Tom Hopkins

Dr O’Connor-Colvin

Lit 650

12th June 2023

9-1 Submit Final Project II: Academic Essay

Toni Morrison is perhaps one of the most important writers of the 20th century. Carla

Kaplan, the Davis Distinguished Professor of American Literature and a scholar of modern,

African-American, and women’s history and culture, argues that Morrison “has done for the

modern novel what Shakespeare did for theatre” (Callahan). Morrison’s legacy is undeniable;

she is a Pullitzer and Nobel Prize winning author who, before becoming an author, worked as

a editor at Random House, giving a voice to important proponents of the Black Civil Rights

Movement, including Angela Davis, Gayl Jones, Toni Cade Bambara, and Muhammad Ali

(Callahan). As an author, Morrison carved out a space in the canon as a feminist and Black

author to be reckoned with. In her works, Morrison used many experimental modern and

postmodern literary techniques, such as fractured narratives, multiple perspectives, stream of

consciousness, framed narratives, and nonlinear time in order to convey the impacts of

racism on the Black consciousness. In fact, Chattaraj argues that her works are

groundbreaking for the ways they capture the often ambivalent psychology of marginalized

races, including the pride, melancholy, fear, love, and shame regularly experienced

simultaneously. Two of her most renowned novels, The Bluest Eye and Beloved, were both

published in the second half of the 20th century, not long the Civil Rights Movement, as well
as the Black Art and Black Power movements; more specifically, The Bluest Eye, which is

set in Ohio during the 1940s, was published in 1970, whilst Beloved was published in 1987

and is set in in the South during 1873, less than a decade after the Emancipation

Proclamation was signed. Morrison attempts to depict the conflicts and the collective trauma

resulting from American racism, specifically the psychosocial impacts of racism, beginning

with slavery, through Jim Crow era segregation, and even beyond the Civil Rights

Movement. She explores the struggles of Black Americans and portrays the Black

community’s outward and inward conflicts as a result of America’s troubled history with

race. Therefore, the final research paper will attempt to analyze the ways Morrison critically

portrays the psychosocial impacts of White hegemony on Black Americans, highlighting how

this group is defined by the dominant one, resulting in double consciousness; however, in

doing so, Morrison offers a form of resistance and encourages Black Americans to redefine

themselves.

Ethnic studies or critical race studies, at least within the discipline of cultural studies

and literature, is a critical way of evaluating the representation of various racial or cultural

groups; furthermore, this critical lens analyzes the relationships and conflicts between such

groups, the ways in which race is constructed more generally, and the sociological and

psychological impacts of such constructions, via its depictions in literature. Ethnic or race

theorists in the study of literature might also examine the literary canon, that is to analyze

what has and what has not been included in addition to how Black authors might use

literature as a form of resistance.

 W.E.B DuBois, the first African American graduate of Harvard, founder of the

NAACP and The Crisis, and renowned writer and thinker, is perhaps one of the most

important figures within race studies. In his essay “Strivings of the Negro People”, DuBois

writes of “two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one

dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” He specifically

refers to the psychosocial conflict that lies within the non-White subaltern in a White Centric

society, in his case African Americans in White America. One way this conflicted twoness

can occur is in the way Black individuals attempt to view themselves through a White lens

only to then be aware that they are treated differently (Posnock 327). This idea was later

expanded upon by thinker Frantz Fanon who, like DuBois, was also a prominent and

educated thinker who was still met with racism, chained to the ways White society defined

‘the native’ (Posnock 328). Fanon argues that the subaltern “tr[ies] to grasp his own being,”

only to have it “shattered” as an “illusion” when he is defined by the dominant group (137).

He continues to claim that when the Black community have their future and past stolen, they

lose an identity making it easier for a new construction, one which legitimizes their low

status, to be defined for them by White society (138). In his “Psychopathology of the Black

Community,” Fanon discusses the impacts of White cultural apparatuses, be it school-taught

history, a White literary canon or cinema, and even the church as constructing narratives and

binaries, such as the White explorers and Black savages, which “collapses the ego” of those

in the Black community, “stopping themselves from behaving as an actional person,” and

making “the goal” of the performance to become the Other as to have at least some worth

and space in White society (154). In other words, within a White hegemony, Black
individuals are defined by the dominant White group as being their binaristic Other, often as

passive or inferior and, in an attempt to not be antagonistic, this description may be

accommodated and reperformed rather than challenged.

Fanon’s and DuBois’s assertions are both reflected in Morrison’s work, which were

also a reflection of their place in time. Whilst The Bluest Eye is set in the 1940s and Beloved

in 1873, both were written in the late 20th century, in 1970 and 1984, respectively. In fact,

The Bluest Eye was written between "1965-69, a time of great social upheaval in the lives of

black people" (Morrison 208). This Civil Rights period was an era where Black Americans

fought inequality; but one cannot ignore the assassination of Civil Rights Activists like

Medgar Evers in 1963, Malcolm X in 1965, Martin Luther King in 1968, Fred Hampton in

1969 as part of the struggles to which Morrison refers. These leaders sought to redefine what

it meant to be Black in America, fighting for an equal space in American society, yet were

silenced and killed. Politically, Morrison’s early novels can be said to carve out a space for

Black voices in America at the time. In addition to the Civil Rights Movement, there was the

Black Arts Movement during this period which promoted racial pride and a “Black is

Beautiful” ideal. This movement defined Art as "political, anti-white, anti-American, and

anti-middleclass" which would be "meaningful to black masses and promote racial pride"

(Tally xvi). Kuzmanović cites postcolonial theorist Edward Said in reference to this, writing

that “a text represents a self-confirming will to power and possesses a voice which tries to

accomplish certain political agenda of the time it was written” (64). This is certainly true for

The Bluest Eye, wherein Morrison notes in an afterword that she wanted to capture the

“damaging internalization of assumptions of immutable inferiority originating in an outside

gaze" (206). The novel portrays Black individuals, notably Black women, belonging to a

world in which White hegemonic beauty standards, through binaries, cause them to see

themselves as ugly and feel shame.

In The Bluest Eye, Morrison uses symbolism to highlight the pervasive reverence

towards White hegemonic beauty ideals which psychologically damage the Black

community. Pecola Breedlove is a young Black American girl who comes to stay with

Claudia MacTeer where white hegemonic ideals of beauty are introduced first via the

symbolism of the Shirley Temple cup. Pecola was particularly “fond of [the cup] and took

every opportunity to drink out of it” (21). Additionally, Pecola also demonstrates a fondness

for milk which verges on fetishization. Claudia even notes that Pecola “took every

opportunity to drink milk out of it just to handle and see sweet Shirley’s face” (23).

Significantly, milk often signifies life given its associations with mothers, in addition to

signifying purity particularly due to its color. Pecola’s desire to drink milk from the cup

suggests a desire to cleanse herself inside to be beautiful outside, giving her a life she wants

within a White society. Her fetishization of the Shirley Temple cup, a famous White child

actor of the time, also highlights the damaging impacts of cinema and White dominating

culture on Black communities. At the time, there was little Black representation in positive

roles; even Hattie McDaniel, who won the first Black person to win an Oscar after her

performance of Mammy in Gone With the Wind, arguably played roles which perpetuated

limiting or damaging stereotypes (Tarmey). Pecola, therefore, only has one idea of beauty for

girls her age, and her desire to consume this ideology is manifested in her desire to drink

white milk from this cup with a White child actor’s face on it. In a White dominant society,
this dominant group defines beauty in their image, excluding people of color. This reflects

what Fanon states about attempting to relate to “white culture, white beauty, white

whiteness,” for if the Other can be accepted based on these qualities in the dominant society,

it must mean that they are truly beautiful and worthy (63). According to DuBois, “that such a

phenomenon results out of a process of internalization of negative stereotypes and attributes

associated with one’s racial group at an early stage of life” (Fitory).

Morrison also uses other symbols to signify Pecola’s desire for Whiteness and her

subsequent loss of personal value as she attempts to construct a version of herself based on

these White values. This symbolism is in the form of the Mary Jane candy, which Pecola

remembers through tears (45). She tries to escape her own Blackness by ingesting Whiteness;

in particular, Pecola wants to “eat the eyes, eat Mary Jane. Love Mary Jane. Be Mary Jane”

with “blond hair in gentle disarray, blue eyes looking at her out of a world of clean comfort”

(45). On her way to purchase the Mary Jane candy, Pecola’s innocence is iterated as walks

past a row of dandelions she describes as beautiful, wondering why parents did not feel

similarly; however, after being treated with contempt by the shop owner who sees her as

ugly, with “phlegm and impatience mingl[ing] in his voice” as he tries “not to touch her

hand,” Pecola finds the flowers ugly (47). This is a “revelation” to her, where she becomes

aware of her own position in her White society as the veil is removed. Here, Morrison

reflects the “process by which [Black girls] realize the limitations they face as an African

American child, in [...] the face of this white man” who is able to define her through

treatment (Feathers 6). Pecola’s illusion of her own ideas of beauty is shattered, leaving her

to symbolically “abandon the specificities of [her] cultural heritage, adopt an anti-racial

patriotic attitude, and, [...] assimilate with white Americans” (Fitory). This is fully

emphasized by her attitudes towards the weeds, which cause her to lose focus and trip,

feeling shame. This could be interpreted as a critique of how attempting to conform limits

progress.

The symbolism of blue eyes, from which the novel takes its name, becomes Pecola’s

focus throughout. To her, emphasized by other children, to be Black is to be ugly (71). Later

in the novel, Pecola visits Soaphead Church, a light skinned West Indian man, and failed

preacher who is now a "Reader, Adviser, and Interpreter of Dreams.” She asks him to give

her blue eyes, described by Soaphead’s narration as “an ugly little girl asking for beauty [...]

a little black girl who wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with

blue eyes (172). Soaphead’s diction of “pit” suggests that Blackness is something individuals

must escape, with its imagery evoking feelings of emptiness and fear. Soaphead, despite

showing some consciousness writing that people of color brought to America attempt to

wrongfully adopt the colonizer’s worst characteristics, still acknowledges the ideal of

Whiteness being beautiful and therefore its binary opposite being ugly. Upon granting Pecola

this wish, after having her unknowingly poison a dog, as though she must undergo further

loss of innocence, Soaphead writes a letter wherein he writes that even if others will not see

her eyes as blue, “she will. And she will live happily ever after” (180). The inclusion of this

line presents conforming to White beauty, as a person of color, instead of trying to redefine

beauty in the Black community’s own image, is akin to a fairy tale - a simple narrative all

children wish to have happen.

 In the final chapter, Pecola has undergone a transformation with her sense of self and

sanity being called into question. Her psychosis is portrayed via her conversing with herself,

absorbed in a paralyzing state of fear and anxiety, wondering whether her eyes are enough, or

if another has eyes bluer:

Please. If there is somebody with bluer eyes than mine, then maybe there is

somebody with the bluest eyes. The bluest eyes in the whole world.

That’s just too bad, isn’t it?

Please help me look.

No.

But suppose my eyes aren’t blue enough?

Blue enough for what?

Blue enough for . . . I don’t know. (201)

Trapped in her mind, Pecola’s fractured identity still cannot say for sure whether she has

reached the pinnacle of her goal, underscoring the idea that such a construct of beauty does

not exist; the tragedy is in that if such an ideal cannot exist even within Pecola’s own

thoughts, then she ceases to exist: she has no identity. Feathers argues that “it is the dark side

of double consciousness, and it arises from the fact that a little African American girl cannot

ever become white. She can’t even accomplish this in her thought life, without losing that

which is most precious to her soundness of mind: her identity” (9). Furthermore, Chattaraj

argues that Morrison’s works are groundbreaking for the ways they capture the often

ambivalent psychology of marginalized races, including the pride, melancholy, fear, love, and

shame regularly experienced simultaneously. There is a sense of absence, of something

desired which can never be attained. Pecola’s desires being unattainable creates such a

melancholic tone towards American society from the perspective of Black individuals who

are often excluded in society (Kozłowska).

Morrison’s depiction of psychological conflict and tragedy in Black characters, as a

result of being defined as the binaristic opposition to White beauty, is not limited to Pecola in

the novel; Pecola’s mother, Pauline Breedlove is another victim of double conscious after

trying to mimic the dominant White group. After going to see a movie, a cultural apparatus

which was an “education” for Pauline, she attempts to see herself through the lens of the

White community by mimicking Whiteness, although aware of her difference: She describes

how she had styled her hair like Jean Harlow, “well, almost just like,” drawing attention to

her attempt to perform a White role, but her recognition that she is still Other. This idea is

fully explored when Pauline breaks a tooth which breaks, further cementing her awareness of

difference, to which she responds by “settl[ing] down to just being ugly,” wearing her hair

back and plaited (121). Symbolically, this could be interpreted as a fracture in her idea of

whiteness, given the color of teeth, and how her now imperfect smile is a reminder of her

inability to perform a White role, the section captures the impacts of White hegemony,

resulting in internalized White supremacy within Pauline as she attempts to mimic the

dominant group, reaffirming their position in society.

Pauline’s psychology captures the feelings of fear and shame for not fitting in in

addition to the disillusionment, estrangement, and self-loathing captured when the subaltern

becomes aware of their Otherness and inability to perform like the dominant group. The fact

that Pauline attempts to mimic an actress playing a character, a literal performer and
constructed role, is significant as it underscores the idea that race is constructed through

signs, such as one’s hair. The contempt Pauline feels towards her Blackness upon her

discovery is reiterated when she refers to herself as “ugly.” Pauline tries to hide under

DuBois’s metaphorical veil, instead of ripping it off, as he suggests Black individuals should,

creating their own identity. Instead, Pauline first attempts to define herself as White, realizes

she is not, and then settles into a definition of Blackness constructed by White hegemonic

ideas (Hosseiny and Shabanirad 126). Her identity becomes fractured and she cannot bear her

current version of Blackness in the White setting in which she lives. As a result, the

characterization of Pauline is useful to the argument that Morrison’s works, specifically The

Bluest Eye, capture the psychosocial impacts of racism. In particular, it portrays the effects of

White hegemonic beauty standards and double consciousness amongst Black individuals.

Like Pecola, such a depiction acts as a cautionary tale, encouraging Black women in

particular to redefine for themselves what it means to be beautiful, divorced from White

ideals.

Morrison’s novel is therefore a critique of a dominant White American culture,

specifically the impacts of White hegemonic beauty standards which, at best, exclude Black

girls and, at worst, define Black individuals as ugly through binary opposition. The novel,

therefore, achieves a critical tone towards this cultural ideology, whilst remaining

melancholic in its depiction of those who suffer. However, Morrison offers resistance,

notably in the form of Claudia. She is placed in contrast to Pecola early in the novel as,

whilst Pecola fetishized Shirley Temple and Mary Jane, Claudia disliked Shirley Temple, in

addition to her White-skinned “big, blue-eyed baby doll” (18). Claudia notes that the world
“had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child

treasured,” and admits that she later “learned much later to worship [this image], just as [she]

learned to delight in cleanliness, knowing that [...] the change was an adjustment without

improvement” (20-21). Despite Claudia’s contrasting reaction to Pecola’s, Morrison still

draws attention to how cultural apparatuses define beauty with the privileging of White traits,

excluding Black characteristics of beauty through a binary, wherein White is beautiful, it is

implied that Blackness is not. The hyphenated list of features, in “blue-eyed, yellow-haired,

pink-skinned” explicitly link bodily features as being innately White. Whilst Claudia is

initially portrayed as operating outside of this ideology due to her young age, she admits to

later believing it, signifying the impact of such socialization in young woman of color, but

noting that this “was an adjustment without improvement” to suggest that fitting in to this

worldview was a process of reconstructing identity without it having any positive impact.

Despite noting that she later also learnt to worship the image of her white doll, she did

“[begin] with an innocent destruction of white dolls but culminat[es] in the politically

effective and successful affirmation that “black is beautiful” (Al-Abbood 25). Claudia comes

to learn that Pecola’s beauty was “assassinated” by those around her, and describes the land

where “certain seeds will not nurture, [and] certain fruit will not bear,” in an encouragement

to rip of DuBois’s metaphorical veil and redefine what beauty should look like with their

own image at the center. She speaks of Pecola as being a mix of “waste” and “beauty”, taking

all of the latter from those around, and having a pure, innocent beauty to begin with which

was taken by others (203). Metaphorically, Claudia asserts Blackness is beautiful, and only

becomes ugly when society tries to position it as so; its binaristic position of ugliness only
exists to privilege its opposite and legitimize power, calling for action and change. This

embodies the Black Arts Movement of the 60s and 70s, echoing the idea that Black is

Beautiful.

Morrison includes other women in the novel who offer resistance to definitions and

constructions being placed on them. In particular, the three prostitutes China, Poland, and

Miss Marie, who live in the apartment above Pecola, powerfully reject societal constructions.

Notably, the narrator states that the women are often “without shame, apology, or

discrimination” (56). These women have a sororal community and, in front of Pecola, are “as

free as they were with each other” (57). The narrator also states that they could not dissuade

Pecola should she wish to join. Abdalla notes that “they have many motherly attributes that

they project onto Pecola. They listen to her and they speak with her and not at her, which is

what her own mother does” (26). This underscores their love for those within their own

specific community, specifically Black women. Furthermore, they reject established systems

of order and dominance, notably the patriarchy, through the ways they cheat men and

sexually dominate them. They also are described as “whores in whores’ clothing,”

highlighting how they reject Western materialism. Fundamentally then, these women

challenge the status quo and embrace their own lifestyles. Yet, they are not even

acknowledged by “the church women” (60) and are “ruined” outcasts according to Claudia’s

mother and Pauline (80) - two women who attempt to conform to the lifestyles imposed

within a White order. Via the transgressive lifestyle of these women, Morrison is able to

depict and acknowledge groups of communities who do combat the oppressive and

exploitative systems by portraying these women as operating outside of such communities.

Moreover, the criticisms given by members of the same community, other Black women,

allow Morrison to highlight the “complacency” of the larger community, and even their own

attacks perpetuating White dominance, which can undermine any form of resistance (Pal &

Gurumurthy 7). All in all, despite the ways in which those who attempt to conform, like

Pecola and Pauline, Morrison’s inclusion of these prostitutes is a form of Black resistance,

showcasing alternatives for marginalized groups and indirectly critiquing members of such

groups which vilify those who exist outside of the dominant culture.

Unlike Pecola and Pauline in The Bluest Eye who are implicitly socialized into being

defined by cultural apparatuses, Morrison’s novel Beloved depicts a more direct means of the

White dominant culture defining Black individuals. Beloved, set in 1873 during the

Reconstruction and after the Emancipation Proclamation, depicts Sethe, an runaway slave

now living in the haunted 124 Bluestone Road, Ohio. She is visited by another former slave

of Sweet Home, where she was enslaved, named Paul D, and via their different perspectives

and flashbacks, the novel captures the violent abuse during Sweet Home as well as their

current lives and how these lives have been impacted.

In particular, the novel is able to highlight how being defined as less than human by

the White dominant group, notably by the master known as schoolteacher, limits the Black

slaves of Sweet Home both psychologically and socially. Paul D, for example, describes the

ways schoolteacher came to define, via torturous methods, him as less than a human - as

something animal. For instance, schoolteacher affixed an iron bit in Paul D's mouth which

Sethe relays seeing done to others. She describes “the wildness that shot up into the eyes the

moment the lips were yanked back” which, even after the bit was removed, would never
“take the wildness out the eyes” (71). After this experience, Paul D compares himself to the

rooster, named Mister, and explicitly states that “schoolteacher changed [him]. [He] was

something else and that something was less than a chicken sitting in the sun on a tub,” and

that even the rooster, Mister “was allowed to be and stay what he was. But [Paul D] wasn’t

allowed to be and stay what [he] was. Even if you cooked [Mister] you’d be cooking a

rooster named Mister. But wasn’t no way [Paul D would] ever be Paul D again, living or

dead. schoolteacher changed [him]” (72). Here, the schoolteacher has been able to define

Paul D and construct an animalistic, less-than-human identity via his abuse. The diction of

“wildness” evokes the idea of savagery, a limiting stereotype used to justify White positions

of power and disempower Black people. Fanon, in particular, notes that this myth of Black

men being savage is a pretense for White dominance, and that in such a society this myth is

an inescapable anxiety that individuals are only a White man’s declaration away from it

becoming true (117). For Paul D, he is not even allowed to become a man, but must be

transformed into an animal, not even worthy of the respect of a rooster. His entire identity

falls within the construction of his White master. Paul D succumbs to only being able to view

himself through the lens of the schoolteacher and “discovered his worth” only relative to

what financial worth he had in a White society. He questions “is that where the manhood lay?

In the naming done by a whiteman” (125). Paul D struggles with a double consciousness

whereby Black individuals can only “view their culture through the ideologies of the

dominant white culture” (Rotter 8). Therefore, through Paul D’s testimony, Morrison

critically portrays the double consciousness and psychosocial impacts of Black individuals

being defined by the White dominant group.

 Stamp Paid offer more direct criticisms of White power and the individuals that wield

it in a White dominated society. Stamp Paid, who changed his name from Joshua after his

master‘s sexual act with his wife, directly alludes to the myth perpetuated by White society:

“white people believed that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle. Swift,

unnavigable waters, swinging screaming baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their

sweet white blood” (198). He continues, echoing Fanon’s remarks that one cannot truly

escape this myth and that, in trying and failing, the ego becomes fractured, stating that “the

more coloredpeople spent their strength trying to convince them how gentle they were, how

clever and loving, how human, the more they used themselves up to persuade whites of

something Negroes believed could not be questioned, the deeper and more tangled the jungle

grew inside” (198). Here, Stamp Paid uses imagery conjuring scenes of an untamed African

jungle which, when considering a colonial context, needs civilizing by White Europeans; yet,

his parallelism stressing attempts to conform but unable to be truly seen is an example of

DuBois’s double consciousness. Moreover, the metaphor of a jungle growing more tangled

implies that this conflict is restricting. Under this White hegemony, Black individuals are

defined by the dominant group and see themselves through this lens. However, the conflict

arises from attempting to try and conform in this limited space without an ability to really be

seen. This disconnect from the impossible desire to be recognized as individuals creates an

example of melancholia (Tettenborn 110). ​As such, Morrison’s inclusion of Stamp Paid urges

Black individuals to redefine themselves instead of trying to limit themselves to the limiting

and constructed role assigned by the dominant White group.

 Stamp Paid directly addresses White hegemony arguing that they created this jungle

in their own image. Specifically, “the screaming baboon lived under their own white skin; the

red gums were their own,” and refers to this damaging belief as a “silent” killer which

“secret[ly] spread [...] this new kind of whitefolk’s jungle” (199). In doing so, Morrison

implies that the negative myth that Black and African Americans being savage or brutal is

constructed only as a result of ideology behind White supremacy’s true nature: White power

structures are violent, and so this culture comes to view the Other only through this lens.

Baby Suggs later offers similar critiques. Baby Suggs, who was defined as Jenny when at

Sweet Home “cause that what’s on [her] sales ticket,” prevented her from defining herself,

from “discover[ing] what she was like” (140). Unlike others, Baby Suggs is not defined as

animalistic, but is still reduced down to an object of property via this definition coming from

her sales ticket. She makes her critique of this power clear when she states “those white

things have taken all [she] had or dreamed [...] and broke [her] heartstrings too. There is no

bad luck in the world but whitefolks” (89). This dialogue explicitly critiques White structures

which take everything from Baby Suggs, and her hyperbole underscores the suffering

inflicted on the Black community. Morrison’s inclusion of the matriarchal Baby Suggs, who

later stays in bed thinking only of color, is an example of the fatigue often felt by attempting

to resist. Lame and bedridden, avoiding the world, Baby Suggs can only have an identity so

long as she is alienated from society at large, although she is not the only character who

independently resists.

Although Baby Suggs later is resigned to her bed, her words echo a larger contextual

call to Black Americans, with an inspiring tone, critical of American society, both in its
history of slavery and in Morrison’s own historical context. She symbolically calls out the

ways Black Americans have been systematically denied agency, referencing the literal

blinding, maiming, and silencing, in addition to the structural ways America has done this,

either via enslavement, or Jim Crow Laws, Redlining, imprisonment, and any other number

of ways. She notes:

Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don’t love your

eyes; they’d just as soon pick em out. No more do they love the skin on your

back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands.

Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands!

Love them. Raise them up and kiss them.... No, they don’t love your mouth.

You got to love it. ...The dark, dark liver—love it, love it, and the beat and

beating heart, love that too (89).

Baby Suggs’s call to action echoes DuBois’s own call to “rip of the veil” and to construct a

new identity divorced from what White hegemony had defined for them, or mimicked White

identity which would never be equal for their is “innate love of harmony and beauty” in

Black Americans (DuBois). He encouraged, like Baby Suggs, to cultivate and love “deft

hands, quick eyes and ears, and the broader, deeper, higher culture of gifted minds”

(DuBois). To this extent, Morrison offers motivation and a roadmap to achieving a new

self-consciousness for the Black community in the Post-Civil Rights era.

In addition to Baby Suggs, Stamp Paid, and Paul D, Morrison’s portrayal of White

hegemony and Black resistance to this is also portrayed via Sixo. Sixo is another of the

Sweet Home slaves who tries to escape with a woman whom he has gotten pregnant. Sixo is
later caught and is shot trying to escape. Surviving, the schoolteacher instead decides he is to

be burnt for “this one will never be suitable” and is tainted. Sixo shows signs of resistance,

unwilling to be defined, and is punished as a result. As Sixo burns and “his feet are cooking;

the cloth of his trousers smokes. He laughs. Something is funny.” Whilst burning, Sixo

shouts “Seven-O.” Here, Sixo remains defiant, unwilling to lose his identity. His laughter and

reference to “Seven-O” are in reference to the pregnant woman whom he thinks has escaped,

suggesting that he, and his legacy, cannot be killed, for it will live on in his children.

Morrison offers resistance and hope here. It was Sixo who told Paul D that “definitions

belonged to the definers - not the defined” (190). However, his unwillingness to be defined,

even in death, urges audiences to resist.

Sethe similarly offers a form of resistance, albeit an extremely melancholic one. Like

Paul D and Sixo, and the other men at Sweet Home, schoolteacher in particular came to

define Sethe as animalistic. This is made explicit via his studies, where Sethe overhears him

tell his nephews “to put her human characteristics on the left; her animal ones on the right”

(193). This alludes to the pseudoscientific, colonial ideologies that Black individuals were

less than human, closer to the lower animal world, legitimizing colonialism. Schoolteacher’s

and his nephew’s beliefs that Sethe is more animal manifests in a violent way when she is

sexually assaulted, held down, and has her milk taken. She states that “even after they stole

it; after they handled me like I was the cow, no, the goat, back behind the stable because it

was too nasty to stay in with the horses” (236-7). Sethe’s identity comes to be defined as a

lowly animal through this practice. However, Sethe does escape and refuses to let this

definition become her. Instead, she defines herself as a mother who will do anything to
protect her children from the same dehumanization, even if it means infanticide. Of Beloved,

who it is implied is the grown up ghost of the child Sethe had killed, Sethe states “I'll tend

her as no mother ever tended a child, a daughter. Nobody will ever get my milk no more

except my own children. I never had to give it to nobody else” (240). Thus, Sethe highlights

the strength and love of the Black community, even after the horrors endured, offering a form

of resistance as she rips DuBois’s metaphorical veil, not viewing herself through the lens of

her White masters, but she defines herself as mother and, symbolically, as nurturer of future

Black children and culture, for “the best thing [Sethe] was, was her children. Whites might

dirty her all right, but not her best thing” (251). In escaping the structures wherein she was

defined and excluded from constructing her own identity as a mother, Sethe was limited, but

in escaping this, she “was big [...] and deep and wide and when [she] stretched out [her] arms

all [her] children could get in between [...] there wasn't nobody in the world [she] couldn't

love if [she] wanted to” (162). The use of polysyndeton here draws attention to the

possibilities and compassion within the Black community once free from the structures

which seek to limit them, with her love for her children possibly signifying a love for the

Black community and future of it more generally, perpetuating the “Black is Beautiful” and

Pro-Black ideals of the Black Arts Movement. In doing so, Morrison calls for Black

individuals to protect their own and to nurture a space for future generations, aware of how

White hegemony might attempt to destroy this.

Sethe’s ultimate resistance to being defined, however, is a melancholic one. After

escaping and making her way to 124 Bluestone Road with the newly birthed Denver, where

she rejoins Baby Suggs and her other children, schoolteacher, a slave catcher, and the sheriff
turn up in search of her. As a response to this fear of being taken back to Sweet Home, Sethe

takes her four children with the intent of murdering them. She is able to murder her eldest

daughter in a shocking act of infanticide. Interestingly, Sethe and the killing of her daughter

to avoid recapture was based on a real person: Margaret Garner, an escaped slave who

committed infanticide fearing recapture. In reality, “Margaret Garner was sentenced for

escaping, and thus depriving her owner of his property, rather than for infanticide and was

never freed” (Kuzmanovic). However, in Morrison’s novel, Sethe is arrested and lives in

prison with her youngest Daughter Denver until she is later freed. Ropero argues that this

“de-emphasizes the economic implications of Sethe’s escape, focusing on the human cost of

her ordeal. Morrison ‘rips the veil’ to shed light on what has been silenced in the history of

black people, as well as in the isolated testimonies of black people themselves” (177).

Sethe’s act, whilst horrific, is an act of resistance towards being defined by White

dominance. Of the act, she tells Paul that “[she] stopped him [...] and took and put [her]

babies where they'd be safe" (192). She justifies this because “she was safer in the ground

than in the hands of those whites” (188). Ashraf Rushdy notes that Sethe's infanticide, while

a morally ambiguous act, can be understood as an assertion of her maternal rights and an

attempt to resist the commodification of her children by the slave system (Rushdy 19).

Moreover, Tettenborn asserts that in Beloved destruction of the self is the first step in creating

the new and a step towards ultimate survival (112). Therefore, Morrison offers a melancholic

but determined attitude towards fighting oppressive racial systems in America. The act, and

the novel more generally, is often full of sorrow, but this reflects the realities of being the

Black subaltern in American history. Morrison captures this sorrow but presents nuanced
resistance against these systems of oppression as a reflection of the difficult yet determined

struggles of Black individuals who have fought in movements and more generally.

In sum, Beloved and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison offer a critique of psychosocial

impacts of White hegemony on Black Americans, specifically portraying the ways in which

White culture come to define Black individuals, results in double consciousness; however,

via characters challenging such definitions or by acting as cautionary tales, Morrison offers a

form of resistance and encourages Black Americans to redefine themselves. In The Bluest

Eye, Morrison captures the implicit ways, through cultural apparatuses, that White hegemony

affects the psychology of Black individuals, including the ways cinema can cause

internalized White supremacy and internalized racism, as is the case with Pauline. Cultural

icons, like Shirley Temple or Mary Jane, impacts Pecola and cause her to hate herself, and

even Claudia learns to worship blonde, blue-eyed, white-skinned dolls. These characters,

specifically Pauline and Pecola exhibit examples of double consciousness; yet Morrison uses

these characters as cautionary tales and, like Claudia, urges resistance amongst Black

individuals, particularly women, against such hegemonic ideals of beauty which exclude

Black women or suggest ugliness through binary opposition. The novel exemplifies the

Black Arts Movement’s ideal of “Black is Beautiful” through her criticisms. On the other

hand, Beloved highlights the ways Black individuals come to be defined in White hegemonic

structures through more explicit means; in particular, Black slaves like Paul D, Sethe, Baby

Suggs, Stamp Paid, and Sixo are all defined by White men to different extents, whether this

means being given a name, as is the case with Baby Suggs, to being characterized as an

animal, like the rest of the Sweet Home slaves; moreover, it includes being defined only by
their economic value as labor in which they are not paid. Morrison pains a melancholic and

sorrowful outlook of how being defined to such horrific degrees, branded with unescapable

mythos such as being ‘the African savage,’ impacts the Black community psychologically.

Characters come to see themselves only through the eyes of their White Masters, and

resistance often leads to alienation or death. However, Morrison offers plentiful warnings

through these characters explicitly and implicitly, and as a result encourages resistance as a

collective. Therefore, both Beloved and The Bluest Eye can be defined as examples of Black

resistance within the literary canon, capturing the damaging psychological impacts of double

consciousness and criticizing White dominant structures which often vilify, exploit, or

exclude the Black community.

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