They decide to marry and move up north to Lorain, Ohio, where there are more jobs. Then life becomes more difficult. Pauline
feels lonely and isolated
, and she is surprised by how unfriendly the other women are. They are amused by her country ways.
What was Pauline doing when she met Cholly for the first time?
What was Pauline doing when she met Cholly for the first time? “
Pauline was strolling out of a movie theater, licking the butter off her right forefinger”
(114). “Pauline was sorting through old photographs, feeling nostalgic for his childhood ” (114).
How does Pauline treat Pecola?
After she has been fired by a white employer and
treated like an animal by white doctors
, she begins perversely to treat her daughter, Pecola, with the same contempt. She is often cruel, cold, and aloof to Pecola as she looks at her daughter’s eyes and sees only ugliness.
Who is Pauline in The Bluest Eye?
Pauline is
Pecola’s mom
, and her character allows us to see how cultural conceptions of beauty can play themselves out in a more benign, though still unfortunate, form than in Pecola’s case. Pauline’s lame foot is a constant source of humiliation for her.
Where was Pauline Breedlove born?
Pauline Breedlove, born Pauline Williams, led a very difficult life as a child. She was born in
Alabama
, the ninth of eleven children. Problems with her foot (it flopped when she walked due to an incident when she was younger when she stepped on a rusty nail) caused her to always feel separate and unworthy.
Who got raped in The Bluest Eye?
In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison writes back against “the male ‘glamour of shame’ rape is (or once was) routinely given”.
Pecola
, the eleven-year-old raped by her father Cholly, is driven mad by her father’s assaults and her mother’s refusal to believe what happened.
Why does Darlene hate Cholly?
We learn that Cholly hated Darlene only
because his subconscious knew that directing his hatred towards the white men would have consumed him
, and while having an explanation does not make the action any less inexcusable, we are told the emotions and thoughts that lead him to rape his own daugther.
What happened to Pauline in The Bluest Eye?
Pauline then takes on her identity as martyr.
She joins the church and becomes the family breadwinner
, securing a job with the Fishers, a wealthy family who appreciate her good work. She loves her work because it allows her to make things beautiful and orderly. She begins to neglect her own house and family.
What happened to pecola at the end of The Bluest Eye?
She is raped by her drunken father and self-deceived into believing that God has miraculously given her the blue eyes that she prayed for
. She loses her baby, and shortly afterward she loses her sanity.
What does the little girl call Mrs Breedlove?
The inside of the house is beautiful, and a small white girl comes in and asks for
“Polly
.” Claudia is furious that the child calls Mrs. Breedlove by this name because even Pecola calls her mother “Mrs. … The cobbler splatters on the floor and burns her, and her mother comes in and beats her.
How does Pecola change in The Bluest Eye?
By the end of the novel, Pecola has
completely lost touch with reality
. Unable to process and accept the fact that she has been raped by her father, she becomes convinced that everyone in town is looking at her strangely because she received her wish of blue eyes.
What is the theme in The Bluest Eye?
At its core, The Bluest Eye is a story about
the oppression of women
. The novel’s women not only suffer the horrors of racial oppression, but also the tyranny and violation brought upon them by the men in their lives. The novel depicts several phases of a woman’s development into womanhood.
Why is Mr Henry thrown out of the house?
Henry is finally thrown out of the house
for touching Frieda inappropriately
.
Why does Mrs Breedlove beat pecola?
Pauline constructs her identity based on the movies she watches, her devotion to Christianity, and her role as breadwinner of the family. She beats Pecola
when she learns of Cholly’s rape of her
.
How old is Pecola in The Bluest Eye?
Like all the principal characters in “The Bluest Eye,” Pecola lives in Lorain, Ohio, where Morrison, who died last August, was born in 1931. When we meet Pecola, she is
eleven years old
but already ancient with sorrow. Her only escape from the emotional abuse that her family and her classmates heap on her is to dream.
How does Mr Yacobowski see Pecola?
Yacobowski looks at Pecola,
his eyes draw back
, as if he sees right through her. Pecola notices a complete lack of human recognition in his eyes and recognizes it as a trait that exists in the eyes of all white people she’s encountered. She assumes Mr.
