Contrast Of Black Women's Two Responses To The White Cultural Dominance In The Bluest Eye

Toni Morrison is an outstanding African American woman writer. Beloved and Song of Solomon have been her two well-known novels. However, The Bluest Eye, one of her earliest works published in 1970, also has powerful influence in presenting the plight and struggle of black women who have long been silenced in a white and male dominated society.In The Bluest Eye, Morrison represents the voice of her oppressed black sisters and provides us with a more complicated portrayal of their psychic ordeal resulting from the impact of pervasive dominant culture on themselves, their families and black community. Though most critics pay much attention to analyzing her female characters' passive responses to the white dominance and their attendant tragic destinies, I also find the possibility of hope in the novel embodied in another group of black women's survival-oriented activities which are a form of resistance. Thus, according to the dual perspectives that this novel is meant to convey, in this thesis I will focus my attention on two kinds of black women's different choices within the context of oppression. That is to say, under the seemingly unshakable myths of hegemonic ideas which privilege white people and devalue or denigrate anything related to the dark skin, black women can choose to be internal demise by mimicry or stalwart survival by resistance against all the odds.In doing this, I will make the contrast of black women's different responses from two aspects. On the one hand I will devote one chapter to the discussion of the predicament black women face and how they deal with it revolving around the myth of the white idealized beauty. On the other hand I will make use of the following chapter to analyze how black women react to the myth of white family style which is often ignored by many critics at home and abroad. Indeed, even though the novel penetrates a black girl's poignant psychic trauma when pursuing her white beauty dream, it is also positioned in the female world of love and kinship and emphasizes family and the mutual-aid community of black women, which at least can offer someemotional and physical sanctuary against the erosion of the white cultural dominance.Therefore, by comparing and contrasting two kinds of black women's contrary responses while facing the strong impact of the culturally legitimate representations of the white dominance, this thesis aims to demonstrate that characters who lose their own identities as black women and cut off the connections with their families, community and cultural heritage, do not possess the ability to fend off the erosion of racist value systems and are ultimately caged in the pain of finding themselves. In sharp contrast, those who embrace their blackness, make tight links with their families and community, and support each other to promulgate their traditional values and beliefs, can get strength to fight against attacks from hegemonic ideas and find worth and authentic existence in the white-culture dominated world.Finally, I come to a conclusion that Toni Morrison, by her keen grasp of the way that the individual characters in The Bluest Eye react differently to the white cultural dominance, demystifies the myth of white superiority, and through the voice of a rebellious narrator, Claudia, directs all her black sisters to resist the racist values and stick to their own culture so that they will flourish as themselves.