pictures. As long as they can believe in their fantasies, they're willing to sacrifice anything else.
On the other hand, Pecola strives to achieve the ideal beauty. She wants to become the white, blonde hair, and blue eyed girl that society deems as beautiful. People commonly referred Pecola as ugly.