The inclusion of Pauline and Cholly’s past is interesting, especially seeing how their experiences translate to Pecola’s perception of beauty. It feels like Morrison has created a scenario of intergenerational trauma, a passing on of pain and internalized disgust from parents to their offspring, kept alive through rituals of self-hatred and a deep yearning for what can never be theirs.

In The Bluest Eye, there’s a suffocating desire to become what one isn’t. We see the characters attempt this transformation through osmosis, acting, and other gestures. Pecola’s technique of trying to beautify herself comes in the form of consumption. In one scene, she drinks 3 quarts of milk from her Shirley Temple cup, an outrageous amount for a single person to finish in one sitting, and Ms. MacTeer spends all day ranting about it. Another instance of Pecola eating her desires: the Mary Jane candies wrapped with a picture of a little white girl with blonde hair and blue eyes whom they’re named after. Pecola says “to eat the candy is to somehow eat the eyes, eat Mary Jane. Love Mary Jane. Be Mary Jane.” This act of eating to Pecola is to somehow consume the creature itself, to become the desired. She prays to be the lovable little girl, the beautiful doll that Temple and Jane are.

Pauline’s desire to be beautiful is also something that consumes her and evidently this desire, as if transferable by blood, is passed on to Pecola. Pauline’s unhealthy obsession with beauty, with whiteness is seen in the period where Cholly begins to neglect her. Instead of consuming what she would like to be, Pauline imitates it. She often took herself out to the movies and obsessed over the gorgeous actors, two of them being Clarke Gable and Jean Harlow. Once she even attempted Harlow’s hairstyle to match her in the film, but after eating some candy, she loses her tooth and gives up, lets down her hair and accepts her “ugly.” Even before Cholly, before the films and attempts to be something she wasn’t, Pauline believed in her ugly. She blamed it on her bad foot. That was why she took such a liking to Cholly, he treated her special, in a good way, he was attentive to her and her leg. He was her ideal man, the man she dreamed of in her fantasies. After children, Pauline found a job at the place of her dreams. The family is like her movies come alive, her reality is different there. It almost feels like she’s playing house, storing, placing, fixing, and being praised for it.

The pining for whiteness and beauty is eased for Pauline as she starts work at her new location. She’s loved there, seen as essential. She gets to play a pivotal role in a white environment and life is different, is good for her now. She’s finally getting to play the role she saw on films and this eases her. The task to continue her yearning, her unending desire to be beautiful, white, precious is passed onto Pecola, who’s own mother looked at her and knew she was ugly.

Cholly Breedlove a young black man , was married to   Pauline Breedlove. In the course of his marriage he and his wife bore children. A son by the name of Sammy and a daughter call Peacola. They were a poor family, with their own private dramas and misery. One would say one has to learn to love themselves before they can love anyone. This sentiment can be said about Cholly and Pauline. These were two broken and lost individuals who seek to understand the feeling of love through each other. Instead of truly loving themselves first. This resulted in a toxic and hateful environment both for themselves and their children.

Cholly Breedlove at four days old was  abandoned by his mother on a junk heap. He was then taken in by is Great Aunt jimmy. Who raised him until he was fourteen. She was a nice woman who rescued him. However, never hesitated to remind him. Though Cholly was grateful he despised his situation. Cholly had no real understanding of love and what it meant to be loved. All he ever knew was the feeling of neglect, rejection and self hatred. In his quest to find himself  he started to ask about his father. He later came to understand that his father abandoned his mother before he was born.

In search for a father figure Cholly found interest in a wild man by the name of Blue Jack. Blue  was a old timer with crazy stories. He told Cholly about all his adventures and “how the black people hollered , cried and song. Stories about how a white man cut his wife head and buried her in the swamp( Morison).” He later then told cholly all his lustful encounters with women in his younger age. This fascinated cholly and he found great admiration in Blue. Having Blue as the closest male figure in his llife. Cholly went on to depicting the same lustful and aggressive nature.

Cholly encountered three women in his life that he felt affection for. These women were Darlene , his wife Pauline and daughter Peacola. Based on the novel Cholly seemed to be destructive in his nature when it came to being close to women around him. His first sexual encounter with Darlene exemplifies this. As they were caught  by two white men who forced him to continue having sex with Darlene. As they watched pervertedly , causing Cholly and Darlene to feel utterly shamed. Cholly targeted his anger towards Darlene who was very helpless in the situation. Instead of hating the men who subjected him to the act.  In the end Cholly decided to abandon Darlene at the thought that she might be pregnant. This was a repetition of what he knew as a child. He was rejected and abandoned  by the people who should love him. As fear makes him a coward so he retreats.

As the novel goes on, Cholly charms his wife Pauline sweeping her off her feet. However, as his responsibilities became real . He started to rebel resulting to aggressive sex,alcohol and abusing Pauline. Which seemed to be the only pleasures of his life. Cholly, seeking to find that sense of affection , acceptance and love, takes advantage of his young daughter Peacola. Then leaves her blacked out on the floor covered under a blanket. These scenes demonstrates Cholly’s confusion and fear. It reflected how childhood traumas can haunt you throughout your life.

Abandonment, and rejection is the most traumatizing experience a toddler could ever experience. Not having the warmth of a mother’s  bosom, or her loving tenderness. In my understanding left Cholly void of basic human empathy. Which is formed in the early developmental years of a child. There is just something about a mothers nurture that an old woman such as, Aunt jimmy could not substitute. Cholly, reflecting on the fact that he should have been left for death that day. Emphasize the darkness that dwelled in his heart . He  was a young man who thought he was unlovable. And didn’t know how to truly develop a healthy relationship with anyone close to him. Instead, he left people feeling as broken as he was . His character in the novel is truly sad . In addition, bearing the cross of being a black man. Along with seeing the devil as destructive, powerful and a reflection of  darkness. Signifying the way Cholly viewed his own self. So in the end he knew nothing good was expected of him. Therefore, he lived within that darkness . Which in turn resulted in him never truly healing from his pain .

Soon after, we go back to learn about Pauline’s own childhood and her experiences. Growing up in Kentucky, the only inclination that she was different or unattractive stemmed from her bad foot. She disappeared into fairytale-like daydreams of someone coming into her life and loving her as she is. She longed to find some distant kind of peace in a person that would see beauty where her insecurity lied. When Cholly came along and embraced her foot, she found power in his worship and embraced it, too.

After meeting and marrying Cholly, she moves North to Ohio. There she becomes familiar with the societal ideals of beauty and her realization of her ugliness began to stem from more than just her bad foot. In her hometown, she was surrounded by people like herself, who spoke like her and had the same customs. The white people that did reside there were scarce, and rarely showed their faces. Now, however, Pauline had become hyper-aware of the countless white people that surrounded her in her new home, as well as the black people who alienated her for the same characteristics that brought her Kentucky neighbors together. This isolation began her increasing dislike for herself. As time progressed, Pauline sought pleasure in spending time with Cholly when he arrived from work, and eventually from getting her own job. Here, she was able to get a glimpse of how “the other side” lived. However, the idealization of beauty and privilege was heavily contrasted from intelligence, as Morrison makes sure to show that white does not always mean better.

A prominent moment of the mirror of beauty being shattered for Pauline, was the loss of her first tooth. She had become absorbed into trying to look her best, causing fights with Cholly in order to shop for new clothes and makeup. In the continuous rollercoaster of trauma she is built up by keeping up with these fads, but torn down again at the understanding that her makeup recreations were terrible in comparison to the other women in her town. In the midst of her attempted transformation, Pauline became exposed to the big screen and beauty as it was defined by the media. On one occasion,  she did her hair up like her favorite white actress only to have her tooth shatter at the bite of a candy bar. Pauline was seemingly putting on a costume with her hair, aiming to mimic the beauty she continuously saw praised. This literal shattering of her tooth metaphorically represents the fragility of the mirror reflecting a made up reality.

Jean Harlow on the cover of a magazine. Pauline did her hair up like this to go see her film at the theater. Harlow’s blonde hair, blue eyes, and cherry red lips encompass the ideal beauty in the 1940’s.

Even in present day, a Google search of “beauty in the 1940’s” turns up an excessively predominant white result.

This moment caused a turn in Pauline, as she stated “I don’t believe I ever did get over that. There I was, five months pregnant, trying to look like Jean Harlow, and a front tooth gone. Everything went then. Look like I just didn’t care no more after that. I let my hair go back, plaited it up, and settled down to just being ugly.” Soon after, when she gives birth to Pecola, the same feelings of her own ugliness in not looking like Jean Harlow is projected onto the child who she knew from birth “was ugly”. This projection is prominent in Pecola’s journey throughout the novel, as we see in the first moment that we are introduced to her mother.