Black Naturalism and Toni Morrison: The Journey away from Self-Love in The Bluest Eye

Author(s): Patrice Cormier-Hamilton

Source: MELUS, Vol. 19, No. 4, Ethnic Women Writers VI (Winter, 1994), pp. 109-127
Published by: The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS)
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Black Naturalism and Toni Morrison:
The Journey Away from Self-Love in
The Bluest Eye
Patrice Cormier-Hamilton
Bristol,Connecticut

Wehavetherecordofkingsandgentlemen adnauseamandin stupiddetail;but

of thecommon run of human and
beings, particularly of thehalforwhollysub-
mergedworkinggroup, theworld has savedall toolittleofauthenticrecordand
triedtoforgetorignoreeventhelittlesaved.
W.E.B.DuBois
As an English instructor using a multi-cultural reader that ques-
tions many of the foundations of American society, including equal
opportunity,I have sometimes heard the rumblingsof students from
a variety of ethnic backgroundswho have become weary of reading
about a minority "that would rather complain about conditions
rather than work sincerely for the American Dream."During class
one African American student offered this response to "Symbiosis,"
an exerpt from a play [TheColoredMuseumby GeorgeC. Wolfe]deal-
ing with the problems of assimilation and the different roles black
Americans assume in our society: "At first this book really irritated
me. I mean, I get tired of hearing how blacks are victimized and op-
pressed all the time. I just get sick of it, y'know? But afterI read this I
started to think, yeah, he's right. I mean, this stuff is still happening.
Minoritiesstill feel they've got to deny their identities in order to get
ahead. So yeah, sometimes I get a little sick of it, but I guess we still
need to deal with it."
Although my students were unaware of it, in a sense what they
were questioning from the standpoint of literarycriticismis not only
the theory of postmodernism with its emphasis on race, class and
gender,but the theory of naturalismas well: the idea that one's social
and physical environmentscan drasticallyaffectone's natureand po-
tential for surviving and succeeding in this world. In this article, I
will explore Toni Morrison's TheBluestEye from a naturalistic per-
spective; however, while doing so I will propose that because Morri-
son's novels are distinctly black and examine distinctly black issues,
MELUS, Volume 19, Number 4 (Winter 1994)
110 PATRICECORMIER-HAMILTON

we must expand or deconstruct the traditional theory of naturalism

to deal adequately with the African American experience: a theory I
refer to as "black naturalism."
But before I do this I think it is important to discuss why it is worth
our while to "dig up" naturalism once again to explore not only earlier
black novels but contemporary works as well. In Max's stirring defense
of Bigger Thomas in Richard Wright's Native Son, he warns us to "re-
member that men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as
they can from a lack of bread! And they can murderfor it, too!" (366). As
the riots in Los Angeles and in cities across the country indicate, men
and women are still forced to struggle for self-realization and one's en-
vironment remains a key factor in influencing and limiting an individ-
ual's potentials and aspirations. Is the cycle of poverty, hopelessness,
and violence in South Central today significantly different from the
ghetto streets of Harlem Ann Petry described in TheStreet?Throughout
her naturalistic novel 116th Street is a living, breathing, menacing force
that attempts to reduce Min to a whispering shadow and to twist Jones
into a crazed wolf who has lived in basements too long; for Petry,filthy
tenement-lined streets such as these are more than symbols of oppres-
sion, inequality and racism-they are the instruments themselves.
Does this mean that by focusing on the influences of environment
in literature we are labeling our main characters helpless victims? Ab-
solutely not. In The StreetLutie Johnson fights the ghetto with a deter-
mination that can only be called heroic; her tragedy is that she loses
her battle against her surroundings, but her triumph consists of her
willingness to break the boundaries that both white and black society
had created for African American women in the 1940s. In Toni Cade
Bambara's "The Lesson," though Silvia is deeply affected by Miss
Moore's lesson of "where we are is who we are," she remains un-
daunted and vows "ain't nobody gonna beat me at nuthin" (94,96).
During an interview of Alice Childress and Toni Morrison con-
ducted by Black Creation magazine, Childress claims "that all black
writers, whether they intended to or not have been writing about not
being free. Always-from the beginning of America right up to now"
(Walker and Weathers 92). The theory of naturalism is also about the
primal struggle for freedom-freedom to develop and realize all of
the possibilities of our souls and intellects within a societal frame-
work. One cannot think of African Americans without considering
society's insidious racist attempts to retain black men and women as
cheap sources of labor, whether enslaved or ostensibly "free."
A universal characteristic of Morrison's published novels has been
her depiction of male and female protagonists failing or succeeding
on the difficult journey to freedom through self-awareness. Of
BLACK NATURALISM AND TONI MORRISON 111

course, the struggle to realize one's identity has surfaced repeatedly

in literature;however, Morrison'ssteadfast concentrationon the im-
portance of the past indicates that for her, self-realizationfor African
Americans canonlybe achieved through an active acknowledgement
of one's culturalpast. Only by understandingand accepting the past
can AfricanAmericansachieve a psychologicalwholeness in the pre-
sent and strengthentheir power as a race in the future.
In Specifying,Susan Willis captures very well the importance of
Morrison'sthemes and the highly chargedatmosphereof her novels:
Thereis a sense of urgencyin Morrison'swriting,producedby the real-
ization that a greatdeal is at stake.The novels may focus on individual
characterslike Milkmanand Jadine,but the salvationof individuals is
not the point. Rather,these individualsstrugglingto reclaimor redefine
themselves, are portrayed as epiphenomenal to community and cul-
ture, and it is the strengthand continuityof the black culturalheritage
as a whole that is at stake and being tested. (93-94)

Whatis "atstake"in Morrison'snovels and in blackfictionin gener-

al is a consistentemphasis on the need to resist forcesstemming from
society which may serve to destroy "continuityof the black cultural
heritage"by a conscious embracingof the past combined with a con-
currentquest for identity.When analyzing this patternof creativere-
sistanceof outside forcesand rebuildingof the self in Morrison'snov-
els, one can perceive a distinctecho of naturalism.The word "echo"is
significant because Morrison's novels are not strictly naturalistic.
While Morrison's works do exhibit naturalistictendencies, she pre-
sents them in a new way, illustratingdifferentchallenges specific to
minorities and offering alternate ways of dealing with these chal-
lenges. Morrison'sprotagonistsface a world thatis more complex,op-
pressive,and destructivethaneitherTheodoreDreiser'sCarrieor John
Steinbeck's Tom Joad because Morrison's protagonists must battle
againstintraracismand interracismas well as poverty and sexism.
In FingeringtheJaggedGrain:Tradition andFormin RecentBlackFic-
tion,Keith E. Byermanclaims that historicallyAfricanAmericanwrit-
ers have not adopted an existing Europeanor Americanliteraryform
without significantlychangingit to correspondto the blackexperience:
FromPhillis Wheatley'searly verses throughthe moralisticstyle of the
slave narrativesand Wright'snaturalismto Ellison'ssymbolic and ex-
perimental novel, black writers have consistently turned European
and white Americanforms and techniquesto their own purposes,just
as blacks in general have changed the religious and social institutions
of the dominant cultureto meet their special needs. (41)
112 PATRICECORMIER-HAMILTON

Furthermore, this "adapting of nonblack forms to black materials"

is not always a conscious or even a voluntary act, but an inevitable
one rising from the differing life experiences of African Americans
due not only to the existence of racism throughout the history of this
country, but to African American cultural heritage, folklore, and
mores (Byerman 41). In his comprehensive text, The Afro-American
Novel and Its Tradition,Bernard Bell argues that dating back to W.E.B.
DuBois there has been a history of African American fiction that can
be identified as naturalistic. Bell also clearly supports an ethnic decon-
struction of the traditional theory when he claims that when natural-
ism appears in black fiction it has been "refractedthrough the double-
consciousness and double vision of black American novelists" (81).
However, although Bell does use the term "black naturalism" once
when describing the naturalism of the 1940s, he does not appear to
propose a new genre with this title. Moreover, my definition of natu-
ralism in African American fiction is more liberal than the naturalism
Bell describes and includes literature that could also be characterized
as having strong pastoral, romantic, mythic or folkloric elements. In
the following analysis of The Bluest Eye, I will attempt to illustrate
that the naturalism in African American fiction has been "adapted"
and altered to such a significant extent to justify a new literary genre
that includes the following themes: the importance of cultural her-
itage or what Bell calls "ancestralism," the problem of assimilation,
the conflict between self and community, the psychological and eco-
nomical barriers created by racism and the resulting quest for whole-
ness that is essential for overcoming these obstacles.
Before exploring black naturalism in Toni Morrison's novel, it
would perhaps be appropriate to briefly review the existing theory of
naturalism in general. As many critics of naturalism, including
Charles Walcutt, have noted, naturalism is an elusive genre, difficult
to define. In his dissertation, Paul Baker Civello states that while nat-
uralism has experienced significant transformations in its modern
and postmodern forms, the root causes of the emergence of natural-
ism remain consistent:

[naturalism]arises from the collapse of man's conception of an order

in the materialworld-an order that had formerlyimbued that world
with meaning. As a result, a rift opens between the self and the mater-
ial world, now perceived as one of meaningless,indifferentforce.Nat-
uralism depicts this rift, and points toward a resolutionof it. (2)

As Civello and others have noted, for early American naturalists

such as Norris, Crane and Drieser, the dissolution of "man's concep-
BLACK NATURALISM AND TONI MORRISON 113

tion of order"was a reactionto Darwin's theory of evolution and the

questions it raised concerning the existence of an ordered universe
created by a benevolent God. This new perception of the world as
"indifferent"and amoralcreateda psychologicalconflictbetween the
self and nature, dramatizedby Vandover'seventual insanity in Nor-
ris's naturalistic novel Vandoverand the Brute. Intellectuals of the late
nineteenth century could no longer view nature as a reflection of
one's spiritual and rational being, could no longer feel secure in an
inherent biological, and therefore moral, superiority to the other crea-
tures inhabiting earth, thus creating the "rift" Civello refers to be-
tween man and an impersonal nature of indiscriminate force. For
Civello, later naturalists like Hemingway also felt isolated from the
environment, but the cause of the rift was World War I rather than
Darwinism.
Like Civello, Donald Pizer also focuses on how naturalism has
evolved as society has changed and grown. Yet, despite its transfor-
mations, Pizer claims that some naturalistic themes from the 1890s to
the 1950s remain essentially the same: (1) the idea of the individual
thwarted by natural or societal forces, (2) the emergence of the "com-
mon man" as hero, (3) the benefits of community as protection
against repressive societal influences, and (4) the ability to gain
knowledge about oneself and one's world. Generally, perhaps the
most well-known tenet of naturalism is its focus on the waste of an
individual's potential due to "conditioning forces" from the environ-
ment. At last the struggles of common men and women who are pro-
pelled into a life of poverty were seen as not merely unfortunate, but
as a tragedy. Another familiar theme of naturalism concerns the prob-
lem of knowledge. Although the Aristotelian tragic hero may fail to
understand himself or his condition during his descent, he does in
the end ascertain who he is and what has caused his fall; in contrast,
early naturalistic fiction indicates that writers came to doubt that
knowledge of oneself and one's reality was even possible (Pizer 6-7).
According to Pizer, in the 1930s the concept of wasted human po-
tential evolved into a focus on the relationship between the mores of
society and the individual. The perception of individuals being
thwarted and oppressed by an elite group also included its oppo-
site-that is, that a group, united together to protect their collective
interests, can prevail. Naturalistic fiction in the 1930s such as Stein-
beck's The Grapes of Wrathincluded, then, a transformation from an
inherent protection of oneself and one's family to an increased
awareness of a responsibility to others, demonstrated when Rose of
Sharon shares her mother's milk with a starving stranger (15). In the
early twentieth century, characters in naturalistic fiction are not only
114 PATRICECORMIER-HAMILTON

prevented from realizing their capabilities, they are also frequently

"wrenchedby their desires or by other uncontrollablecircumstances
from their grooved but satisfying paths into thechaosof life 'outside"'
(7). As naturalism evolved, writers also came to regard the issue of
knowledge of the self differently,believing that knowledge of oneself
and one's world was difficult but not impossible. In the 1940s and
1950s there arose a distinct distrust of society-formed groups-
whether it be the army,the family,or the citizen committee. Largely
in response to WorldWarII, many traditionalnaturalisticauthorsbe-
lieved that although the common man or woman is still thwartedby
forces beyond control,the only protectionor validation he or she can
find lies not in the community but in the individual. If knowledge
was at all possible, it could only be found throughindividual experi-
ence, though it may be self-destructivein nature (87).
It seems, then, that naturalismevolved from an exclusive reliance
on community to an equally exclusive relianceon the self. It is in this
breachbetween these two extremesthat the theory and its evolution
prove inadequate in dealing with black fiction. Black naturalism in
Morrison'snovels explores the challengesAfricanAmericansexperi-
ence as they contend with the conflicting responsibilitiesto the self
and the community that arise to a greatextent due to racism.In order
to gain a better understandingof the complex psychological struggles
minorities experience as they attempt to resist influences from a
dominant society, it might prove helpful to consider Elaine Showal-
ter's discussion of the three phases that subcultures go through in
their search for independence and cultural identity. In "TheFemale
Tradition,"Showalterdescribesthe firstphase a subcultureor minor-
ity experiences as an extended period of "imitationof the prevailing
modes of the dominant tradition,and internalization of its standards
of art and its views on social roles"(1108).As a subculturevalues the
unique characteristics of its identity and gains a better sense of its
power, it progresses collectively into a second phase that includes a
"protestagainst these standardsand values, and advocacy of minori-
ty rights," while she describes a third phase as a period of "self-dis-
covery,a turning inward freed fromsome of the dependency of oppo-
sition, a search for identity" (1108).Although Showalteris discussing
female "literarysubcultures"in her article,I think we can profitably
apply her phases of development to subcultures in general. Her
analysis is perhaps especially helpful for those of us who are mem-
bers of the dominant society and do not have a directexperiencewith
the psychological pressuresinherentin being a minority.
It is no coincidence, then, that all of Morrison's novels present
charactersstriving with these same issues: the danger of indiscrimi-
BLACKNATURALISMAND TONIMORRISON 115

nate internalizationof white Westernmores, the need for advocacy of

African American values, and the importance of self-discovery.The
first two stages Showalter describes elucidate the psychological bar-
riers African Americans must travel through before they can ac-
knowledge the past and consequently achieve self-identity. Thus a
characterlike Paul D in Morrison'sBelovedmust unlock the steel box
of memories in his chest before he is able to reap the benefits of self-
love. For all minorities, the journey to self-realizationis a journey of
survival for the individual and for the race. When analyzing Morri-
son's characters, therefore, it is important to remember that along
with combattingprejudiceand injusticestemming from society, they
are also overcoming inner struggles that are unique to a member of a
minority.And because Morrisonsuggests a healing, vital process to
freedom and self-awareness,her novels go beyond protest literature
and well into the realms of art and black naturalism.
Morrisonincorporatesthe naturalistictheme of the "waste of indi-
vidual potential"due to environmentalcircumstancesin many of her
novels and most emphaticallyin the characterof Pecola Breedlovein
TheBluestEye. As many criticshave noted, Pecola is victimized by a
society that conditions her to believe that she is ugly and therefore
worthless, because she doesn't epitomize white Western culture's
idea of beauty. In her book BlackWomenNovelists:TheDevelopmentof
a Tradition,1892-1976,BarbaraChristianseems to support a naturalis-
tic interpretationwith her claim that "Pecola'sdestinyis ultimatelyde-
terminedby the myth of beauty and goodness one culturehas foisted
on another"(153,emphasis added).
In both fiction and poetry in Westernculture,outward beauty has
often been an indicationof innervirtue.Pecolabelieves that if her eyes
were blue she would be pretty,virtuous,and loved: friendswould play
with her at recess, teacherswould smile at Pecola the same way they
smile at Maureen Peel, and even her parents might stop fighting be-
cause they would not want to "do bad things in front of those pretty
eyes" (TBE40). For Pecola,beauty equals happiness,and it is difficult
to fault a young girl for the misperception;certainlyboth white and
black communities in her world seem to support the idea. Maureen
Peel, "a high yellow dream child,"is treatedwith respectand awe by
students and teachersalike not only becauseof her economicalsuperi-
ority,but because of her light skin, her brown hair,her green eyes, her
"whiteness"(TBE52). ForAfricanAmericansthereis a directrelation-
ship between economic gain and light skin: a black individual's
chances of achieving both social and economicadvantagesis in direct
correlationto his/her abilityto correspondmore closely to the images
of beauty and common ideologies of the dominantsociety.
116 PATRICECORMIER-HAMILTON

Morrison indicates how damaging careless adoption of Western

values can be for African Americans in two memorable incidents.
The first incident occurs when neighborhoodboys dance "a macabre
ballet" around Pecola, berating her for the darkness of her skin,
singing "Blacke mo. Blacke mo" (TBE55). In describingthe episode,
Claudia remarks that "it was the contempt for their own blackness
that gave the first insult its teeth" (TBE55). In Pecola'sclash with the
group of boys, Morrisonis demonstrating"how these ideas caninvert
the natural orderof an entire culture," creating young men who feel an
awful contempt for the color of their skin and, by implication, their
culture (Christian152-53,emphasis added). By subscribingto a false
white standard of beauty,AfricanAmericansassist the repressiveef-
forts of the majority culture and bury their identities, following an
unhealthy path of self-hatredratherthan self-love.
When the young black boys chant "Yadaddsleepsnekked"they
chide Pecola for not being "civilized" according to Western stan-
dards, again indicating an unnaturalinversion of values and an un-
willingness to take pride in one's own culturein the black communi-
ty.As Claudia listens to the boys, she recallsaccidentlyglimpsing her
own daddy naked one night as he passed her bedroom:"we had seen
our own father naked and didn't care to be reminded of it and feel
the shame brought on by the absenceof shame"(TBE59, emphasis
added). Therefore, unlike some critics, I do not view the fact that
Pecola saw Cholly nude as a foreshadowing of his later molestation.
As Claudia and her sister lie with wide-open eyes in the dark after
seeing their father,his nakedness remains in the room as a soothing
"friendly-like" presence. Furthermore,Morrison herself indicates
that even while the boys were harassing Pecola "theirown father[s]
had similarly relaxed habits"around the house-in ostracizingPeco-
la for looking black and having a black family with black mores, the
boys censure their own culturalidentities.
Pecola is an easy victim, responding with tears ratherthan insults
because, like her mother, she has completely assimilated the values
the majorityculture presents in billboards,advertisements,and mo-
tion pictures. In studying Pecola from a psychological perspective,
one can say that Pecola and much of her community are trapped in
Showalter's first phase of growth for a subculture-"imitationof the
prevailing modes of the dominant tradition,and internalization of its
standardsof art and its views on social roles"(1108,emphasis added).
Another incident Morrison provides to illustrate the debilitating
effects of the infiltrationof Westernideas on AfricanAmericansis the
scene in which Pecola is expelled from the neat, orderly,and sterile
house of Geraldine. By straighteningtheir hair,clothespinning their
BLACK NATURALISM AND TONI MORRISON 117

noses and suppressing "the dreadful funkiness of passion" (TBE64),

these brown women from Mobile and Meridianhave groomed away
their identities with the hot comb of self-hatred.Although Juniortells
his mother that Pecola killed the cat, Geraldine's strong reaction
against Pecola goes far deeper than her cat's death. Geraldine calls
Pecola a "nasty little black bitch" because Pecola reeks with the funk-
iness and the poverty Geraldine has so stridently avoided. As Geral-
dine stares at Pecola over the silky black back of her dead cat, she
notes Pecola's soiled clothes, muddy shoes, slipping socks, and
loosely plaited hair, despising the little girl for being poor and too
black: "She had seen this little girl all of her life ... They had stared
at her with great uncomprehending eyes. Eyes that questioned noth-
ing and asked everything. Unblinking and unabashed, they stared up
at her.... And this one had settled in her house" (TBE 75).
As critics such as Otten and Willis have noted, young women like
Geraldine who forever strive to expunge their blackness and "creep
singly up into the major folds" (TBE 18) of mainstream white society
continue the corruption of the white community by spawning a
brown race that revers white standards indiscriminately, denying
their ancestral heritage and denying their passionate natures, believ-
ing the myth broadcast by white society that black skin represents in-
feriority and bestiality.
In her novel, Morrison also demonstrates the forces in white soci-
ety that eat away at Pecola's self-esteem and sense of self-worth with
her encounter with Mr. Yacobowski. Pecola visits Mr. Yacobowski's
store eagerly willing to spend her pennies on a handful of Mary Jane
candies. Although Pecola is a paying customer, Mr. Yacobowski's
glazed eyes betray a "total absence of human recognition" while his
hand gingerly takes the pennies from the little girl's fist, careful not
to brush her black skin (TBE43). When Pecola leaves the candy store,
she once again sees herself as ugly, and meaningless as a weed strain-
ing through a crack in the sidewalk. It is interesting to note that
Gwendolyn Brooks's autobiographical character, Maud Martha, also
envisions herself as a plain dandelion due to her too-dark skin: "it
was hard to believe that a thing of only ordinary allurements-if the
allurements of any flower could be said to be ordinary-was as easy
to love as a thing of heartcatching beauty" (qtd. in Washington 389).
In Maud Martha's world, the "thing of heartcatching beauty" is rep-
resented by her sister Helen, a light-skinned girl.
As other critics have noted, Pecola's next gesture of eating the
Mary Janes indicates her strong desire to lose her black identity in a
transporting ecstasy of chewy caramel delight:
118 PATRICECORMIER-HAMILTON

Each pale yellow wrapper has a picture on it. A picture of little Mary
Jane.... Smiling white face. Blond hair in gentle disarray,blue eyes look-
ing at her out of a world of clean comfort.The eyes are petulant, mis-
chievous. To Pecola they are simply pretty.... To eat the candy is some-
how to eat the eyes, eat MaryJane.Love MaryJane.Be MaryJane.
(TBE43)

Therefore, in black naturalistic fiction, minority characters begin

their struggle with the outside forces of society with the additional
handicaps Showalter's stages of progression indicate. Although char-
acters like Tom Joad were often compelled to fight malicious stereo-
types such as "hick" and "Okie," they were never denied person-
hood, never overpowered by the vacuum of acknowledgement that
Pecola experiences with Mr. Yacobowski or that Richard Wright ex-
periences as a bellboy in a Southern hotel or as a worker who is
forced to fight another "Black Boy" for the amusement of white man-
agers. Tragically, both black and white communities unwittingly join
forces to extinguish Pecola Breedlove's fledgling sense of self-worth,
driving this little girl to her ultimate destination: the garbage heaps
on the outskirts of town.
In The Bluest Eye there is a palpable condemnation for African
Americans who sacrifice vulnerable members of their community to
attain the benefits of assimilation into white society. In Down from the
Mountaintop, Melissa Walker discusses the tragic waste of people like
Pecola Breedlove and the communities who fail them:
Claudia acknowledges that she and otherslike her who have managed
to rise above their origins use the Pecolas of the world to bolster their
own sense of belonging in the mainstream.... The culprits in the
crimes against Pecola, then, are not just the social conditions that de-
stroyed first her parents and then Pecola herself,but those within the
black communitywho use the less fortunateto facilitatetheirown suc-
cess in a racistsociety. (58)

Thus the white majority culture is both a direct and indirect sup-
pressor, withholding money, power and prestige to turn blacks against
blacks, creating an inverted and aberrant community, whose little boys
and girls sing songs of self-hatred: "Black e mo! Black e mo!"
Not only is Pecola prevented from developing her nature and
growing to her fullest potential, she is also wrested from existence
"into the chaos of life" first when she is "put outdoors" and forced to
live with Claudia and Frieda, and second when her father, Cholly
Breedlove, rapes her. In the opening pages of the novel, Claudia de-
scribes the significance and horror of Pecola's plight: "Outdoors, we
BLACKNATURALISMAND TONIMORRISON 119

knew, was the real terrorin life.... Thereis a differencebetween be-

ing put out and being put outdoors.If you are put out, you go some-
where else; if you are outdoors, there is no place to go.... Outdoors
was the end of something, an irrevocable,physical fact"(TBE18).
In TheBluestEye Morrison does not exonerate Cholly Breedlove
from committing his family to the outdoors or violating his daughter.
Instead she presents some possible explanations of circumstances
stemming from his environmentthat may have contributedto his ac-
tions and his nature.First,as previously stated, both black and white
society have become aberrant;as long as one culture is allowed to
dominate and exploit another, there will be unnatural acts such as
Sethe killing her "already crawling" baby in Belovedand Cholly
showing his confused love in the incestuous act of rape. When Chol-
ly sees his daughter standing in the kitchen cleaning a frying pan,
"herhead to one side as though crouchingfrom a permanentand un-
relieved blow,"he is filled with pity, rage and helplessness (TBE127).
Cholly feels pity because his daughter should be enjoying the free-
dom and innocence of childhood and cannot, largely due to racism;
he feels rage because he unconsciously senses that economic disad-
vantages (a given in most AfricanAmericanexperience at this time)
and a life in a rundown storefrontamongstbattlingparentshave con-
tributedto the "permanentand unrelievedblow" exhibitedin her de-
meanor;he feels helpless because as an illiterateblack man too long
estranged from his family and his responsibilities,he does not know
how to assuage Pecola's broken, "crouching"spirit. In a drunken,
confused state, Cholly gropes for something to give his daughter to
demonstratehis love and tenderness and returnto himself a sense of
self-respect. Therefore, like Bigger Thomas and many of the
"grotesques"in Anderson's Winesburg,Ohio,Cholly remains mute,
helpless, and in turmoil, unable to communicate his changing feel-
ings of tenderness and hatred.
In part, then, Cholly rapes Pecola to demonstrate his love: "He
wanted to fuck her-tenderly" (TBE128).But Cholly also does it be-
cause like many early naturalisticprotagonists,he is driven by an in-
ner force almost against his desires, a force he does not fully compre-
hend in his drunken, muddled brain to do this "wild and forbidden
thing" that "excitedhim" (128).Two circumstancesin Cholly's youth
succeed in severing him from a connectionwith the rest of human na-
ture and human morality: his mother's desertion prompted by
strained economic conditions and the exploitation and humiliation
he experienced at the hands of the two white hunters. The inner
forces governing Cholly's behavior with his daughter are born from
this dangerous disconnection and the correspondingrage and help-
120 PATRICECORMIER-HAMILTON

lessness it has produced in Cholly Breedlove. When Pauline finds

Pecola lying on the kitchen floor with her dingy underwear still hov-
ering about her ankles, she beats Pecola, almost killing her. Thus
Cholly's deranged act of love produces yet another terrifying, brutal
blow in Pecola's young life, finally compelling her into madness.
It is worth noting that unlike naturalistic tragic figures, when
Pecola is thrown "into the chaos of life 'outside,"' she does not fall
from "midway"; her life is not on a "grooved but satisfying" path.
Living in a grubby storefront, taunted and alienated by her class-
mates and either beaten or ignored by her parents, Pecola is a tragic
figure who begins life at the bottom the moment her mother, brain-
washed by the white movie industry, decides her daughter is irre-
trievably ugly: Pauline Breedlove "was never able, after her educa-
tion in the movies, to look at a face and not assign it some category in
the scale of absolute beauty, and the scale was one she absorbed in
full from the silver screen" (TBE 97).
Sitting in the local cinema day after day, Pauline Breedlove dreams
of looking like Jean Harlow, parting her hair on the side and pulling
a curly lock over her forehead. When Pauline looses her front tooth,
she realizes how terribly impossible and foolish her dream was.
Pauline begins to hate herself, unconsciously believing the messages
paraded on the silver screen-that only beautiful women like Jean
Harlow and Norma Shearer deserve love and happiness. And when
her daughter is born, regardless of Pecola's pretty head of hair and
soft wet eyes, she sees Pecola as ugly too. Not only is Pauline's awful
sense of self-worth passed on to her child, her impossible dream of
blond blue-eyed beauty is passed on as well.
Samuels and Hudson-Weems claim that readers must not overlook
Pecola's own responsibility for her abdication of freedom and descent
into madness. The authors compare Pecola's passive reactions to situa-
tions of repression (such as the cruel attacks on Pecola's dark skin color
by Maureen Peel and the neighborhood black boys) with Claudia, who
welcomes an occasion to express her anger and scream insults. Samuels
and Hudson-Weems argue that even children "must consider the direc-
tion of their lives" (22). The authors are correctwhen they claim that un-
like Pecola, Claudia "is determined to overcome any definition of self
that is externally ascribed" from the white or black community (22).
However, can one ignore the roots of Claudia's survival? Claudia
was raised in a house where "love, thick and dark as Alaga syrup"
coated her childhood (TBE 14). Claudia has never experienced being
put "outdoors" or, that we know of, watched violent fights between
her mother and father. Claudia does not live in a squalid storefront
and her mother is not absent for much of the day, working as a maid.
BLACKNATURALISMAND TONIMORRISON 121

Claudia has been equipped with the shield of self-love to combat

negative influences from black and white society-Pecola has not.
Therefore,because she has developed in a less debilitating environ-
ment than Pecola Breedlove, an environmentthat encouraged Clau-
dia to feel pride for herself,while still a young girl, Claudiahas been
able to move beyond Showalter'sstage one into a protest against the
mores of the dominant society. And the adult Claudia we hear
throughout the novel has progressed beyond stage two to the quest
for identity indicated in stage three. When Claudia destroys her
white doll with its glassy blue eyes, she demonstrates pride in her
identity and the ability to understand,to some degree, the repressive
values pervading her black community.
Samuels and Hudson-Weems are correct, however, in asserting
that Pecola participates in her own destruction; Pecola is passive,
folding into herself because she lacks the strengththat love of oneself
and one's identity provide to "standerect and spit the misery out on
the streets"as Claudia does (61).Yetit remainsdifficultto fault Peco-
la for a destructive lack of self-awarenessand self-love. Pecola lives
in a brutal world of rejection, deprived of even parental affection.
When Pecola accidently topples a pan of blueberrypie she is forced
to suffer as berry juice scalds her legs while her mother dispels the
tears of the little white girl delicately dressed in pink and yellow: "In
one gallop she was on Pecola,and with the back of her hand knocked
her to the floor.Pecola slid in the pie juice, one leg folding under her"
(TBE86). The relationshipbetween motherand daughteris so distant
that Pecola invariably thinks of her mother as "Mrs. Breedlove,"
while the little white girl affectionatelyrefersto Pauline Breedloveas
"Polly."Pecola behaves like a victim because she has been victimized
on three debilitatingfronts from the moment of her birth:by the ma-
joritywhite society,by the black community,and laterby herself.
Consequently, this cringing, retreating,alienated little girl never
attains knowledge of herself or comprehendsthe complex forces that
manipulate her reverencefor blond-hairedblue-eyed ShirleyTemple
figures. Pecola's final step into madness described by Claudia indi-
cates the extent of Morrison'stragedy: "A little black girl yearns for
the blue eyes of a little white girl, and the horrorat the heart of her
yearning is exceeded only by the evil of fulfillment" (TBE158). In
desperation,then, Pecola createsa friend out of her imaginationwho
will love her and assure her that she has the bluest eyes in all the
world, bluer than the blue sky, bluer than "Alice-and-JerryStory-
book" eyes. With the demise of Pecola Breedlove,Morrisonissues a
direct and clear warning of the importance of self-love for African
Americans.
122 PATRICECORMIER-HAMILTON

Many criticshave noted Claudia'sreflectionon the inabilityof some

seeds to grow andbearfruitin the soil of hercommunity:"Thesoil is bad
for certainkinds of flowers.Certainseeds it will not nurture,certainfruit
it will not bear,and when the land killsof its own volition,we acquiesce
and say the victimhad no rightto live"(TBE160).Whattoo many critics
inevitably fail to print is Claudia's next sentence: "Weare wrong, of
course,but it doesn'tmatter."In her novel Morrisonis claimingthatthe
soil-or the societalenvironment-should not fail in nurturingflowers
like PecolaBreedlove.The seed of Pecolawas not plantedtoo deeply-
Pecola'ssoul was deniednourishment.Affectionwas nevershoweredon
Pecola'sforlorn,yearningsoul;therefore,the fruitof self-lovewas never
realized.Withoutthe strengthof love for one'sculturalidentity,vulnera-
ble members of minoritiesare in real danger of being starvedby both
black and white environments.Blacknaturalismencompassesthis de-
mand of the societalenvironmentto nurtureratherthan starveAfrican
Americans,allowingthemto flowerto theirfullestpotentials.
Unfortunately, Morrison's message is still much needed for to-
day's generation of AfricanAmericans.The preferenceamong black
children for white, blond, blue-eyed dolls is still all too prevalent;ac-
cording to a study conducted by Hopson and Hopson of black
preschoolers,76 percentof the childrenselected a blackdoll as "bad,"
and 60 to 78 percentstill chose a white doll over a black one. It seems,
then, that little has changed since 1941 and Pecola's dreadfulvisit to
Soaphead Churchfor the blessing of blue eyes: many AfricanAmeri-
cans still suffer from a dangerouslylow sense of self-esteemoriginat-
ing from their internalizationof the prejudicesof white culture.Ac-
cording to a survey conductedby the MetropolitanChicagoInforma-
tion Center,"AfricanAmericansare more likely than whites to hold
negative opinions of their fellow blacks' innate capabilities"(Mabry
and Rogers 33). Morrison'snovel reflectsthis dangerous internaliza-
tion of racist values and the cycle of self-hatredpassed on from par-
ents to children it produces. By calling our attentionto this self-per-
petuating cycle in her first novel, Morrisonis trying to eliminate the
devastation of dandelions like Pecola Breedlove.Consequently,one
significant tenet of black naturalismthat does not exist in traditional
naturalismincludes this prevalentringingcall of warning concerning
the dangers of internalizationand the need for balancebetween self
and society. Not only does this tenet function as a diagnosis of soci-
ety's problems, it also serves as both a challenge and a stimulus for
psychological and political change.
Having explored both the direct and indirect societal forces that
serve to thwartcharacterslike PecolaBreedlove,we areleft with a few
questions:what exactly is blacknaturalism,how is it significantlydif-
BLACKNATURALISMAND TONIMORRISON 123

ferent from the existing theory,and how do earlierblack naturalistic

novels such as TheStreetand NativeSondiffer from the black natural-
ism we see in Morrison'snovels? First,I think it is worth noting that
writers of black naturalisticfiction were not responding to the same
"rootcauses"Civello describesin his dissertation.EarlyAfricanAmer-
ican naturalisticwriters such as DuBois were more than likely not re-
actingto the rise of Darwinismin the nineteenthcenturythatso rocked
the white Americanman's idea of an ordereduniverse.Although the
Christianreligion was highly importantin many black households in
the late nineteenthcentury,the crisisthat influencedblacknovelists of
this period was the idea of slaveryand the continuedoppressionof the
black race during Reconstruction.I think the injustices of white su-
premacy and racism served to alienateAfricanAmericansfrom their
conceptual ideas of an ordered material world far more drastically
than the theory of evolution and its affecton the Christiandoctrineof
creation.Moreover,while both AfricanAmericanand white characters
may suffer psychologically in naturalisticfiction, the causes of their
conditions are very different.As Civello notes, in FrankNorris's Van-
doverandtheBrute,having learnedof his biologicalaffinitywith the an-
imal kingdom and being unableto rely on the Biblefor guidance,Van-
dover cannot reconcilehis spiritualand moralideals with his physical
instinct, thus creating a psychological split between his physical and
rationalself that resultsin madness.However,as I have illustratedpre-
viously, in blacknaturalisticfiction,the sourceof psychologicalconflict
for African Americans is interracismand intraracism.Therefore,al-
though characterslike Vandoverand Pecola Breedloveboth become
insane, the foundationsthat motivatetheirfalls areunrelated.
Furthermore,black novelists from the Harlem Renaissance were
not responding to the devastating effects of WorldWarI in the same
ways as their white contemporaries.When blacks joined the fight to
save democracy,many hoped that the freedomthey were fighting for
in Europewould become realized in the United States.Instead,in the
1920s there was a resurgence of Klan activity,lynching, and accord-
ing to annual reportsfrom the attorneygeneral,peonage still existed
"to a shocking extent" (Aptheker 193). Black soldiers returned to a
country that sought to de-emphasize the heroic roles AfricanAmeri-
cans played in Europe and "deprivethem of gains in jobs and hous-
ing made during the war" (Bell93). Therefore,because black natural-
istic writers were responding to a very different"wasteland"devoid
of racialjustice, they createda significantlydifferentliteraryform.
It is also worth noting that in AfricanAmericanfiction many black
charactersdisplay a significantlydifferentperceptionof naturethan is
exhibitedin the traditionaltheoryof naturalism.As Morrisonindicates
124 PATRICECORMIER-HAMILTON

in her novels, natureis not merelyan oppressive,indifferentforcethat

seeks "to undermine [one's]dignity and againstwhich [one] therefore
had to struggle" (Civello 13). In Morrison'snovels nature serves as
both a reflectorof humanity and as an indicatorof future happiness
and depair.Dead birds falling from the sky in Sulanot only announce
Sula's arrivalbut seem to indicatethe approachingof hard times and
the existence of disorderin "TheBottom."In addition,the intolerance
of Pecola's community is reflected in the intolerance of the soil for
growing marigoldsthatyear.Blacknovelistsperceivenatureas neither
benevolent and ordered,as viewed by the Romantics,nor as callousor
objectiveas perceivedby white naturalisticnovelistslike JackLondon,
because their perceptions arise from a differentculturalbackground
containingAfricanmyths, legends, spirituals,blues and tales.
A second important differencebetween black naturalismand the
traditionaltheory concernsthe issue of knowledge of the self and the
nature of reality.In naturalisticfiction, the idea of knowledge was at
first perceived as impossible and laterperceived as possible but diffi-
cult to achieve. In black naturalism,however, knowledge is not only
possible, it is essentialfor the physical and culturalsurvivalof the race.
For African Americans, self-knowledge and a strong sense of self-
identity is the only protection against the various forms of both in-
traracismand interracismthat still pervadeour society.Unlike charac-
ters in traditionalnaturalism,in black naturalisticfiction this impor-
tant sense of identity can onlybe achieved by embracingthe past, as
demonstratedby characterslike TarBaby'sJadineChilds and Songof
Solomon'sMilkmanDead. Until characterscan travelbeyond the first
two stages of Showalter'sstudy of subcultures-imitation and protest
of the dominant society's mores-to a quest for identity, like Pecola
Breedlove, they remain psychologically trapped and whipped by
their societal environment.We have, therefore,a consistentpatternof
the importanceof the past for understandingthe presentand redefin-
ing the future not only in Morrison'snovels, but in modern black fic-
tion and poetry in general.The importanceof embracingone's cultur-
al heritagedoes not appearin traditionalnaturalismmainlybecauseit
is not essential for membersof a dominantsociety to make an effortto
embracean identity or a past:first,because quite often theircollective
past is not filled with a sanctioned,long-termpatternof persecution;
and second, because society has not made a concertedeffortto appro-
priate or annihilatetheirculturesand collectivehistories.
This necessary embracingof the past in black naturalismpresents
an interesting question: Can black novels that fail to offer this solu-
tion be considered as members of the black naturalismgenre?When
analyzing Native Son Bell states that although Wright provided a
BLACKNATURALISMAND TONIMORRISON 125

great service in bringing the harshlight of naturalismto the problems

facing blacks in the 1930s, he fails to indicate the importance of
"black folk culture as a way of maintaining or changing arrange-
ments of status, power, and identity in a hostile environment"(165).
According to Bell, many black readersincluding JamesBaldwin "ap-
parentlyknew that white oppression,even during slavery,was never
absolute in its control over the intragrouplives of black Americans,
who, from the slave quartersto the urban ghettos, have carriedwith
them a system of values and rituals that has enabled them to sustain
their humanity" (165). Therefore,do earlier naturalistic novels like
Native Son and TheStreetfit into this new genre I have outlined? I
think we can say that these novels do qualify as part of black natural-
ism but with the stipulationthat they exhibitcharacters(and perhaps
authors) who are trapped in Showalter's second stage of protest
against the dominant society.
One can also ask the same question about novels from authorslike
Zora Neale Hurston, Jessie Fauset and Nella Larsen.Although Bell
does not label these novels as naturalistic,he uses the rhetoricof nat-
uralism to describea common quest sharedby novels of the New Ne-
gro: "[the quest] was for the resolution of the psychological and so-
cial dilemma of the modem blackAmerican,for an affirmationof the
human spirit overtheforcesthatthreatened its integrityanddevelopment"
(115,emphasis added). Furthermore,when discussing the idea of an-
cestralismin romanticfiction, Bell also uses the language of natural-
ism- writers look to the past when their souls are "under siege by
destructive forces"(114).I would argue that due to the extensive in-
fluence of societal environmentson AfricanAmericansdue largely to
racism, although many black novels may be categorizedas romantic,
folkloric, or pastoral, they can also be categorized as examples of
black naturalismas long as charactersare striving against conditions
that threatentheir "integrity"while seeking to gain self-awarenessas
a "modernblack American."
In black naturalismwe are also confrontedwith the problemof as-
similation with characterslike Helen Wright,Geraldine,and Jadine
Childs, who, by denying theirblack ancestralculture,have risenboth
socially and economically in mainstream society. In introducing
members of the black bourgeoisie, Morrisonexplores two challenges
African Americans face: first, the inherent difficulty all minorities
have in assimilating into a dominant society without betrayingone's
race;and second, the danger of alienationfromoneself and one's past
due to this betrayal.For all minorities,a certain amount of assimila-
tion is important:one must learn the language and the customs of an
adopted society in order to function successfully within it. The diffi-
126 PATRICECORMIER-HAMILTON

culty occurs when individuals over-assimilateto ride the road to ma-

terial success, power or societal acceptance. This is distinctly a mi-
nority issue and cannot be found in traditionalnaturalism.And un-
like other minorities, blacks often experience a greater desire to as-
similate because of a strongersense of alienationinstilled in them by
white society due to the color line.
In an interviewwith JudithPaterson,MayaAngelou sounds remark-
ably like the fictional, young, courageous Sylvia from "TheLesson"
when she states,"Iwill not allow anybodyto minimizemy life, not any-
body,not a living soul-nobody, no lover,no mother,no son, no boss, no
President,nobody"(119).Judgingfromher many accomplishmentsin-
dicatedin her autobiographicalnovels,Angelou seems to have provid-
ed ample proofto supporther statement.Yet,as she affirmsin an inter-
view with BillMoyers,strugglingfor one's freedomis a "difficult"and
"perpetual"effort (19). One cannot rise above the forces that seek to
"minimize"our lives-whether it be our loveror our President-unless
one makesa consciouseffortto understandand acknowledgethem.For
all races and for all individuals, it is criticalto fully comprehendhow
society influencesour values and beliefs--only afterfully understand-
ing the influences(bothpositive and negative)thattouchand shapeour
lives can we strive to combatthem and grow to our fullestpotential.

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