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Essay / Powerful Female Characters in The Bluest Eye and Beloved
Power is the ability to overcome and influence behavior toward internal personal struggle. Stereotypes are the simplistic idea of a specific gender, class, or race. A demonstration of the power aspect in female protagonists can be found in Toni Morrison's novels, The Bluest Eye and Beloved. The Bluest Eye is set in the early 1940s in the state of Ohio, before the American Civil War, where Claudia MacTeer chronicles the black community's struggle for the idealization of white beauty standards. Cholly rapes her daughter Pecola, 13, which forces Pauline, the mother, to choose a husband or her daughter. Beloved is set just after the American Civil War and is inspired by the escape of Margaret Garner, a slave from Kentucky. The main character Sethe devotes her life to her children; first by escaping slavery, then by keeping her two daughters and two sons safe, leading her to kill her youngest daughter to avoid being recaptured by the slave owner. Female protagonists gain power by overcoming negative stereotypes of women in the 1940s and 1960s, through external conflict resolution, the positive family values of the main female characters, and the negative portrayal of women's emotional traits. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The Bluest Eye and Beloved shows female protagonists gaining power by overcoming negative stereotypes of women in the 1940s and 1960s; because of how mothers resolve the external conflict of being enslaved by power-hungry men. In The Bluest Eye, after Cholly rapes her daughter, this forces Pauline to choose between her husband or her daughter: "Hate would not let him hold her, tenderness forced him to cover her... trying to connect the pain between her legs with her mother's face looming above her” (Morrison 163). Cholly's inability to control his behavior forces his wife, Pauline, to choose sides. Pauline goes against the stereotype of women by choosing to take her daughter's word instead of going with the man who supports her financially. In Shubhankar Kochar's essay "Chapter 2: Dealing with Violence in The Bluest Eye", he discusses how men demean women, making women seek power to overcome the negative stereotypes men have about them : the novel also reveals how a few individuals direct their anger and frustration at others who are below them in terms of status and power because they cannot raise their voices against their exploiters who are in a position of strength. in any case superior to them. (Kochar 4) This demonstrates the power of women because when they are faced with conflict, it forces them to stand up and take power over the men who are socially above them. Similarly, in Beloved, Sethe brings freedom to her family by escaping slavery and Sethe says to herself, "I did it. I got us all out. Without Halle too. Until then, she was the only one something I did alone” (Morrison 190). Sethe fights the conflict of standing up to the men who enslave her and her family, but when the men find her and threaten her family, she makes the harsh decision to send herself to prison and her children to daycare. by slitting the throat of his youngest daughter. In both cases, the mothers overcame the external conflict of men controlling their lives, renouncing Pauline for her negative actions and escaping Sethe from white male slavery. In doing so, they overcome.