The Bluest Eyes: Objectification of Women and Victimization of Male Sex-offenders

Zenab Jahangir; Tayyaba Bashir; Rasib Mahmood

doi:10.47264/idea.lassij/2.1.6

Authors

Zenab Jahangir Department of English, National University of Modern Languages (NUML), Islamabad, Pakistan. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6343-4856
Tayyaba Bashir Department of English, International Islamic University Islamabad (IIUI), Islamabad, Pakistan.
Rasib Mahmood Department of English, Qurtuba University of Science and Technology, Peshawar, Pakistan.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.47264/idea.lassij/2.1.6

Keywords:

Incest, Rape, Sex-Offenders, Oppressors, Paedophilia, Victimization, Feminism

Abstract

The present study intends to study Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eyes with a Feminist approach. It shows how the sex-offenders oppress little black girls in a patriarchal society. The sex-offenders on the other hand are presented as victims of circumstances and their victimization of black girls is justified by portraying the girls to be the cause of the heinous acts committed to violate their innocence. All black girls, despite the claim of the novelist that it is written from their perspective, are presented in the novel to be reasonably oppressed by the male characters. The author through a series of incidents has tried to depict the objectification of the female sex on one side while the victimization of the sex-offenders on the other. It is a strange dichotomy of events and incidents which has been explored through Catherine Belsey’s Textual Analysis as tool of interpreting various scenes and dialogues.

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