A Dark Side to Coming-Of-Age
tw// brief mention of sexual assault
Toni Morrison explores a different side of coming-of-age in The Bluest Eye. A heavy and dark novel, the story follows eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove, an African American girl in 1941 Ohio. Through Pecola's tragic story, Morrison weaves a tale of how fraught coming-of-age can be, especially for black girls, and just how much they have to fight through to reach adulthood. For Pecola, the shear amount of aggression and hostility she has to face as she attempts to traverse her coming-of-age ultimately ends up in her collapse, going insane.
Even occurrences taken as granted as parts of a girl's transition to womanhood often have the potential to be very hard experiences, such as a girl's first period. When not explained or handled properly, the experience can be extremely isolating and scary, and can prompt feelings of terror, embarrassment or shame in the girl, which is what happened to Pecola. In addition, girls undergoing puberty often have to deal with unwanted attention and sexualization, which Pecola suffers from greatly, being raped and impregnated by her own father. When this happened, the rest of the town either turned a blind eye or treated Pecola's trauma as everyday gossip. Pecola's tragic experience depicts the hard experiences and disgusting behavior girls often have to deal with while trying to grow up, and how the rest of society seems to just allow these horrible things, or not acknowledge the struggle of being a girl undergoing puberty and reaching her coming-of-age.
Further, Pecola's race presents still more obstacles in her path to becoming an adult. An idea especially prominent in 1941, but definitely still around today, is that of anything white being beautiful and something to worship and respect, and black being ugly and inferior. Pecola suffers greatly from this ingrained ideology that society tries to impress upon the young and influential children, seeing herself as ugly, and thinking that if she had blue eyes, she would be beautiful and loved. The way society perpetuates these poisoness and harmful ideas towards certain races makes it so hard for them to grow up with healthy and positive views of themselves. A huge part of coming-of-age is figuring oneself out, learning about who you are, but it's so incredibly hard for Pecola and other African American children to do this when the rest of society is determined to make them feel worthless and lesser than.
For children like Pecola, the odds seem stacked against them, the world determined to make their coming-of-age an uphill battle every step of the way. The Bluest Eye calls attention to how certain demographics truly do face different, and often harder, coming-of-age experiences as they have to deal with certain prejudices and ideas or events that other people do not necessarily have to deal with, or even acknowledge.
I find it interesting how you're making a point using a coming-of-age narrative. In other words, you're using the book to express the hardships of growth as a girl, especially in a racist society. Instead of exclusively following Pecola's coming-of-age, you use her experiences as examples for an overall statement. One thing I noticed; however, is that she doesn't necessarily come of age, in the end. You explain all of the hardship she endured; however, there isn't much said on how she officially came of age and overcame said challenges.
ReplyDeleteI've never read this book but I really liked how you gave a different perspective of coming of age. I feel like most books and movies with a coming of age component show someone's hardship but they ultimately come out "stronger" or with a positive lesson. You briefly mentioned in the intro how Pecola ends up going insane which shows that although her hardship and challenges might've matured, they came at an irreversible cost. Her experiences that forced her to "come of age" were too much to handle and unfortunately many girls could relate to this and it caused her to go insane.
ReplyDeleteThis books sounds like a really important take on the usual coming of age narrative. From what you've described, it seems like Morrison is trying to shine a light on other types of coming of age stories (after all, everyone is different, so what defines the genre is really just what mainstream and/or white society /wants/ to see). Still, I think these stories are few and far between. The "coming of age battle" you describe seems to me like a product of a country that doesn't want Pecola to come of age, or doesn't want there to be any room for her if she does.
ReplyDeleteWow this book sounds really heavy, but at the same time, it sounds like a much-needed different viewpoint on the process of coming of age (like Eve said). I like how you pointed out that people don't come of age in the same ways, and often people are forced to come of age through trauma. A lot of the coming of age novels that I think of are usually more lighthearted, and convey the message that growing up is exciting or that it's uncharted territory just waiting to be explored. Like Raneem said, most of the coming of age novels I've read have some sort of happy ending or at the very least, a nicely wrapped up conclusion. I also think it's interesting how you touched on race, and how this can drastically affect the coming of age process. Especially in the 1940s, I'd imagine that the coming of age journey for black girls would be far different than that of white girls.
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ReplyDeleteHer story highlights so many evils in society. It made me really sad that she's so convinced that blue eyes would make her more accepted, more loved, because that's something she has no control over. My circumstances in comparison are extremely light but I remember wanting to have blonde hair and blue eyes as a kid, so i know how sad and heartbreaking that self hatred can be
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