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African American Studies
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J Afr Am St (2010) 14:220-233
DOI 10.1 007/s 12111 -009-9 1 00-y
ARTICLES ~ "
Abstract The aim of this paper is to help rekindle interest in the employment of
psychology as a tool for interpreting female characters' racial dilemmas found in the
Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. Rather than questioning the already well-established
methods of analyzing them, it illustrates how modern science of the human mind can
offer extra dimensions of valuable insight, especially in terms of validating the
behavior and thoughts of such characters. Such insight might offer new angles from
which to look at them whilst showing the relevance of the issues these characters
deal with to the contemporary society. Although the limits of this article prevent the
full exhaustion of such proposed hybridization, it invites the consideration of a more
eclectic approach, whose lack of popularity appears to be unjustified in view of
potential benefits available.
"A little black girl yearns for the blue eyes of a little white girl, and the horror
at the heart of her yearning is exceeded only by the evil of fulfillment"
(Morrison 1999, p. 162).
As literary works do not exist in vacuum, they function across diverse cultural,
historical and social planes. The play of the text (both extratextuality and intratextuality),
A. Zebialowicz
Department of English and Creative Writing, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
e-mail: annazebialowicz@hotmail.com
M. Palasinski (El)
Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, Lancaster LAI 4YF, UK
e-mail: marekpalasinski@hotmail.com
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...long hours she sat looking in the mirror, trying to discover the secret of her
ugliness, the ugliness that made her ignored or despised at school, by teachers
and classmates alike... (Morrison 1990: 34)
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All of our waste which we dumped on [Pecóla] and which she absorbed. And
all of our beauty, which was hers first and which she gave to us. All of us - all
who knew her - felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were
so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us,
her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health.. .Even her waking
dreams we used - to silence our own nightmares... 4 and yawned into fantasy of
our strength... She, however stepped over into madness, a madness which
protected her from us... (Morrison 1990: 163).
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References
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