Transforming the Bildungsroman to Develop Consciousness About Race

Abstract

Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye is unique in its position within the ​genre of the Bildungsroman. The Bildungsroman typically ​examines factors that dictate its protagonist’s psychosocial growth on their journey toward self-realization and acceptance of their place in the world. Morrison, on the contrary, demonstrates how the idealization of whiteness and the racial self-loathing it engenders makes it impossible for a young, Black, female protagonist, like Pecola, to exercise narrative authority or progress toward self-realization and social acceptance. My paper contrasts a "classic" Bildungsroman featuring a young, white, male protagonist, such as James Joyce's "Araby", with the split narrative voice and reversed narrative progression in ​The Bluest Eye. Morrison recounts Pecola's story from the perspective of her friend, Claudia, rather than as Pecola's stream of consciousness. She also challenges key plot-related elements, such as the moment of resolution. My aim is to show how Morrison does not merely substitute a young, white, male protagonist with a young, Black, female protagonist to produce a realistic account of Black female experience. Instead, she manipulates the generic conventions of the Bildungsroman to show how both the world and the narratives that tell stories about the world fail Pecola, and, by extension, Claudia. How we tell stories matters as much as whose stories we tell. The world Morrison presents through her alteration of the Bildungsroman forces the reader to question the static ideals in the world around them and reflect on the role of race in the development of agency over one’s own story.