What is beauty?

Hello! Toni Morrison speaking again! His time I would like to propose an activity to understand better the main idea of my novel The Bluest Eye. In the Bluest Eye, I consider the treatment of different ideas, but today we are going to work the idea of beauty in the novel.

Therefore, for doing the main activity that I propose to you, I would like you to read the following passages from the novel:

"They lived there because they were poor and black, and they stayed there because they believed they were ugly. [...] But their ugliness was unique. No one could have convinced them that they were not relentlessly and agressively ugly." (Morrison, 1994)

“Thrown, in this way, into the binding conviction that only a miracle could relieve her, she would never know her beauty. She would only see what there was to see: the eyes of other people.” (Morrison, 1994) 

As you can see, these two passages depict the idea of how the characters consider themselves ugly people because they don’t fit the standards of the beauty of white society. Now, think for a moment and try to answer this question writing an essay on, what is beauty for you? (150-200 words).


Bibliography:

• SparkNotes: The Bluest Eye: Plot Overview. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/bluesteye/summary/
• Morrison, T. (1994). The bluest eye. New York: Plume Book.
• Dombrowski, Q. (2008). Bluest Eye [Image]. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/quinndombrowski/3988454541