Undergraduate Thesis Summary

            Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye, traces the development of Pecola Breedlove, from her coming of age, to her ultimate destruction and descent into madness. The novel can be seen as a double Bildungsroman, in that it follows the development of two different protagonists, although the emphasis is clearly on Pecola’s story. In the traditional Bildungsroman, the typically white-male protagonist achieves success by, in the words of Dahl, “morally subjugating himself to the community represented by the state.” Morrison’s treatment of Pecola’s development throughout the novel, ultimately calls into question the validity of the traditional model of development proposed by the Bildungsroman, when that traditional model of development is applied to a non-white, or non-male protagonist.

            Michel Foucault’s theories of discourse and disciplinary power can be useful in an assessment of Morrison’s revision of the Bildungsroman. The development of each protagonist is dependent on a struggle between opposing discourses governing social worth, and specifically relating to standards of beauty. Foucault’s concept of disciplinary power, and his assertion that discourse ultimately constitutes truth, allows us to examine the forces working on Pecola, as well as on the other characters in the novel.

            For the Bildungsroman protagonist, the family is a critical starting place. It represents a grounding force. In Foucaldian terms, the family is the first place that a child encounters a discourse on the value of the individual, and, more specifically to the text, a discourse on standards of beauty. This familial discourse represents a certain normalizing force; and in a child’s early years, before they encounter other, competing discursive narratives represented by school, mass media, and other larger social systems, the child’s truth is constituted entirely by this familial discourse. The child in this stage is enveloped in a system of disciplinary power whose substance is determined by and within the family. Morrison’s novel examines the effects that different discursive narratives have on the development of the protagonists.      

Pecola’s story is often told through the eyes of sometimes-narrator Claudia MacTeer, and the novel is concerned with the development of both characters. As children, Claudia and Pecola are in an interesting position. Because of their age, the girls are still largely under the influence of a familial discourse. However, being on the cusp of adolescence, already in school, and beginning to interact with the larger world on their own terms, both girls are also acted on by a discourse that is outside of the family, and centered on ‘white’ images of beauty and worth. These young girls then, are caught between two different normalizing gazes; that of the family, and that of the larger white power structure. By the end of the novel, Pecola, through her adoption of a white disciplinary power, eventually deteriorates into madness. Claudia, on the other hand, is able to resist the damaging effects of the dominant white discourse, and develops as a somewhat actualized individual. Morrison is asserting a basic difference between Pecola and Claudia’s relationship with a white disciplinary power.

            Through an examination of the text, we can see that it is the relationship between familial discourse, and the larger white discourse that accounts for Pecola and Claudia’s divergence. The ultimate conclusion is that a strong or relatively unadulterated familial discourse; that is, a culturally oriented discourse which defines value and worth in culturally relevant ways, is the only means for resistance to larger discursive forces. In other words, in order to avoid destruction by an inherently damaging normalizing gaze, the individual must have a well-delineated familial discourse that reinforces culturally relevant standards of beauty and worth.

            Pecola’s subjugation to a dominant ‘white’ discourse of beauty and worth ultimately results in her madness and destruction. To see this in terms of the traditional, conventionalist Bildungsroman, by accepting a dominant white discourse, Pecola has, in fact entered into the ‘established order,’ and therefore should be viewed as a successful Bildungsroman protagonist. In the case of Pecola though, her utter psychological destruction can hardly be seen as a success. If we evaluate ‘success’ based on the traditional criteria, any protagonist who is outside of the gender, or ethnically based norms of her or his community can never be seen as successful, if their ultimate development involves “morally subjugating [her or] himself to the community represented by the state.” Morrison’s novel ultimately asserts that the Bildungsroman in its present form is inadequate for dealing with the development of protagonists who are outside of delineated societal norms. She is able to use the traditional trajectory of the genre, in order to undercut its final conclusions, and to simultaneously call for a revision of the earlier form.

© 2006 Jon Campbell