Abstract

The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison’s first novel. It tells us about a little black girl who yearns for a pair of blue eyes. This thesis tries to analyze the black women’s quest for identity in the novel. It is argued that self-recognition plays an important role in black women’s quest for identity. They must accept their own culture and resist the erosion of white culture. Besides, the thesis suggests that love and sense of responsibility are important for black women’s quest for identity.

Key words: Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye, quest for identity, love

摘要

《最蓝的眼睛》是托妮•莫里森的第一部作品。小说讲述了一个黑人小女孩渴望得到一双蓝眼睛。本文主要是通过分析《最蓝的眼睛》中的女性形象来探讨黑人女性在她们社会生活中对自己身份的追求。本文认为自我的认同是关键，接受自己的黑人文化并抵制白人文化对黑人的侵蚀。同时，本文也提出爱与责任感对于黑人女性寻求自我的身份也起到十分重要的作用。

关键词：托妮•莫里森; 《最蓝的眼睛》; 身份; 爱

1.    Introduction
Toni Morrison, one of the greatest and most influential black novelists in the contemporary American society, is also the first black woman who won the Nobel Prize. Most of her works focus on the black female self-awareness, their search for self-identity under the double oppression of sexism and racism. As the identity of black woman writer endowed her with special perspective, she provides insightful representations of the racial problems. Among her works, Beloved, Jazz, and Paradise are the best known.
In 1970, she published her first work The Bluest Eye, which is about a tragic story of a black girl named Pecola Breedlove. Pecola has a strong desire for a pair of blue eyes in order to change her living situation, while she becomes more miserable. Because of her ugliness, she is isolated by her classmates and teachers, and she suffers from the white’s disdain, her mother’s abuse, her father’s rape. Internalized discrimination also brings her great damages. She is assimilated by the white culture. In the end of the novel, due to her mental disorder she fancies that she has got a pair of blue eyes.
At home and abroad, critics are always concerned about the subject of female self-discovery, the female characters, the mythic structure and writing techniques in The Bluest Eye. Many studies focus on the black women’s resignation to the white values. My thesis aims to analyze the black women characters’ quest for their identity from a feminist perspective. It is argued that self-recognition helps reconstruct black women’s identity through acceptance of the black culture and resistance of the white culture. The thesis also emphasizes that love and responsibility play important roles in the self-recognition of the black female.