著者

別府 恵子

出版者

神戸女学院大学

雑誌

女性学評論 (ISSN:09136630)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.7, pp.83-99, 1993-03

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Horatio abstains from felicity a while, entreated by his friend, to tell the story of Prince Hamlet. In the culture that loves its blond, blue-eyed children,who will tell the story of a black girl who dreams of having blue eyes so as to be loved? In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye(1970) Claudia MacTeers becomes to her friend Pecola what Horatio was to Prince Hamlet. The innocent blue-eyed baby doll given to little girls every Christmas becomes a potent cultural sysmbol in American society that loves its blue-eyed children; this image of beauty is then used against black girls and women who can never attain such image of beauty. They are told to be just like an innocent blue-eyed doll if they were to be loved. The world seems to be in conspiracy to control women within the narrow confines of their femininity, whispering to them: "It's best to be pretty-then you are assured of love and happiness. See the story of Cinderella?" Cinderella lived happily ever after with the Prince, we are told,because her foot fit into the glass shoe, in other words she is a blue-eyed beauty. The Bluest Eye is a tragedy of Pecola Breedlove who foolishly believed in the idea of physical beauty,"the most destructive idea in the history of human thought."Morrison's novel is also a story of Claudia Macteers,who sees through the destructive mechanism "the beauty myth"entails: how the images of beauty- the blue-eyed baby doll,the Shirley Temple milk cup, and many others-are employed to indoctrinate women,just as the idea of femininity used to,with "the myth of pretty woman"-woman's success story. A familiar story.