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European Journal of Business &
Social Sciences
Available at https://ejbss.org/
ISSN: 2235-767X
Volume 07 Issue 03
March 2019
Available online: https://ejbss.org/ P a g e | 1057
Comparative Analysis: Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and
Walker’s The Colour Purple
Ms. Minakshi
Ph.D. Scholar
Singhania University, Pacheri Bari, Jhunjhunu (Raj.)
ABSTRACT: This paper is an attempt to analyze the compare perspectives of race, class,
ethnicity and gender in two novels—Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Alice Walker’s The
Colour Purple. The paper assesses the treatment of sex, alienation, rape, lust, incest and
gendered identity in both novels. My attempt is explore how internal racism overcomes two
major protagonists, Pecola and Celie in both the novels. Pecola finds her ugly and unlucky in
the world so Celie grapples with her own problems. This is an attempt how gendered identity
is explored and constructed in both the novels and how concept of beauty is socially
constructed. It has been analyzed how race determines the fate in Afro-American girls and
ladies and how they have to live a worse life even than animals. The inhuman treatment
drives them to stride outside violating the social and patriarchal rules.
KEYWORDS: Racial Consciousness, Resistance, Identity, Hardships, Suffocation.
INTRODUCTION: Toni Morison‘s novel The Bluest Eye is an overwhelming story of woes of
an eleven year old, socially victimized and ugly girl; Picola Breedlove fuels her desire to have
blond hair, blue eyes and white skin to be beautiful like other white girls. The novel is a
depiction of an ugly girl, Picola Breedlove who is optimistic in the antagonistic white society
where she is mocked at as she is an ugly girl. When we first meet her in the novel she is
homeless. She is teased by her school boys Bay Boy, Woodrow Cain, and light-skinned
Maureen Peal. Claudia. Pecola sister Claudia one day tries to punch Maureen for it but she
unfortunately misses and hits Picola‘s face instead. Just as Pecola feels inferior to Maureen;
Page 2 of 9
European Journal of Business &
Social Sciences
Available at https://ejbss.org/
ISSN: 2235-767X
Volume 07 Issue 03
March 2019
Available online: https://ejbss.org/ P a g e | 1058
her friend, Claudia also wonders why people admire little white girls, ―But the
dismembering of dolls was not the true horror. The truly horrifying thing was the
transference of the same impulses to little white girls. The indifference with which I could
have axed them was shaken only by my desire to do so. To discover what eluded me: the
secret of the magic they weaved on others. What make people look at them and say, but
not at me? The eye slide of black women as they approached them on the street and the
possessive gentleness of their touch as they handled them‖ (Toni Morrison 15). Peale,
Maggie to Lucy in George Eliot‘s The Mill on the Floss, and Jane to Georgianna in Charlotte
Bronte‘s Jane Eyre also suffer from this inferiority complex. Jane thinks that her stepmother
―could not love‖ her as she is not beautiful. (Charlotte Bronte 13) and ―if she were a nice,
pretty child, one might compassionate her forlornness; but one really cannot care for such a
little toad‖ (Charlotte Bronte 21). Toni Morrison‘s The Bluest Eye portrays how children
learn from their parents and society around them and believe everything adults do say to
them. Like this in the novel Pecola‘s community makes her think that only white people are
beautiful and she is obsessed with this thought all the time that she may also look beautiful.
One day, a young black boy from her neighborhood lures Picola to enter his house. When
she goes he attacks with a cat on her and later he kills the cat and blames her for killing it so
that his mother yell at her and kick her out from their house Pecola is considered scapegoat:
― ̳If she looked different, beautiful, maybe Cholly would be different, and Mrs. Breedlove
too. Maybe they‘d say, ̳Why, look at pretty-eyed Pecola. We mustn‘t do bad things in front
of those pretty eyes‘‖ (Morrison 46). Like this the main protagonist of Alice Walker‘s novel,
The Color Purple, is Celie whose life is also like Pecola as she is also oppressed by his
supposed father and society throughout his life. She has to suffer a loss of both of her
children and her sister Netty also for a long period, around thirty years due to misdeeds of
her husband, Mr. Johnson. The novel is a good example on how women have been making
remarkable strides to make their own identity in the patriarchal society. Celie achieves
success, recognition and equality.
Page 3 of 9
European Journal of Business &
Social Sciences
Available at https://ejbss.org/
ISSN: 2235-767X
Volume 07 Issue 03
March 2019
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Sex emerges as a dominant theme in both the novels where the male characters are
lustful and incestuous. When they get chances outside, they use women and they don‘t
spare their own daughters. In the novel, The Color Purple when Celie‘s mother is gone
to consult a doctor for her illness, her father rapes him saying, ―You gonna do what
your mammy wouldn't‖ (Walker 3). Soon after due to her illness, Celie‘s mother dies
and Alfonso rapes Celie more and more often. Celie considers that her father has killed
her both children but in fact, he has sold them. He brings a new wife in his home. He
now wants to get rid of Celie and that‘s why she is married to Mr. Johnson so that he
may have sex with her younger sister, Netty also. Due to this fear, Netty flees from the
house and takes refuses to married Celie‘s house. But here, too she finds that Mr.
Johnson, her sister‘s husband and her lover want to have sex with her and she has to
flee from this house also. Netty has to strive hard to maintain her chastity in the novel.
But Celie‘s life is no better than her life with her father. Mr. Johnson is a cruel man and
he considers that the best way to keep a woman in her place is to beat her. He marries
to her simply because he wanted someone to serve him and his two children from his
earlier wife. He loves Shug Avery, a blue singer but she does not love her. The same bad
happens with Celie. One day her mother was ill and she went to consult the doctor
.Then her father, Cholly rapes her in the kitchen mercilessly and then he covers her with
a quilt. And she lies on the floor unconscious. Her friend Pauline finds Pecola
unconscious on the floor. When Pecola tells her that Cholly has raped her, she doesn't
believe it and hits her. But this callousness does not stop. Her father as he was hungry
for sex, he rapes Pecola again after some time. This act of rape by her father is
shameful, violent, humiliating and awkward. Like him other male characters except Mr.
Mac Teer, Mr. Henry, and Soaphead Church are also hungry for young girls. Soaphead
rarely or never feeds his desires but Mr. Henry gropes Frieda. Pecola‘s father, Cholly‘s
background also shows how he was born and discarded by his own parents. Cholly was
abandoned by his mother near train tracks when he was four days old. He was brought
up by his aunt, Jimmy. But even on the day of Jimmy's funeral, Cholly shows betrayal to
her aunt when he has his first sexual experience with Darlene who is a local girl. As they
are having sex in a field, two white men approach there and shine a flashlight on them.
