Outside Source for Final Essay

In The Bluest Eye Pauline Breedlove is Pecola’s mother and she is yet another example of a woman whose only dream is the truth of her daily life. She is at her most powerful when in the kitchen. She works in the kitchen as a way to make a living and the kitchen is where she bests expresses herself by lashing out at her family. Wen ching Ho, author of “In Search of Female Self: Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior” explains how Pecola is influenced by her parents and their treatment of each other, as well as how Pauline treats her “two’ kitchens: “Pecola lives unhappily in a family wracked by morning fights or evening quarrels between a father who is drunkard and a mother who rejoices in housekeeping for her employer’s family while overlooking her duty at home” (3). She is given a sense of power and voice with her employer’s kitchen. She is never seen wrestling with anyone there—it is her place of status. Ruby Dee is quoted in Nicole Spottke’s "Coffins, Closets, kitchens, and Convents: Women Writing of Home in Gendered Spaces" as going so far as to refer to “the seat of power in the Fisher’s home as ‘her kitchen throne’” (130). The truth is that she is in no position of power. Spottke quotes Andrea O’Reilly as she offers a more accurate assessment of this situation: “Pauline’s power is, of course, not real; it is a borrowed power, accorded Pauline only in her capacity as an employee of the Fishers” (130). Her race and gender has regulated her to working, not only in homes but also more specifically in kitchens. 

Pauline identifies herself as a mule and also points out that she is the only reason the Breedlove’s have survived. “If working like a mule don’t give me the right to be warm, what am I doing it for? You sure ain’t bringin in nothing. If it was left up to you, we’d all be dead…” (Morrison 40-1). Cholly’s limitations in terms of job choice makes it clear that he is having trouble providing for his family. He eventually becomes undone by the reality of his life and turns to alcohol to deal with being a father, a husband and the breadwinner in his home. These pressures lead to violence and neglecting his family. It is certainly symbolic that he dies alone in a workhouse. But it is Pauline’s daily life that is highlighted in this early morning scene. “The tiny, undistinguished days that Mrs. Breedlove were identified, grouped and classed by these quarrels. They gave substance to the minutes and hours otherwise dim and unrecalled” (Morrison 41). Hers is a life imprisoned in the walls of her home. A home that was not even a true home but a storefront so that the tragedy of the Breedlove’s daily life is on display for everyone to see. Not only would everyone be able to see the physical and vocal disagreements but they would also see the dull minutes and hours of their daily lives. “The family, on a Saturday morning in October, began, one by one, to stir out of their dreams of affluence and vengeance into the anonymous misery of their storefront” (Morrison 39). They dreamed not only of a better life but of one that included vengeance towards those that kept them in that storefront.  Pauline could have been an artist but no one would ever see that. In fact, Morrison states that these altercations and fights in their home were her only outlet. “In these violent breaks in routine that were routine in themselves, she could display the style and imagination of what she believed to be her own true self” (Morrison 41). This was her creative outlet and the reader can see her sharp wit in these scenes. She had no other means to display any creativity so she can be seen as almost reveling in these otherwise dark and depressing episodes of a family that feels alone and trapped.

                The symbolic nature of how the heart of a home is the kitchen can be seen in Spottke’s description of how kitchens often function: “The kitchen is a space that is traditionally meant to be inviting to outsiders, a place where neighbors can enter, warm themselves by the hearth, and perhaps be offered something to eat” (131). For Pauline, the room of her own is her kitchen. She is seen demanding Cholly to get out of bed get her some coal “I said I need some coal. It’s cold as a witch’s tit in this house” (Morrison 40).  This is just prior to the violent altercation between Cholly and Pauline. She is seen poking at Cholly and getting in some insults: “You going to get your drunk self out of that bed and get me some coal or not?” (Morrison 41). They both insult each other but Pauline is the one who is creative and expressive in this room. This strength or creative expression in the kitchen can also be seen being displayed by Nnu Ego. She mocks her husband and the fact that his boss is a woman. “You behave like a slave! Do you go to her and say ‘Please, madam crawcraw-skin, can I sleep with my wife?’ I want to live with a man, not a woman-made man!” (Emecheta 50). This mirrors Pauline’s treatment of Cholly when she was trying to wake him to get wood for the kitchen. Both women display a kind of impatience and lack of pity for their disappointing husbands.

Lastly, in The Bluest Eye Cholly’s rape of Pecola is more of beacon of hopelessness. It raises uncomfortable questions of the hopelessness of the life the Breedlove’s led. Cholly’s first sexual experience and the embarrassment he experienced when the two white men caught him the act has completely stripped the emotional attachment one feels from a sexual experience. He is also reminded of a time when his life was less complicated as he watches Pecola do the dishes. It brings up:“…memories of Pauline and the doing of a wild and forbidden thing” (Morrison 160). This could be linked to his excessive drinking as well; a form of escape from the sameness and hopelessness of his reality. All three examples of rape from these novels deal with an experience involving lack of power or an attempt to show that these men did indeed retain some form of power in their lives.

O’Connell, Sean. “The Kitchen Poets of Zora Neale Hurston, Buchi Emecheta, and Toni

Morrison.”