By: Joyeeta Majumdar

Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye explores the internalisation of white hegemony by the black community and its implications, especially for the black women. The parameters of beauty created by the whites produce a sense of inadequacy and inferiority among the black women as happens in the case of Pecola. Her desire to possess a pair of blue eyes almost becomes an obsession and has serious and dangerous repercussions. There are moments of resistance as well when the concept of beauty and virtue are challenged by some of the women in the novel. This paper attempts to study the women characters in Morrison’s novel and map their engagement with the male members of the black community as well as their negotiation with racism. The paper shall explore the intersections of gender and race to foreground the double victimisation of the black women and Morrison’s indictment of the same.