Black Female Images In The Bluest Eye From The Perspective Of Black Feminism

Black women have always been the focus of American black woman writer Toni Morrison as a main subject of her literary creation.This thesis is intended to apply the theory of Black Feminism to interpret the black female images in Morrison's debut novel The Bluest Eye.It interprets the cruel phenomenon of the poly-chronic oppression of race,class and gender suffered by black women in America and their different destiny trends.The thesis discusses the loss of black women's identity and deconstruction of the traditional stereotypes of black women.Then,this thesis seeks to find the significance of redefining black women's self-identity,and approaches it for the purpose of reconstruction.Black feminists,scholars and writers alike have extracted and classified four kinds of stereotyped black female images that exist in literary works,that is,mammy,matriarchs,welfare recipients and hot mommas.Based on this prototypal classification,this thesis identifies four categories of black female images in The Bluest Eye,namely,mammy,matriarchs,hot mommas and little black girls.These stereotyped black female images institutionalize the intersecting oppression of race,gender and class,reinforce and legitimize the ideological oppression by the white society and patriarchal society.By analyzing the plight of the black females in the novel,this thesis interprets their process of pursuing self-identity and different responses—obedience or resistance—under multiple oppression.With that,this thesis attempts to use the black female characters' experiences to inspire black women or other female readers to respect themselves,deconstruct the false identity images,and pursue their true self-identity so as to realize subjectivity and value of the self.