Not So Fast, Dick and Jane: Reimagining Childhood and Nation in The Bluest Eye

Werrlein, Debra T.

doi:10.1093/melus/30.4.53

Cited by 18 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…1 The primer series, begun in the 1940s with characters Dick and Jane, foregrounding the white heteronormative family of mother, father, son, daughter, younger sister, and dog, provides a much-studied frame for the novel. See Werrlein (2005) for discussion and bibliography. 2 See, for example, Schreiner 2019;Milne 2012;Hayes 2004;MacKethan 2003;Duvall 1997;Moraru 1996;Bishop 1993;Fishman 1984;Stein 1980.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Place Names in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

Vinne¹

2022

names

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The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, recounts the story of Pecola Breedlove, an eleven-year-old Black girl in Lorain, Ohio, where her wish for blue eyes represents desire for what she is denied, the privileges of her white classmates and the comforts of a safe home. Amid this novel set in 1941 during the Great Migration, a place name-based analysis reveals a literary landscape of racism in the mid-20th-century US, from the Jim Crow South to the industrial North. A toponymic study reveals how Morrison uses place names as stylistic devices in two ways. In the narrative present, she deploys them as opening frames for immediate lessons in racial behaviors for the children who are her main characters; in the narrative past, he uses them to recall distant locations from adult characters' histories to suggest ways in which racism persists across space and time. In combination, Morrison's application of toponymy and setting casts Lorain as microcosm of the nation and implicates all its citizens in the racist ideology that destroys Pecola and her family.

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Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Place Names in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

Vinne¹

2022

names

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“…472-3). One way to observe the operation of such narrative strategies and gauge the efficacy of their unsettling effect is to scrutinize Morrison's engagement with the Dick and Jane school primer, which is part of a series of books widely used in the 1930's and 1940's to teach American children to read (Werrlein, 2005). The passage Morrison quotes begins as follows:…”

Section: Deconstruction Of the Myths Of "Dick And Jane"mentioning

confidence: 99%

White Oppression and Black Resistance in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye

Al-Abbood

2019

IJECS

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Many critical interpretations of Morrison’s The Bluest Eye are driven by the belief that the novel pessimistically depicts an African American community so helplessly captivated by an insidious white aesthetic ideology that it is incapable of resistance, self-regeneration, or change. Pointing out the flawed premises of these readings, this article argues that the novel presents rather an effective example of resistance to the dominant white ideology thematically and formally. Morrison’s deconstructive rewriting of the “Dick and Jane” primer effectively subverts the terms of the white oppressive discourse and demolishes its ideological foundations, thus paving the way for African American self-affirmation. This is reflected in Claudia’s increasing awareness of, and mounting rebellion against, the destructive white aesthetic. Her rejection of the white beauty myth, demonstrated by her confused early childhood’s destruction of white baby dolls, culminates in a more sophisticated perception of the operation of this myth and in a radical retrieval and re-affirmation of the black beauty and worth which the white beauty myth denies in order to legitimate itself and establish its hegemony. The article argues that the radical resistance to the dehumanizing white ideology Claudia develops is, like Morrison’s formal deconstructive project, quite indebted to African American music and, more crucially, to the rich heritage behind it. The article concludes by emphasizing that in the world depicted in The Bluest Eye possibilities of resistance and chances of survival are vitally dependent on the strength of one’s connection to African American culture and heritage, as the story of Claudia’s survival proves.

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“…(Morrison 1990 163) Such examples of self-blame led to arguments (Kella 2000) pointing out the great extent to which black communities are subjected to racism, revealing divisions within black communities themselves. Werrlein (2005) explains that the apparently lonely suffering does not affect just one individual, but it also degenerates families and communities. A bitter accusation of the black community trying to comply with the revered ideals of white attractiveness can be discerned here.…”

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confidence: 99%

Probing Racial Dilemmas in the Bluest Eye with the Spyglass of Psychology

Zebialowicz

Palasinski

2009

J Afr Am St

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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.Keywords Black womanhood . Bluest Eye . Psychology . Racism "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),

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Not So Fast, Dick and Jane: Reimagining Childhood and Nation in The Bluest Eye

Cited by 18 publications

References 4 publications

Place Names in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

Place Names in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

White Oppression and Black Resistance in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye

Probing Racial Dilemmas in the Bluest Eye with the Spyglass of Psychology

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