The Bluest Eye and Dubois' The Souls of Black Folk

W.E.B. Dubois’s The Souls of Black Folk introduces two concepts describing the blacks’ experience in America: the veil and double consciousness. Both The Souls of Black Folk and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye emphasize the racial self-loathing blacks have once they fully understand how different they are from whites. They begin to feel inferior to whites and do not view themselves as true Americans. Most would rather either become white, or disappear and become invisible. Blacks grow up learning how to objectify beauty; it something that is taught, and it is generally defined as having white skin, blue eyes, and nice hair. Once blacks learn these standards of beauty, they accept themselves as ugly without question. They proceed to live their lives, ashamed of their appearance and their ultimate lack of whiteness. This shame draws out the concept of the veil, which is used by blacks to hide their ugly appearance from white judgment and disapproval.

"How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.  And yet, being a problem is a strange experience, -- peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe. It is in the early days of rollicking boyhood that the revelation first bursts upon one, all in a day, as it were. I remember well when the shadow swept across me. I was a little thing, away up in the hills of New England, where the dark Housatonic winds between Hoosac and Taghkanic to the sea. In a wee wooden schoolhouse, something put it into the boys' and girls' heads to buy gorgeous visiting-cards -- ten cents a package -- and exchange. The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card, -- refused it peremptorily, with a glance. Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows. That sky was bluest when I could beat my mates at examination-time, or beat them at a foot-race, or even beat their stringy heads. Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the words I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine."

- W.E.B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk (2)

Shown in both Dubois's The Souls of Black Folk and Morrison's The Bluest Eye, blacks have two very significant revelations early in life: the moment they realize they are black, and the moment they realize it is a problem. Dubois's experience exemplifies the self-hatred blacks feel once they understand how different they are from whites, and are therefore excluded by society as ugly, inferior, and essentially a "problem." In this time period, blacks grew up learning the standards of beauty, and what is accepted by society and what isn't. For instance, Claudia, in The Bluest Eye, acknowledges a point in her life when she had not yet been taught certain standards in society. Claudia did not understand what was so adorable about the Shirley Temple doll she got for Christmas, and she recalls, "Younger than both Frieda and Pecola, I had not yet arrived at the turning point in the development of my psyche which would allow me to love her" (Morrison 19). Furthermore, Dubois's experience explains that blacks are blocked from the rest of the world "by a vast veil." This veil is a physical and metaphorical barrier between blacks and whites, and Dubois recalls that he never attempted to break through that social barricade: "I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through." In The Bluest Eye, Pecola Breedlove has a similar revelation. She only feels comfortable behind her veil: "Concealed, veiled, eclipsed - peeping out from behind the shroud very seldom, and then only to yearn for the the return of her mask" (Morrison 39). Pecola has no desire to tear down her veil; her only desire is to become white and have blue eyes, so she can be accepted by the rest of society.

            The concept of sight plays into Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Dubois’s The Souls of Black Folk in that blacks are living in a world that enables them to only see themselves through whites’ eyes.

“A world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world.”

 – W.E.B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk

Any African American’s attempt to know themselves, and see themselves as who they really are, is blocked by white superiority and their standards for living. Morrison additionally demonstrates this lack of self-consciousness with Pecola’s character: “Thrown, in this way, into the binding conviction that only a miracle could relieve her, she would never know her beauty. She would see only what there was to see: the eyes of other people” (Morrison 46-47). Pecola is unable to see herself for who she really is; she can only see herself through the eyes of other people. Society has made it impossible for blacks to know themselves and to be an individual.