The Bluest Eye: Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

Pauline's self-perceived sense of ugliness begins with her disabled foot, which leads to a sense of separation form her family and feeling of worthlessness, showing the damaging effects of self-perceived ugliness. The rusty nail that penetrates her foot, leading to her deformity, can also be seen as symbolically foreshadowing Cholly's penetration of Pecola, which ultimately destroys her. Mrs. Breedlove's fondness for order as a child foretells her adult proclivity for cleanliness, which signifies her desire for whiteness.

Pauline's family leaves their home in Alabama in search of better employment because of difficult economic circumstances. The lack of real June bugs and colloquial differences in the north make her feel far from home, further her sense of isolation.

Pauline finds a sense of purpose in caring for the home and family, and is able to engage in her childhood passion for arranging things. Pauline takes on the role of a mature woman by caring for the house, although she is still an adolescent. Her mother's job serving a white minister shows that race and class standards exist in the North as they do in the South.

Pauline is changed by her desire for sexual intimacy, drawing her away from the housework she once enjoyed. Pauline's fantasizes about a figure, a god or a man, who will heal her disabled foot and allow her to escape her ugliness and worthlessness, indicates both her own innocence at the time but also the sense among women that their own identities and futures are entirely dependent on having a relationship with a man.

Cholly is depicted in a threatening almost demonic way, but Pauline's fantasy of a man coming to redeem her allows her to fall for Cholly nonetheless. Cholly is drawn by Pauline's disabled foot, which signifies her weakness. This action foreshadows Cholly's tendency to prey on and oppress the weak (though this view will be complicated by the next chapter, which focuses on Cholly). Pauline associates Cholly's presence with colors that remind her of her home in the South. The image of mashed berries on her dress symbolically suggests Pauline's passage into womanhood, connecting to the blood on Pecola's dress during her first menstruation.

Pauline's fantasies about a man saving her blind her to the fact that Cholly might not be the best man for her. His attention to her disability allows her to feel special, and like many women in the novel, her sense of worth becomes defined by the man in her life.

The nature of racism is different in the North. At home in the South, the communities were strongly segregated, and whites were overtly aggressive toward blacks. While awful, this has the effect of binding all the black people together in a kind of equal status and community. In the North, the whites and blacks are more integrated and racism is less overt and aggressive but still exists (as the novel has portrayed). As a result, outside pressure of white violence and aggression does not bind the black community together and blacks can begin to identify the differences among themselves (based on the standards of white culture that they have adopted) and racism develops among and between black 's themselves and black community, while freer, also becomes more cruel.

Cholly wants a woman for his own purposes; not someone who needs him all the time. Not someone who impinges on his own desire to do whatever he wants. Their relationship becomes even more strained once Pauline is introduced to the white standard of beauty. Her friends, who are already dedicated to the standard, make fun of her appearance, which causes Pauline to believe she would be accepted if she talked, dressed, and straightened her hair like them. Pauline strives for this unattainable white beauty standard by spending money on items that signify whiteness. Meanwhile, Cholly wants that money to use to escape his demons and sadness in another way: through alcohol.

The white family's unhappy home life shows that even though they fit the ideal on the outside, being white and rich, they are still unhappy. Pauline's view of whiteness as the ideal, however, is not changed by what she witnesses. The interaction between Pauline and the white woman captures a lot of the trickiness of racism and its complicated effects on communities. The white woman's sense that Pauline should leave Cholly is almost certainly correct. But the white woman does not make it as a suggestion; she demands it, and she links that demand to Pauline's own survival by refusing to giver he any money if she doesn't leave Cholly. The white woman is acting both patronizing and dictatorially, and Pauline has enough pride to not bow to such pressure. Had the white woman advised Pauline in the spirit of friendship, without demand and with generosity, the outcome might have been different. But, of course, the white woman's implied racism and sense of superiority would never allow her to even think of acting in such a way.

Cholly's behavior changes when he realizes he is going to have a family, showing the redeeming nature of home and family. Pauline's pregnancy forces her to leave her job, making her dependent on Cholly once again, which makes her depressed. The movies heighten her obsession with whiteness as the ideal of beauty and romance. The beautiful white actresses contrast her physical appearance, leading to self-contempt; their fictional love lives distort her views and lead her to hate her own marriage; and their beautiful homes make her resent her little apartment. The white standards of beauty make her hate everything about her own life, and about herself.

Losing her tooth symbolically represents the loss of her dreams of attaining whiteness and her acceptance of ugliness. The (white) tooth leaves an empty dark space in its wake, which can be equated to the emptiness Pauline feels as a black woman. Pauline's acceptance of ugliness and Cholly's insults have a devastating effect on her relationship with Cholly.

Pauline's emptiness comes from her longing for whiteness, so the birth of her black child was unsuccessful in fulfilling her desire. Realizing this, she decides to think about her second child differently, although the force of her desire for whiteness leaves her unable to live up to this promise. The doctors' interaction with Pauline demonstrates the shocking dehumanizing effect of racism and specifically the damage such racism inflicts on black women.

Pauline's obsession with white beauty leads her to imagine the ideal child. This ideal, however, is unattainable, and distorts her views of her own child, allowing her to believe Pecola, her own newborn baby, is ugly. Pecola's conviction about her own ugliness now makes more sense—any baby brought up by a mother who thinks it is ugly is bound to come to that same conclusion about itself. So Pauline's sense of her own ugliness is passed on to Pecola—it's a vicious cycle.

Pauline's taking on the role of a family martyr who sacrifices herself for those she loves gives her a sense of purpose and a sense of superiority, which helps to maintain her, but with serious negative consequences, as she comes to see and treat both Cholly and her children as burdens she must bear, and neither Cholly nor her children will benefit from, or like, being treated that way.

Working for the white family allows Pauline to finally feel like she is part of the world of white people. She is blind to the fact that her nickname marks her as pejorative or inferior. Instead, it makes her feel a part of the family. She especially enjoys taking care of the white children, paying close attention to the signifiers of their whiteness—their white skin and blond hair—but her devotion to the white family makes her resent her own home and family, showing the negative outcomes of a black woman striving to access the white world.

Unable to overpower Cholly physically, Pauline uses gossip and her Christian virtue to overpower him. Sex can be a redeeming factor in a woman's life, and for Pauline it once gave her a sense of beauty and a feeling of power in the relationship. The colors she used to experience during the act connect love making with a feeling of being at home in the South. But as her relationship with Cholly sours, sex becomes an oppressive force in Pauline's life. In her powerlessness she turns to God, but misses the sense of home she used to experience.