Feminism and the Quest for Identity in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye

Abstract

Over the years many scholars have strived to discuss the slave narrative focusing on the origin of slavery and quite often on autobiographies of freed slaves. How they were forcibly uprooted to the new world and barely on the issue of colour as a jinx. The black female characters in the African American society widely known as a society embedded with mixed racial identity and difference has not been fully explored. This paper is basically on the exposition in the quest for identification of self and to reveal the effects of stereotype and societal conformity as the African Americans were regarded as “second class citizen” due to gender, colour and racial disposition. Womanism as a strand of feminism is the theoretical underpinning used to interrogate the quest for identity, racism and gender disparity as presented in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. The paper finds out that embracing one's black image, family, and culture is crucial for resisting white oppression and maintaining authentic identities for black women. As a writer, Morrison, a black woman herself, rejects mainstream cultural influences and instead portrays black women as central subjects, as seen in her depiction of Claudia in The Bluest Eye. The paper concludes with the position that the African American women depicted by Morrison are undaunted and not restricted by the unfavourable sociocultural boundaries in their milieu.