Mrs. Macteer and Mrs. Breedlove Essay

Parental guidance and support are key components of the foundation of a child’s growth and development. Without either, a child cannot grow and develop properly. In her novel The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison examines the effect of different mothers on their respective children through the characters of Mrs. MacTeer and Mrs. Breedlove. Throughout the novel, both characters express their thoughts and feelings through words, with Mrs. MacTeer having a few fussy soliloquies and Mrs. Breedlove having a few interior monologues to get their points across. Although Mrs. MacTeer and Mrs. Breedlove are two entirely different individuals, their respective fussy soliloquies and interior monologues greatly reflect one another. Giving to charity doesn’t always equate to getting something in return. In The Bluest Eye, Mrs. MacTeer takes in Pecola Breedlove for a bit. While Pecola is staying with the MacTeer family, she grows fixated with a Shirley Temple glass, using it every chance that she can. Subsequently, she ends up drinking a lot of the milk that Mrs. MacTeer has for the entire family. Mrs. MacTeer is not thrilled with this, as she rants, â€Å"Three quarts of milk. That’s what was in that icebox yesterday. Three whole quarts. Now they ain’t none. Not a drop. I don’t mind folks coming in and getting what they want, but three quarts of milk! What the devil does anybody need with three quarts of milk? † (Morrison 23). Initially, Mrs. MacTeer’s soliloquy seems reasonable. It seems as though she is simple a mother frustrated with the fact that her milk has been drank up and potentially wasted. However, there are hidden connotations in her speech. By rationalizing her own life situations through her fussing soliloquies and then singing, Mrs. MacTeer manages to isolate her children. They, particularly Claudia, view her singing as a demonstration of the pleasure Mrs. MacTeer takes in insulting others through her soliloquy. As Christine Spies writes in Vernacular Traditions: The Use of Music in the Novels of Toni Morrison, â€Å"the way in which the singing is described, the cathartic quality of the music becomes obvious, as for Mrs. MacTeer singing constitutes a cleansing ritual and establishes a validation of her self† (Spies 13). It is suggested that Mrs. MacTeer is unhappy with her everyday life, as well as with herself. She utilizes the soliloquies to rip apart others, a concept that is detrimental to those she fusses about, yet therapeutic to herself. Once she is satisfied with the degree in which she has ranted and raved, she begins to sing. Her songs are representative of the cleansing of herself through her rants and rambles, as well as a demonstration of her satisfaction and happiness with putting down others. Pauline Breedlove, Pecola’s mother, is fond of reflecting on the better days of her life. Oftentimes throughout The Bluest Eye, Mrs. Breedlove is found reminiscing on the days of her past, when she was a younger woman. In particular, at one point in the novel, Mrs. Breedlove reflects upon a time in which she was pregnant with her oldest child, Sammy. During this time in her life, she enjoyed going to the cinema by herself during the day. She would look at magazines and style her hair like the movie stars. To her, going to the cinema and admiring the glorious movie stars was an escape from her marriage and life with Cholly. For the length of the film, she could disappear into the movie and be amongst the stars. At one point, Mrs. Breedlove attended a film and her fantasies of blending in with the stars unraveled in front of her very eyes. She took a bite of a piece of candy, and one of her front teeth was pulled out by it, instantly altering her appearance forever. She reflected, â€Å"There I was, five months pregnant, trying to look like Jean Harlow, and a front tooth gone. Everything went then. Look like I just didn’t care no more after that. I let my hair go back, plaited it up, and settled down to just being ugly† (Morrison 123). Mrs. Breedlove tried to escape from the unhappiness of her own life by going to the cinema, and instead, the cinema caused her even more unhappiness. She simply gave up on ever feeling glamorous or happy, something that is only fueled by the growing unhappiness of her marriage. As she stated, â€Å"Cholly poked fun at me, and we started fighting again†¦He begin to make me madder than anything I knowed† (Morrison 123). As much as she tried, Mrs. Breedlove could no longer escape her unhappiness. It was simply escalated by the cinema. From the very beginning of Pecola’s life, her mother ingrains in her the idea that she is ugly—a concept that Mrs. Breedlove herself is viewed as due to her missing front tooth and her skin color. After her birth, she refers to Pecola as being â€Å"a right smart baby† but â€Å"a cross between a puppy and a dying man. But I knowed she was ugly. Head full of pretty hair, but Lord she was ugly† (Morrison 126). Mrs. Breedlove acknowledges that Pecola is a smart girl, but doesn’t view it as an impressive quality. Instead, she focuses on the fact that her daughter is unattractive. As Spies mentions, â€Å"even by her own mother, Pecola has been denied the slightest notion of being valuable or worthy of love† (Spies 15). By denying value and love to her daughter, Mrs. Breedlove is instilling in Pecola the same self-hatred that Cholly and society has instilled in herself. Mrs. Breedlove’s unhappiness is unquestionably the reason for Pecola’s own dissatisfaction and unhappiness. Although Mrs. MacTeer and Mrs. Breedlove are two entirely different individuals, their thoughts are eerily reminiscent of each other. Both complain about others, specifically complaining about Pecola. Mrs. MacTeer is frustrated with Pecola drinking up the milk, whereas Mrs. Breedlove is frustrated by her lack of beauty. Both women try to come off as â€Å"better† individuals than they actually are. Mrs. MacTeer rambles about Pecola and suggests that she is of a lower, varmint-like class. Mrs. Breedlove goes on about Pecola’s ugliness, when, in fact, she is not only perceived as but admittedly ugly herself. Both women are unsatisfied with their lives and places in society. They both wish to be glorious and of higher class, yet they cannot achieve these respect places due to outside factors—Mrs. MacTeer is a middle class woman, and Mrs. Breedlove is â€Å"ugly† and black. Both women enjoy prattling about their misfortunes and the misfortunes of others, yet they do so in entirely different ways. Contrarily, Mrs. Breedlove expresses herself silently through inner monologue. She is a soundless voice in society. Not only is she a black female, but she is poor and ugly as well. She could voice her opinions out loud, but she feels it is not worth it. Society rarely recognizes her presence, and when it does, it is quickly forgotten. When Mrs. Breedlove reflected on the birth of Pecola, she recalled being the only black woman in the maternity ward of the hospital. A doctor walked by to check on her with a team of residents who were learning how to be doctors, and he said that black women deliver babies like horses, quickly with no pain. Mrs. Breedlove recalls, â€Å"They never said nothing to me. Only one looked at me. Looked at my face, I mean. I looked right back at him. He dropped his eyes and turned red† (Morrison 125). The resident who looked at her is embarrassed to have acknowledged her, and he immediately tries to erase this moment of connection from existence. She is an isolated, lower class of her own in society due to not only the oppression of her individuality as a poor, ugly black woman and the reaction of society to her identities, but because she is also oppressed by her husband, Cholly. Although it is clear throughout the novel that Mrs. Breedlove fights back when it comes to arguments with her husband, she is not given a voice to do so. As Gibson states, â€Å"whatever authority Cholly possesses accrues not because it comes to him by nature, or because he is male, but because Morrison chooses to give it to him. She grants this black male a voice† (Gibson 169). Morrison does not allow Mrs. Breedlove to have a voice; rather, she allows Cholly to have one to further exploit the weaknesses and state of despair of his wife. She cannot voice her opinions out loud because she is not given the means to do so. Like Mrs. MacTeer, Mrs. Breedlove has an invisible audience. However, her audience is literally invisible—nobody listens to her thoughts but herself. She is not given a voice in society, so she feels she cannot do anything. To her, it is not worth it to try to express her thoughts to anyone but herself. By keeping to herself, she is only trapped in her unhappiness further. Undoubtedly, the thoughts and opinions of Mrs. MacTeer and Mrs. Breedlove in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye are essential to demonstrating the messages of societal oppression within the novel. Both women exhibit the concept of members of society being oppressed due to factors they cannot change, such as gender, level of wealth, race, beauty, or even lost dreams. Mrs. MacTeer’s fussing soliloquies reach out to an invisible audience of her children and Pecola, explicitly discussing her unhappiness with her own role in society, as well as the hierarchical roles in society and her daily life. Additionally, Mrs. Breedlove’s silent interior monologues allow readers to see the result of silence within society. Her monologues also allow readers to see the effect of giving up on one’s own happiness and dreams in life. Together, the voices of Mrs. MacTeer and Mrs. Breedlove inevitably come together to convey the effect of societal oppression within the novel. Without their respective fussing soliloquies and interior monologues, the meaning of the novel would be lost within the pages. The thoughts and opinions of Mrs. MacTeer and Mrs.