AUTUMN
-warmth
-shelter
Page 38-39:
The Breedloves ugliness: “it came from their conviction”, their self-understanding.
Page 20-21:
Doll passage: she is searching for the understanding of white beauty.
Doesn’t understand why people think that, she wants to see what’s inside, not satisfied, wants to find why whiteness is considered beautiful -> doesn’t find anything. She feels the need to question it, she’s not understanding the main stream yet
Different Claudias -> Claudia/child character + Claudia-as-narrator: adult?/older retrospective
Page 22-23:
She hates the whites so much, she realizes how horrible her thoughts are: disgusted by her thoughts -> convinced herself it would be better to lover her than to want to kill her. Hate becomes worshiping: “fraudulent love”. She doesn’t feel improvement just adjustment, doesn’t feel better about it: She is just accepting, hates them because they are considered beautiful, and she is not. To go to acceptance seams like a step back. Easier to go along with others and to not understand than to deal with hatred.
Claudia is very observant, forces by the norm to lose this quality: regression.
She can raise question of white beauty: she is a child and can
Emotion slipping into another
Page 49-50: Pecola feelings shift
Pecola: sees dandelions and finds them beautiful, doesn’t need society, but then feels fear and shame. Satisfaction comes from Mary Janes
->Shifts between anger & shame
Why sex in this passage?
Mr. Yacobowski is disgusted by her, doesn’t want to touch her. Anger comes out in Pecola then she feels shame.
She thinks it is better to be angry than to feel shame for there is “a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness” : Metaphor with puppy, thirst for anger quenched -> anger runs out and then only shame is left.
To console herself from shame, to stop from crying: she thinks of the Mary Janes : seams beautiful but blue eyes are “petulant, mischievous”
Association of whiteness with “clean comfort”
To Pecola: eating Mary Jane=satisfaction
-> wants whiteness in her : “Love Mary Jane, Be Mary Jane” wants to become Mary Jane, white, she needs love
-> she feels alone, needs comfort from candy
-> feels pleasure from eating candy -> relates it to sex (she can’t separate moral from physical) loving her, internalizes her by eating her.
-> Idolization, she wants to be like her: blonde, blue eyes. Becoming fantasy
-> Desire to see what’s “underneath”
She feels shame more than anger because then she would be alone, she has to accept norm before rejecting it to not be completely alone.
She suffers silently, (page 43): she knows she can’t get what she wants
Other example of shifting emotions:
-Cholly comes home drunk and sees Pecola washing dishes: feels confusion, guilt, pity ->turns into arousal, desire (rape) PAGE 161
Whores:
Connects to issue of violation.
They transform want for company to physical please (Pecola & Mary Jane). They turn prostitution into companionship, and into being ones own. They want to be beautiful but in their own terms->rebel to society.
Out of all characters, they are the most socially unaccepted, but are the happiest ones. They complain about past but not about presence. They make their won money now, enough to support themselves.
They appear as the most dysfunctional, but all families are dysfunctional. It makes the people calling them that feel better about themselves. Whores are however the most down to earth.
Pecola can get her fix of the desire she wants through their stories, she lives through their stories and their companionship.
Many thanks to Claire for posting our first set of notes! I'm keeping these here for your additions and comments and also pasting them above on the Bluest Eye page (assuming I can figure out how to do that...)
ReplyDeleteIn the meantime, take Claire's initiative as a challenge. Who's up for posting another comment, question or link?