Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye portrays the African-American females’ attempt to use racial masquerade as strategies for improving their social status. The black females were excluded from the white society in the 1940s; most African-American females realize that catering the white can provide opportunities of class upward mobility. In order to achieve this goal, most of the female characters in Morrison’s novels are good at imitating the whites to gain acceptance in the mainstream culture.
The actions of catering the white values for those African-American females suggest that they are exposed to the images in mass media, inducing them to seek out models of physical beauty; eventually, individuals are more conscious of their own beauty defined by the mainstream culture and are unable to resist the allurement of the consumer market. Nowadays, females are increasingly becoming more concerned about their physical appearance because of the “slender is beautiful” concept. It is not surprising that women today try to meet the standards of the mainstream culture by means of diet, exercise, and so on. This novel The Bluest Eye is indeed socially relevant to today’s consumer society. This thesis is divided into five chapters. Introduction offers the 1940s American social context. Chapter One engages in studying how African-American females’ identities are shaped by the white society. Chapter Two explores how African Americans have been spiritually and physically victimized throughout the oppression of white society. Chapter Three discusses the consequences of internalizing white values. The Conclusion deals with the awakening of the black culture. This thesis aims at reviewing the strategies of survival of the African-American females in the white society.
