Probing Racial Dilemmas in the Bluest Eye with the Spyglass of Psychology

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to help rekindle interest in the employment of psychology as a tool for interpreting female characters' racial dilemmas found in the Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. Rather than questioning the already well-established methods of analyzing them, it illustrates how modern science of the human mind can offer extra dimensions of valuable insight, especially in terms of validating the behavior and thoughts of such characters. Such insight might offer new angles from which to look at them whilst showing the relevance of the issues these characters deal with to the contemporary society. Although the limits of this article prevent the full exhaustion of such proposed hybridization, it invites the consideration of a more eclectic approach, whose lack of popularity appears to be unjustified in view of potential benefits available.Keywords Black womanhood . Bluest Eye . Psychology . Racism "A little black girl yearns for the blue eyes of a little white girl, and the horror at the heart of her yearning is exceeded only by the evil of fulfillment" (Morrison 1999, p. 162).As literary works do not exist in vacuum, they function across diverse cultural, historical and social planes. The play of the text (both extratextuality and intratextuality),