The Bluest Eye Autumn (II) - Winter (I)
Autumn (continued)
This section begins with another excerpt from the Dick and Jane reading primers, and it describes a pleasant greenhouse. This excerpt doesn’t have any punctuation or spaces between the words. It is followed by a description of the bland and ugly Breedlove home, that used to be a storefront.
Another Dick and Jane excerpt is included, and it focuses on a happy family living with their children in a pleasant home. The narrator then begins to describe the ugliness of the Breedlove family, for all of them felt that they were ugly and expressed that ugliness in different ways. Pauline expressed her ugliness through her martyrdom of being with an abusive husband, and Cholly expressed his through drunkenness and violence. Their children, Sammy and Pecola struggled with their ugliness as well. Pecola hid behind her ugliness and did not quite understand why she felt so ugly. The narrator describes an early morning argument between a hungover Cholly and Pauline, which quickly devolved into a fight. Cholly hit Pauline, and she in turn knocked him out with a frying pan, while Sammy tried to convince her mother to kill Cholly. Pecola just sat on her bed and tried to be still. She thought she could make herself disappear, and she would spend a long time just lying in her bed trying to make her body disappear. She managed to make all of her parts disappear but she could never do that to her eyes. Pecola believed that the ugliness got into her through the eyes, and she would often pray for blue eyes, like those that were described in the Dick and Jane books.
Later Pecola goes to the store to purchase some candy for herself. The store owner does not make eye contact with her and has a short temper talking to her. Pecola is on the verge of tears as she asks him for the Mary Jane candy, and upon leaving the store Pecola is overwhelmed by anger and shame. She eats the candy and experiences the intense pleasure that it brings. She enjoys looking at the blue-eyed blond girl on the wrapper of the candy and makes her way to the rooms above her house. Three women, Miss Marie, Poland, and China live above the Breedlove house. They are prostitutes and the only people who are ever pleasant to Pecola. She tries to ask why they have so many boyfriends, and the women openly talk about their vocation while ribbing one another with inappropriate jokes. They do not try to shield Pecola from the adulterous nature of their work. The narrator briefly explains that these were not the noble prostitutes that often featured in books, but rather women who had chosen to become prostitutes for economic gain. As Pecola leaves the prostitutes, she thinks about her understanding of love. She pictures her father making animal noises as he lays on top of her mother, who always remains deathly quiet.
Winter
In the winter, Claudia and Frieda were both irritated as well as fascinated by the arrival of Maureen Peal, who belonged to an affluent family, had a light complexion, and had long straight hair that was often tied in braids. The whole school seemed to be enamored with the new girl, and even the teachers smiled when they spoke to her. Claudia and Maureen had their lockers close to one another, so they often ran into one another. A few days into winter, Maureen spoke to Claudia and asked to walk home with her since they would travel a bit of the same route. Claudia and Frieda were quite excited to be talking to the new girl, but they soon came upon a group of boys who were making fun of Pecola. They had her surrounded, while they yelled mean things about her complexion, and the fact that she had seen her father naked. Claudia and the two other girls rescue Pecola and chase away the boys, who don’t want to make a bad impression on Maureen. She comforts a visibly upset Pecola and recommends that they go get some ice cream. Claudia and Frieda later discover that Maureen meant to buy ice cream just for herself and Pecola. They don’t have any money for ice cream, so they don’t get any.
Maureen begins to ask Pecola questions about seeing her father naked, but Claudia and Frieda rush to her defense. They have seen their father naked, but they don’t want to admit it, and the conversation soon devolves into an argument. Maureen rushes away from the girls as she crosses the street while saying mean things about how black they appear. She tells them that she is cute while they aren’t, but the girls yell at her as well. They make their way home dejectedly and find Mr. Henry in a jovial mood. He gives them a little money and sends them off to get something to eat. They return to the house before he had anticipated and find him hosting Miss Marie and China. They observe him fawning over them and remember that their mother had said that these women were bad influences who needed to be kept away. After the women leave, Frieda confronts Mr. Henry about the women, and he tells her that they had come over for Bible study. Frieda decides not to tell her mother about the women because they hadn’t eaten on their plates, which she knew her mother had specifically said that she wouldn’t allow.
Analysis
The Breedlove family is affected by a deep ugliness, a spiritual ugliness, that manifests itself as a physical ugliness. Pecola grows up in a horrific environment of drug abuse, domestic violence, and neglect. She begins to associate these conditions as a consequence of her ugliness, which leads her to wish for blue eyes. She believes that if she had blue eyes, her parents would not fight so often or so violently, and the people around her would treat her better. The concluding section of the Autumn section serves as a portrait of Penola’s disturbed childhood. In addition to all the material lack in her life, Pecola is overly sexualized through her conversation with prostitutes and her exposure to sex between her parents. Tragically, Penola has no understanding of love since she has received so little of it from anyone in her life, and begins to associate love with sex. Her troubled house life leads to disturbed school life as well. African American boys in school make fun of her for her complexion and tease her about her naked father, but they are stopped by Claudia, Frieda, and Maureen.
The opening section of Winter highlights yet again the importance of white physical features in beauty. Maureen is most likely an interracial child, and according to Claudia, she is deemed to be cute by everyone in her school. Maureen eventually resorts to telling the other girls that she is superior to them, and she leaves them after teasing them in the same way as the boys who had been bullying Pecola.
