UNIT 1 THE BLUEST EYE : BACKGROUND - eGyanKosh

U N I T 1 THE BLUEST EYE : BACKGROUND

Structure

Objectives Introducing Toni Morrison Toni Morrison-Life and Works 1.2.1 Toni Morrison-A Chronology 1.2.2 Novels 1.2.3 Salient Points concerning Toni Morrison's Life and Art A Note on Terminology The Bluest Eye 1.4.1 Genesis of the Novel 1.4.2 Autobiographical Touches 1.4.3 Title of the Novel Summing Up Questions Further Readings

1.0 OBJECTIVES

The Unit is meant to introduce you to Toni Morrison who is the most important African American novelist and to her first novel, The Bluest Eye (1970).

Toni Morrison (1931-)

The ~ l u e s t Ere 1.1 INTRODUCING TONI MORRISON

I have used the author's name in place of the name of the text purposely. I want you to go beyond The Bluest Eye which is of course the prescribed test. Rcading and coming to grips with it is most important but bardly ever enough. Read at least one other novel of hers-read Belovc d which in many ways is even a more absorbing novel. This will help to strengthen your grip on The Bluest Eye, give you a fbller understanding of Toni Morrison and also equip you better to face your euaminatron.

In Huckleberrj) Finn you were introduced to a white American writer, Mark Twain. writing about a runaway black slave in the company of a white boy. In The Bhiest Eye we skip almost eight decades and we read about the doomed quest of a young poor black girl-child for blue eyes in racist America.

As you read the novel I would like you to keep the following questions in mind:

1. What particular areas of black experience has the writer chosen to focus on'? 2. Is Pecola's quest for blue eyes hers alone or is it something wider'? 3 . How do blacks view themselves in the novel? Is there a similarity in their

points of view? 4. How do whites appear in the novel?

While looking'for answers, keep comparing The Bhesl Eye with Ht~ckleberry Finn and other texts in your course, which present blacks and their esperience.

-

1.2 TONI MORRISON-LIFE AND WORKS

1.2.1 Toni Morrison-A Chronology

193 1 18 Feb born Chloe Anthony Wofford in Lorain. Ohio to George Wofford and Ramah Willis

1953 B.A. Howard University m Wash~ngton. D C 1955 M.A. Cornell University: worked on alienation in the works of William

Faulkner and Virginia Woolf f ~ r her M.A. hssertation; Instn~ctor in Engl~sh at Texas Southern University, Houston, 1955-57.

1957 Instructor in English at Howard University, 1957-64 1958 Marries the Jamaican architect, Harold Mornson. 1964 has two children. Harold Ford and Slade Kevin. divorces Harold Morrison. 1965 Senior Editor, Random House in New York CiQ . 1 970 The Bluest Eye. 1971 Associate Professor of English at State University of New York at Purchase.

197 1-72 1973 Szlla. 1 974 Edits The Black Book (mthology) 1975 Receives National Book Award nom~nation and Ohioana Book Award for

Szcla 1977 Song of Solomon (Book-of-the-Month Club Selection). recelves Nat~onal

Book Cr~tlcs Circle Award and the Anerican Academy and Institute of Arts arid Letters Award for Song of Solomon, visiting lecturer at Yale Uni\erslt~. 1976-77.

1980 Member, National Council on the Arts. 198 1 Tar Baby; elected melrlber of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and

Letters.

Schhveitzer Professor of Humanities at the State University of New York at The Bluest Eye : Albany, 1984-89. Baclcgruuncl Play Dreaming Emmet first produced at Albany N.Y. on Jan.4; rcceives the New York State Governor's Art Award; visiting lecturer, Bard College, 1984- 88. Beloved; Regent's Lecturer at Univerdty of California, Berkeley. Pulitzer Prize for fiction and Robert F. Kennedy Award for Beloved; receives Melcher Award and Columbus Foundation Award; receives Elizabeth Cad? Stanton Award from National Organisation 6f Women. Robert F. Goheen Professor of Humanities at Princeton University: wins the Modem Language Association of America's Commonwealtl~ Award in Literature. Jazz; Playing in the Dark:. Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, a book of literary criticism; edits Race-ing Justice, En-Gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill. Clarence Thomas, and the Construction of Socinl Reality. Nobel Prize for literature; delivers the Nobel Lecture. Nobel Lecture published. Paradise.

1.2.2 Novels

Sula (1973)

As in The Bluest Eye the focus in her second novel Sula (1973) is on women, this time on friendship between two women, Sula and Nel. This subject, according to the writer. is special, and different and has never been depicted as the major focus of a novel before Sula. Nel is a traditional nurturing woman whereas Sula represents the New World adventurous woman. Morrison presents them as complementary opposites and explores their relationship not only to one another but to the co~nmuriity as well. Some critics see the novel as undermining the centrality of heterosexual or ron~antic love

Song of Solomon ( 1 977)

This novel of Toni Morrison's brought her national recognition. It received thc National Book Critics Award and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award. It was also the first book by a black author since kchard Wnght's Natlve Son in 1940 to be a Book-of-the-Month Club main selection.

Based on the Africa11 American folktale about the oppressed Africans who flew back to Africa to escape slavery, the novel is an exploration of the fabulous past of a black family living in a small industrial city on the shores of Lake Michigan. The quest for family fortunes and roots is undertaken by Milkman Dead who goes to Virginia for this purpose. But there is no hidden gold and at the end we see Milkman and her aunt Pilate reburying her father Jake's bones on Solomon's Leap. Milkman's unwilling search for identity ends with his acceptance of his personal and familial past. The novel is rich in elements of fantasy, fable, song, allegory and story-telling and evidences Morrison's delight in the use of language.

Tar Baby (1981)

As the preceding three novels, Toni Morrison's concern in Tar Baby (198 1) is with the quest for wholeness. But this quest is conducted in a setting in which the whites are a dominant presence---Valerim Street, a retired candy manufacturer and Margaret his second wife, who o v a an island in the Caribbean and live there along with their black servants Sydney and Ondine. Their niece Jadine is Valerian's protege and has been educated in Paris. 1 ' 1 ~c writer studies the convulsions caused in this "yaradisal" atmosphere by the el itry of a black youtlg man Son There are no easy choices for

The Bluest Eye Jadine and Son who are united by their passion for each other but drift apart because of their different values.

The novel uses the folktale of the tar baby to suggest that Jadine and Son are the tar baby or a trap for one another that prevents them from realizing themselves. 'Ibr flab!. is a complex examination of the dilemma of blacks in contemporary America and of their relationship to the whites.

In Beloved (1987) Morrison shifts her focus again and retells the story of slavery and the sufferings it entailed. Set in 1873 a id based on a real life incident in which Margaret Gamer, a slave wonian killed her child in order to save her from slaven.. Morrison combines free play of imagination with histov to represent the iniplications of slavery both for the fomier slaves and for their cultural descendants. Shc had discovered the story while editing The Black Book. The writer's narrative is multidirectional and polyphonic. Among the several voices we hear are those of Sethe the slavemother, Baby Suggs, her mother-in-law,kaul D. Sethc's lover. and most insistent of all, Beloved the child who Sethe mercy-killed but who haunts the house and who later becomes flesh to live in it. Making use of folk motifs and practices and the oral tradition of story-telling, Morrison explores the meaning of freed0111 and nnotlierhood and love.

Juzz (1992) forms the second novel of Morrison's trilogy on love. Like Rek~wd. .Jazz too was sparked off by a real life incident-a photograph of a young girl who \\as shot by her lover at a party but who refuses to identifir her assailant. The photograph \\as taken by the great African American photographer James Van Der Zec and \I as ii-icluded in Camille Billops's The Harlem Book of the Dead.

'The novel tells the story of the 50-year-old Joe Trace's killing of his teenaged paraniour Dorcas and his wife Violet's attempt to disfigure her [Dorcas's] face during her funeral. Set in the Harlem of 1920s, the novel makes use of jazz as its structuriilg principle. Like Faulkner, Morrison lets the readers view the happenings from several points of view, not only as the oinniscieiit narrator sees them but from the points of view of several other characters also including that of Malvonne, Joe's neighbour. Rose Dear, Violet's mother, True Belle, her grandmother, Alice Manfred. Dorcas's aunt and Felice, her girl friend. The novel and Morrison's book of critical essays- Y l a y i ~ g in the Dark also published in 1992 were both reviewed on the front page of the New York Times Book Review.

The summaries of Toni Morrison's novels have I hope given you some idea of thc range and complexity of her work, her roots in African American histon. and oral tradition and the innovative narrative techniques used in her novels. Her primc focus is what it meals to be an African American, particularly an African American woman in white America.

1.2.3 Salient Points concerning Morrison's Life and Art

On the basis of the outline of Morrison's biography and the accarnt of her uorks and her interviews the following points could be made:

Toni Morrison was born and brought up in Lorain. Ohio. which is In tlic north but her maternal grandparents had emigrated from Alabanaa to Ohio in order to escape racism aid poverty and to find greater opportumities for their children. Her father likewise left Georgia to escape the racial violence rampant there. She grew up in what has been called "a vilxant African American culture." In k ~ r interview Toni Morrison talks o f the rich cultural and imaginative life of her family. Part of the fanlily entel tainrnent \+as telling stories, particularly ghost stories at which her father excel 'ed. Her

grandmother would ask her about her dreams and from this she learnt not to hide the "secret," "unwashed self' that gets expressed in dreams. She also developed respect for her southern roots.

The Bluest Qr : Bacligrountl

A Word About Ohio

Ohio is central to Toni Morrison. The Bhre'st Eye is set in Lorain, Ohio, Sula is set in Medallion, Ohio and her inasterpiece Beloved is also set in post-Civil War Ohio.

Ohio is crucial in Toni Morrison not only because she was born there but also because the state was one of the major stations on the Underground Railroad and it represented "an escape from stereotyped black settings being neither plantation nor ghetto." Like Pauline Williams in The Bhlest Eye, her mother's family shifted from Alabama to Lorain, Ohio via Kentucky, and again like Cholly her father shifted from Georgia to Loraine, Ohio. There were steel mills in Ohio, which held promise of jobs to aspiring migrants from south. Other gpenings included serving in white households.

2. Morrison inherited a legacy of resistance to oppression and exploitation. She often tells the story of her mother's letter of protest to Franklin D. Rooscvelt against being given insect-infested flour when the family received public assistance.

3. Morrison workedun the theme of alienation in the works of William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf for her M.A. dissertation. Both these authors were concerned with the inner life of their characters and were known for their innovative styles. These were to be important elements in Morrison's own novels later on.

4. Morrison and the Black Experience:

According to the well-known African American scholar W.E.B. Du Bois, American hstorians were trying to exclude African Americans from American history. But. as Du Bois claimed, "the black experience stood at the centre of national history." Retrieving the history of this black experience, 'the presence and the heartbeat of black people'2 was, according to Toni Morrison, of the utmost importance for establishing the identity of African American people.

Her novels could be seen as part of t h s process of recovering the past. This process involves not only recovering but also reconstructing and re-visioning the past with the help of creative imagination. The two novels where this process is most obvious are Beloved (1987) and Jazz (1992).

5. Morrison and Women Characters:

In a 1986 interview Toni Morrison explained that she came to writing fiction because she felt that "There were no books about me, I didn't exist in all the literature 1 had read . . . this person, this female. this black did not exist. . . ."' So she stepped in to fill the vacancy.

In the beginning she was "just interested in . . . placing black women center stage in the text, and not as the all-knowing, infallible black matriarch but as a flawed here, triumphant there, mean, nice, complicated woman, and some of them \\in and same of them lose. I'm very interested in why and how that happens. but here was this vacancy in the literature that I had any familiarity with and the vacancy was me. or the women I knew. So that preoccupied me a great deal in the beginning" (Christina Davis: 4 19).This explains her focus on Pecola and Claudia and Frieda in The Bluest Eye (1970) and on Sula and Nel in Sula (1973).

'_

The Bluest Eye Later on she was also to be "interested in the relationships of black nxn and black women and the axes on which those relationships frequently turn, and how they complement each other, fulfil one another or hurt one another and are made whole or prevented from wholeness by things that they have incorporated illto their psyche" (Christina Davis: 4 19)

6. Morrison and Black Audience:

Toni Morrison specifically addresses black Americans. She says she has no intention being "universal," "a word hopelessly stripped of meaning for me. Faulkner wrote what I suppose could be called regional literature and had it published all over the world. It is good-and universal-because it is specifically about a particular world That's what I wish to do." She rejects the suggestion that 'Yo write for black people is somehow to diminish the writing." For she said - "From my perspective, there are onl!. black people" (Thomas LeClair: 374).

In a 1986 interview she uncompromisingly narrows her audience to include only black American women: "I write for black women. We are not addressing the men, as some white female writers do. We are not attacking each other, as both black and white men do. Black women writers look at things in an unforgivingoving way They arc writing to repossess, re-name, re-own'' (Sandi Russell: 46). She refers to the black woman writer's "unblinking gaze" citing Gloria Naylor's description of the rape scene in The Women of Brewster Place and says that several white women writers had this uncompromising female gaze but no white woman writer had yet explored the roots of racism as deeply as their black contemporaries.

She however clarified elsewhere that she did not write'"*!+-omen's literature as such. I think it would confine me. I am valuable as a writer because I am a woman. because women, it seems to me, have some special knowledge about certain things. [It comes fiom] the way in which they view the world, and fiom women's imaginati~n. '~

7. Morrison's Views on Art:

For Toni Morrison writing novels is not indulgence in "some private closed exercise of my imagination," nor is it a fulfilment of some "personal dreams." A black art~st. for her, "is not a solitary person who has no responsibility to the community" (Christina Davis: 418-19). The best art, she says, is political. It must "effect change- improvement-take cataracts off people's eyes in an accessible way. It may be soothing; it may be painful, but that's his [the writer's] job-to enlighten and to strengthen . . ." But if she thinks that a novel has to be "socially responsible." she at the same time acknowledges that it must be "uncompromisingly beautiful" as well.'

In another interview she said she wrote what she called "village literature. fiction that is really for the village, for the tribe. I think long and carefully about what my novels ought to do. They should clarrfL the roles that have become obscured: they ought to identifl those things in the past that are useful and those things that are not: and they ought to give nottrishment" (Thomas LeClair, 370).

8. Morrison and Orality:

As a student of Howard University, Morrison joined the Howard University Pla!,ers and her experience with this group taught her much "about voice. pitch and nuance." No wonder Toni Morrison is so particular about the oral quality of her work.

9. Morrison and the Reader:

Toni Morrison believes in a close relationship between the writer and the reader She "expects, demands participatory reading." She says that her "language has some holes

and spaces so that the reader can come into it." She hopes that her books won't provide "easy, passive, uninvolved and disengaged experiences--television experiences . . . I won't do that" (Christina Davis: 4 19). She wants a mentally alert reader who thinks and participates and helps in constructing the meaning of the text.

1.3 A NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY

I While reading about African American writing you will come across several terms used to describe it-Negro literature, black American literature, Afro-American literature and Afiican American literature. Of these the first is no longer in use. Between Afro-American and African American, the latter is preferred because presumably it gives full weightage to the two components in the literary heritage-- African and American. The term black American literature, however, continues to be acceptable.

I 1.4 THEBLUESTEYE

The Bluest Eve : Background

The Bluest Eye 1.4.1 The Genesis of The Bluest Eye

In her Afterword to the Penguin edition of the novel Toni Momson recounts an incident that led first to a short story and then to the novel.

One day a girl in her school expressed a wish for blue eyes. The younger Morrison fclt ansry at this: "The sorrow in her volce seemed to call for sympathy, and I faked it fcr her, but, astonished by the desecration she proposed, I 'got mad' at her instead "" Toni Morrison recalled the incident some 20 years later in the 1960s when the black leaders were shouting, "Black is beautihl" in assertion of their racial pride. The result airas a short story which she wrote in 1962 for a writer's workshop she attended whle teaching at the Howard University. The story elicited a favourable response from some members of the group.7

She took it up again for revision in 1964 (after she had divorced her husband in 1964 and had settled in Syracuse with her two sons). The novel was only three-fourths complete when she sent it to an editor who liked it. Thereupon the novel was completed and published in 1970.

1.4.2 Autobiographical Touches

The genesis of the novel in a childhood incident has already been pointed out. Toni Momson insists that her novels are not autobiographical. But there are some parallels between some details in The Bluest Eye and her own life experiences.

l 3 e story is set in the town of Lorain, Ohio where she had grown up. The MacTeer girls Claudia and Frieda are roughly of the same age that the younger Toni Momson and her elder sister would have been in 1941 when the novel is set. Like her mother, Mrs. MacTeer likes singing. dnd like her father, Mr. MacTeer throws a man down the stairs and a tricycle after him when he suspects him of molesting his daughters.

As pointed out earlier, Pauline. Williams' family shfts from Alabama to Kentuck! and then to Lorain, Ohio. And a& like father, Cholly moves from Georgia to Lorain, Ohio.

1.4.3 Title of the'Novet

The story of the novel deals with thc tragic search of a poor black girl for blue eyes. But why 'the bluest eye'? -

This is obviously a'kference to the American myth of success and the sense of competition according-to which you need to be always ahead of your neighbours or those you know. The title shows that the blacks have absorbed this sense of competitiveness as well as the white standards of beauty symbolized by blue eyes That is why Pecola is not satisfied when as she thinks Soaphead Church has 'given' her blue eyes. She wants them the bluest of all.

1.5 SUMMING UP

n i s Unit tries to put you in possession of facts concerning the life and work of Toni Morrison who is among the foremost African American writers writing today. I have also given you some details about her first novel The Bluest Eye (1970) includmg its genesis in a childhood incident.

! 2

. ~ ~ ~-~~ ~~ -.pp......-.-...-- ~~~- ~ .

1.6 QUESTIONS ---

I . I would like you to go back to your test The Blriesr Eye and think of the questioi~s raised ill 1.1 above.

2. On the basis of the novel, what can you say about the attitude of 'Toni Morrison towards the whites?

1.7 FURTHER READINGS

Cooper-Clark. Diana. 'Toni Morrison,' in Interviews with Contemporar~ Wrrter:~. Houndmills: Macmillan. 1986. 190-2 1 1.

Davis, Christina. "Interview with Toni Morrison." in Toni Morrison: Criticnl Perspectives Past and Present. Eds. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and K.A. Appiah. 4 1 2-20.

LeClair, Thomas. "The Language Must Not Sweat," A Conversation with Toni Morrison," in Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. 369- 77.

Lester, Rosemarie K. "An Interview with Toni Morrison, Hessian Radio network: Frankfurt, West Germany," in Critical Essays on Toni Morrison, 47-54.

Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Ejle. Picador, 1970. All hrt!!er references to the ilovel will be indicated by the abbreviation BE followed by the page numbers.

Russell, Sandi. "It's O.K. to say O.K." [An Interview essay] Critical E:ssays on Toni Morrison. Ed. Nellie Y . McKay, 43-46.

'The Bluest Eye', in Literature and Its Times, Voluine 4, Joyce Moss and George Wilson. Detroit: Gale. 1997.

UNIT 2 A BRIEF VIEW OF AFRICAN AMERICA% LITERATURE

Structure

Objectives Introduction Harlem Renaissance Social Changes and Civil Rights (1940-60) The Black Power and Black Arts Movement (1960-70) African American Women's Writing since 1970 Summing Up Glossary Questions Further Readings

2.0 OBJECTIVES

Unit 2 aims to give you a very brief idea about the main developments in Afncan American literature, particularly the literature of African American women writers. This will help you to place Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye in the context of African American literature and understand it better.

2.1 INTRODUCTION

The birth of African American literature is an evidence of the irresistible human urge for freedom and for freedom of expression. Slavery is described as being "naturally and necessarily" the "enemy of literature."' Yet ironically, it provided a fertile ground for the creation of a new literature that was produced by the oppressed and that indicted the oppressors.

Africans were considered an inferior race incapable of producing literature. The Scottish philosopher David Hume suspected the Negroes to be "naturally inferior" to the whites and that there never was "a civilized nation of any other complexion other than whitemg Imrnanuel Kant, the German philosopher held that the Negroes of Africa had by nature "no feeling that rises above the triflingm" and that they were fundamentally different from the whites in the "mental capacities as in color." Chiming in with these views was the view of Thomas Jefferson who said in his Notes on the State of Virginia (1787) that Phillis Wheatley's compositions [she was the first African American poet] were "below the dignity of criticism."" Yet the same African Americans produced a literature that has both richness and variety. It is a literature of pain and survival, of struggle for freedom and equality and of the quest for identity. It is a literature that records their triumphs and defeats, their fears and dreams.

The oral tradition of this literature began in the form of spirituals, blues, ballads. sermons and folktales which both cheered the slaves and also gave them comfort.

Its written forms included early poetry of Phillis Wheatley published in 1772 and several slave narrative written by slaves themselves or their sympathetic white masters- But whether poetry or slave narratives, or in other forms, early African American