LANGUAGE CIRCLE: Journal lof Language and Literature X/2 (April 2016) p-ISSN 1858-0165
Available online at http://journal.unnes.ac.id e-ISSN 2460-853X
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THE IMPACTS OF THE BEAUTY MYTH
ON THE EXISTENTIAL FREEDOM OF PECOLA
IN TONI MORRISON’S THE BLUEST EYE
Ratna Asmarani
ratna_asmarani@yahoo.com
Faculty of Humanities, Diponegoro University
Received: 20 August 2015. Revised: 1 January 2016. Accepted: 10 March 2016
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the destructive impacts of the beauty myth on the existential
freedom of Pecola, the young, poor, black female character, in Toni Morrison‘s ―The Bluest Eye.‖ The
analysis is done through feminist criticism supported by the concept of the beauty myth and beauty as
well as Sartrean concept of existentialism. The result shows that the widely spread beauty myth blocks
Pecola‘s existential freedom on the physical, consciousness, or social life level. All these lead to young
Pecola‘s ruined existence.
Key words: beauty myth, existential freedom, Sartrean existentialism, feminist criticism
How to Cite: Asmarani, Ratna. 2016. The Impacts of the Beauty Myth on the Existential Freedom of Pecola in
Toni Morrison‘s The Blue Eye. Language Circle: Journal of Language and Literature, X/2.
INTRODUCTION
In practice, not everyone can have or enjoy
his/her existential freedom. There are many
hindrances to the freedom of existence, one
of which is the ideology of the beauty myth.
Operating mainly in the unconscious level
and practised in many forms, beauty myth
affects many levels of human existence. All
these can be seen in Pecola‘s existence. As a
young, black, poor girl she is the easy target
of the beauty myth as it leads to her ruined
existence.
There are some concepts used in the
analysis. Each concept will contribute
significantly in analyzing the main topic of
the paper.
Wolf coins the term ‗beauty myth‘ to
refer to ―a backlash against feminism that
uses an ideology about beauty to keep
women down‖ (1992: 3). In its practice,
beauty myth takes many forms, such as
making women convinced that the concept
of beauty is objective and universal instead
of a socially constructed concept (Wolf,
1992: 12-14).
In daily life people unconsciously follow
and practice certain beauty criteria as
critically examined by Abu-Laban and
McDaniel:
For the female child, to be assessed as
―pretty‖ or ―beautiful‖ is the highest
accolade ... To be pretty is to be
approved, liked, and rewarded ... Beauty
norms are both prescriptive and
proscriptive ... However, there can be
little doubt that standards of beauty are
social and historical construct ... The
image of beauty that society presents to
women is embofied in a female who is
not only young and slim but also White
mailto:ratna_asmarani@yahoo.com
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(or ―Whittish‖), heterosexual, and class
advantaged. This is a monolithic image
of appearance (1995: 107-108, 14).
Those beauty criteria obviously refer to a
certain race (or skin colour), a certain social
status, and a certain sexual preference in
which those who possess the criteria will be
accepted or respected in society.
The analysis on this paper is done using
feminist criticism in which it ―reads writing
and examines its ideology and culture with a
woman-centred perspective‖ (Humm, 1995:
51). Thus, using the perspective of a woman,
the black female character will be analysed
focussing on the entanglement of beauty
myth on her existential freedom.
The term ‗existentialism‘ is proposed by
Sartre in which he divides existence into
three modes of being. The first one is
‗being-in-itself, which is the existence
without the consciousness. The second one
is ‗being-for-itself‘ which is the existence of
humans with their consciousness. The third
one is ‗being-for-other‘ which is the
existence of humans in their social life
involving the conflicts to be subject over the
others (Sartre, 1992: 800).
The Sartrean modes of being do not
include the existence of women, even less
the existence of black women. For the sake
of analysing the existence of black women,
two modes of ‗being‘, namely, ‗being-for-
itself‘ and ‗being-for-other‘, are modified
because those two directly concern the
human existence. The result is the ‗black-
woman-being-for-herself‘ which is the
existence of a black woman with her critical
consciousness as a black woman in the
world commonly dominated by white
perspective and the ‗black-woman-being-
for-other‘ which focuses on the conflictual
social life of a black woman because of her
sex, race, social status, etcetera (Asmarani,
2010: 51-52).
Since a woman‘s existence can not be
separated from her body, it is necessary to
include Sartrean categorization of human
body. Bearing in mind that body and
consciousness are one unity, Sartre divide
the body into three levels. The first is body
as a form to be in the world in which the
consciousness is not dominant yet. The
second is body as seen by other in which the
consciousness follows the other‘s evaluation
of the body. The third is body as evaluated
by other in which the evaluation makes the
critical consciousness grow (Sartre, 1992:
404-461).
METHODOLOGY
The data being analyzed in this paper is
focused on a novel entitled The Bluest Eye
written by Toni Morrison (1931 - …), the
first black woman to receive the Nobel Prize
in Literature
1
. The qualitative analysis is
done through library research using printed
and electronic references. In analyzing the
chosen topic, contextual analysis which is
basically an analysis borrowing theories
from outside the field of literature and its
intrinsic elements is used (http://www.unl.
edu/english/sbehrendt/StudyQuestions/Cont
extualAnalysis.html accessed February 17,
2014). Since the topic is concerning the
impacts of the beauty myth on the existential
freedom on the black female character,
feminist criticism is used as the frame of
analysis. This frame of analysis is supported
with the concepts of existentialism such as
Sartre‘s modes of being, Asmarani‘s black
1
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/morrison/morriso
n_toni-bio.html accessed 6 January 2016
http://www.unl/
Asmarani, Ratna. 2016. The Impacts of the Beauty Myth on the Existential Freedom of Pecola in Toni
Morrison‘s The Blue Eye.
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185
women‘s modes of being, and Sartre‘s
concept of human body. Wolf‘s concept of
beauty myth and Abu-Laban and
McDaniel‘s beauty concept also integrally
support the analysis.
BEAUTY MYTH ON PECOLA’S
EXISTENTIAL FREEDOM
Pecola, the young, black female main
character in Toni Morrison‘s The Bluest
Eye, faces a specific problem in having
existential freedom. The basic problem is
the operation of beauty myth. To analyze the
impacts of beauty myth on Pecola‘s
existential freedom, the discussion is divided
into several parts covering the triggers, the
supporters, and the impacts of beauty myth,
as well as the specific resistance done by
Pecola.
The Triggers of the Practice of Beauty
Myth in Pecola’s Existence
The beauty myth, with its imposing beauty
criteria, operates in and around Pecola‘s
existence. There are several factors that
trigger the operation of beauty myth. Those
factors can be classified into two parts;
namely, the physical characteristic of Pecola
and the social factors surrounding Pecola.
Pecola Breedlove, the twelve-year-old
black girl, is portrayed as having specific
facial features. These facial features are
shared by all the members of the Breedlove
family.
The eyes, the small set of eyes set
closely together under narrow foreheads.
The low, irregular hairlines, which
seemed even more irregular in contrast
to the straight, heavy eyebrows which
nearly met. Keen but crooked noses,
with insolent nostrils. They had high
cheekbones, and their ears turned
forward. Shapely lips which called
attention not to themselves but to the rest
of the face (Morrison, 1972: 34).
The description indicates that Pecola and
her family can not be considered as having
interesting or beautiful physical appearance.
Certain facial features which fulfill the
beauty criteria; namely shapely lips,
ironically make the other facial features
already labelled not beautiful look worse.
The whole physical appearance of
Pecola is described by Geraldine, a rich,
tidy, fair-skinned black woman.
Saw the dirty torn dress, the plait
sticking out on her head, hair matted
where the plaits had come undone, the
muddy shoes with the wad of gum
peeping from between the cheap soles,
the soiled socks, one of which had been
walked down into the heel of shoe. She
saw the safety pin holding the hem of the
dress up (Morrison, 1972: 75).
Pecola‘s physical appearance indicates
not only poverty, but also indiference,
carelessness, and slovenliness. All these
characteristics can not be accepted as things
that belong to the beauty criteria.
The living place of the Breedlove family
also supports their deviation from the
standard of beauty. The four of them—
Pecola, her parents and brother—are
crowded in one room without a partition on
the third floor of an abandoned shop. The
location of the shop itself is an eyesore to
the surroundings: ―It does not recede into its
backgound of leaden sky, nor harmonize
with the gray frame house and black
telephone poles around it. Rather, it foists
itself on the eye of the passerby in a manner
that is both irritating and melancholy‖
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(Morrison, 1972: 30). It is not only poverty
that keeps them in the improper place, but
also their own belief that they deserve to live
improperly because of their physical
condition which does not meet the beauty
criteria: ―they stayed there because they
believed they were ugly‖ (Morrison, 1972:
34).
So, there are at least three things that
serve as the triggering factors for the
emergence of the operation of beauty myth
in Pecola‘s existence; namely, her facial
features, her physical appearance, and her
living place. Those three factors are
worsened by the widely spread beauty myth
in the community where Pecola lives. All
imposing representations of beauty myth
reflected in ―every billboard, every movie,
every glance‖ (Morrison, 1972: 34) directly
emphasize the ugliness of Pecola and her
family.
The Supporters of the Ideology of the
Beauty Myth in Pecola’s Existence
The beauty myth as an ideology will not
thrive if there are no supporters that practise
or spread its beauty criteria. In the case of
Pecola, the supporters of the beauty myth
and its criteria can be grouped into three: her
own family, other people around her, and
Pecola herself.
Pecola‘s family, especially her mother,
Pauline, is a blind supporter of the beauty
myth. Black, poor, uneducated, and having
physical defect, Pauline adores beauty. She
longs for elegance, wealth, and romanticism
portrayed in films starring white film stars.
Pauline absorbs all those non-real white
beauties in order to escape from the boring
routine of her poor family life. From those
films, Pauline learns one lesson: ―She was
never able, after her education in the
movies, to look at a face and not assign it
some category in the scale of absolute
beauty‖ (Morrison, 1972: 97). This indicates
that Pauline is not only a passive follower,
but she also actively applies the beauty
standard to the people around her, especially
her own daughter, Pecola.
Individuals or small groups of people
around Pecola are also the practitioners of
beauty myth. This is obviously reflected in
the school area where Pecola studies: ―the
ugliness that made her ignored or despised
at school, by teachers and classmates alike‖
(Morrison, 1972: 39). The fair-skinned black
women belonging to the middle class and
following the white standard of living,
represented by Geraldine, do not want to
associate with Pecola, much less have the
dirty black girl in their immaculate house:
――Get out,‖ she said, her voice quiet. ―You
nasty little black bitch. Get out of my
house‖‖ (Morrison, 1972: 75), because she
equates poor, dirty, and ugly black people
like Pecola with flies: ―Like flies they
hovered; like flies they settled‖ (Morrison,
1972: 75). Pecola‘s blackness and dirty
appearance also make her invisible in the
eyes of the old, white man, the owner of a
small candy shop where Pecola sometimes
comes to buy candies: ―She ... sees the
vacuum where curiosity ought to lodge. And
something more. The total absence of
human recognition—the glazed separateness
(Morrison, 1972: 42). Even Geraldine‘s little
son, like the mother, also despises blackness
and slovenliness as indicated by his bad
conduct to Pecola who is much older than
him.
Along with those two parties, Pecola
herself also adores the beauty criteria. As a
victim of beauty standard, Pecola gradually
despises her physical condition and sees no
Asmarani, Ratna. 2016. The Impacts of the Beauty Myth on the Existential Freedom of Pecola in Toni
Morrison‘s The Blue Eye.
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187
hope to avoid it: ―As long as she looked the
way she did, as long as she was ugly, she
would have to stay with these people.
Somehow she belonged to them‖ (Morrison,
1972: 39). On the other hand, she uses her
physical ugliness and her shabbiness as a
nest to hide and to save her from the
imposing beauty standard that surrounds
her: ―She hid behind hers. Concealed,
veiled, eclipsed‖ (Morrison, 1972: 35).
The Impacts of the Beauty Myth on
Pecola’s Existential Freedom
Undeniably, the beauty myth has certain
impacts on Pecola‘s existence, especially her
existential freedom. Here, the impacts of the
beauty myth on Pecola‘s existential freedom
will be analyzed on three different levels of
existence: on her physical freedom, on the
freedom of her personal consciousness, and
on the freedom of her social life.
Pecola‘s body suffers certain treatment
triggered by the operation of the beauty
myth. Her male class mates make fun of
Pecola‘s body and her father‘s habit of
sleeping naked: ―A group of boys was
circling and holding at bay a victim, Pecola
Breedlove ... they gaily harrassed her‖
(Morrison, 1972: 55). Actually, there is no
ill-feeling or hatred between them. They
themselves are black and poor like Pecola,
and like Pecola they are the victims of the
beauty myth. They too, like Pecola, secretly
adore the beauty standard. Their action is
triggered by their frustration of being
excluded from the beauty circle. Thus, they
just try to find a victim to save them from
the inferior feeling as the outcasts. Pecola is
the perfect target because she looks
defeated, hopeless and friendless. This event
indicates that because of her physical
ugliness, Pecola‘s freedom of movement is
limited. She is not free to go as she wants.
She loses the freedom of her own body.
Pecola‘s body also suffers mistreatment
from her mother, Mrs. Breedlove. Mad at
Pecola‘s clumsiness that makes her white
master‘s kitchen dirty and her white
master‘s little child cry, Pecola‘s mother
hurts Pecola‘s body: ―she was on Pecola,
and with the back of her hand knocked her
to the floor. Pecola slid in the pie juice, one
leg folding under her. Mrs. Breedlove
yanked her up by the arm, slapped her
again‖ (Morrison, 1972: 86). Pecola‘s
mother‘s preference to her white master‘s
kitchen and child than to her own daughter
who is black, dirty, and ugly obviously
shows her blind adoration to white life style
and white people. For the sake of white
beauty standard which she can not meet,
Pecola‘s mother is willing to put aside her
own daughter. She does not care about the
part of Pecola‘s body that is badly burnt by
the hot berry juice. For her, Pecola‘s body
does not mean anything, it is just a black
dirty body that reminds her of her own
blackness that she herself despises and tries
to avoid. Thus, Pecola loses the right of her
body because her body is not considered
valuable in tthe eyes of her own mother.
Pecola‘s freedom to her body also
disappears when she meets Geraldine‘s little
son, Junior. Persuaded to have a look at a
cat, the lonely Pecola becomes trapped in
Junior‘s house. Teasing and frightening her
with her mother‘s beloved cat he hates so
much, Junior throws the cat at Pecola,
resulting in painful scratches all over her
face: ―The clawed face and chest‖
(Morrison, 1972: 73). Junior, much younger
than Pecola, dares to do mischievous things
to Pecola because Pecola is friendless and
looks hopeles. Here, Pecola not only loses
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her freedom of movement but also gets hurt
as well. Thus, it can be said that on the level
of physical existence, Pecola suffers from
unfair and/or painful treatment due to her
physical condition and appearance that do
not meet the criteria of beauty adored by
people around her.
Besides mistreatment on the physical
level, Pecola also suffers mistreatment on
the consciousness level leading to certain
damaging impacts. The first impact is that
Pecola‘s critical consciousness does not
develop. Being young, alone, and
surrounded by the many representations of
the beauty myth, Pecola is an easy target for
the imposing practice of the beauy myth.
She is not mature enough to be able to
develop a critical perspective of her own.
She also does not have her family‘s support
or a friend‘s love to enable her to develop
her own opinion. The many layered forms of
the beauty myth around her make her unable
to escape from its influence. The result is
predictable, Pecola does not have her own
critical consciousness concerning the beauty
myth and its imposing criteria, due to her
lack of the opportunity.
Inevitably, Pecola is unconsciously
influenced to adopt the beauty myth which
permeates the community‘s consciousness.
She begins to use the community‘s
perspective in seeing everything, especially
her own condition. Despite critisizing the
beauty myth, Pecola, like others including
her own mother, becomes the follower and
worshipper. However, she uses her false
consciousnes to evaluate herself: ―... she
would never know her beauty. She would
see only what was there to see the eyes of
other people‖ (Morrison, 1972: 40). This
makes her consider her physical condition as
not beautiful and eventually this leads to her
despising herself.
In her desperation, Pecola makes self-
destructing choices concerning her
existence. At first, Pecola wants to make her
unbearable existence disappear: ――Please,
God,‖ she whispered into the palm of her
hand. ―Please make me disappear‖ She
squeezed her eyes shut. Little parts of her
body faded away ... Only her tight, tight
eyes were left ...‖ (Morrison, 1972: 39). This
effort fails because she can not erase her
eyes which represent her perspective as a
human being. This indicates that physical
existence is easier to destroy but not
personal perspective loaded with personal
experience.
Failing to erase her perspective, Pecola
then tries to strengthen her perspective
which follows the community‘s perspective,
especially concerning the adoration of
everything that belongs to the criteria of
beauty. In her naivette and desperation,
Pecola comes to the conclusion that she will
belong to the community which so far has
abandoned her, only if she possesses some
elements of beauty. She concludes that part
of her body which must be beautiful is her
eyes: ―if those eyes of hers were different,
that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be
different ... Each night, without fail, she
prayed for blue eyes‖ (Morrison, 1972: 40).
She thinks that having beautiful, blue eyes
will lead her to a happy and free life denied
from her so far. Naively, Pecola assumes
that beautiful, blue eyes will make her able
to see things beautifully, including herself.
In other words, beautiful, blue eyes are the
solution to becoming beautiful and to
belonging to the beautiful world.
Pecola‘s dream to be beautiful, happy,
and loved, is portrayed in her adoration of
Asmarani, Ratna. 2016. The Impacts of the Beauty Myth on the Existential Freedom of Pecola in Toni
Morrison‘s The Blue Eye.
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189
Shirley Temple, the well-known and
adorable white child actress in the era of
1920s. She sees the picture of Shirley
Temple on the mug from which she drinks
the milk when she lives temporarily with the
MacTeer family: ―She was a long time with
the milk, and gazed fondly at the silhoulette
oF Shirley Temple‘s dimpled face‖
(Morrison, 1972: 19). The MacTeer family
is a poor, black family who is willing to save
her from the prospect of living as a tramp
after being abandoned by her own family.
Since then, Pecola‘s dream grows stronger
and unshakeable. She dreams to be beautiful
through the possession of blue eyes.
Her effort to realize her dream, however
impossible it seems, is carried out in an
unsual and shocking way. Having no one to
consult, Pecola dares herself to ask the help
of Soaphead Church, a man who claims the
ability to realize dreams. In reality, he is a
liar who earns his living by cheating people
who believe in his words (Morrison, 1972:
131, 136). Pecola‘s straightforward but
simple statement about her eyes: ――I want
them blue‖‖ (Morrison, 1972: 137) indicates
her strong desire to be a valuable person,
meaning a person considered beautiful. It
also indicates her desperation to be able to
exist, although just in the periphery, in a
world which allows beautiful people only in
its suffocating embrace.
As a liar and manipulative person,
Soaphead Church plan to use Pecola for his
own benefit. Disgusted by the old dog but
does not want to do dirty job by himself, he
gives Pecola a piece of meat, already
poisoned, for the dog. He wickedly tells
Pecola that if the dog shows any reaction
after aeating it, it is a sign that her strong
wish is granted. Blinded by her desperation
and supported by the reaction of the
poisoned old dog (Morrison, 1972: 139),
Pecola really believes that now she already
possesses blue eyes. This false conscious-
ness makes Pecola, who is so happy and
proud of her imaginary blue eyes, unable to
stop admiring and talking about them.
Having no one to listen to her incessant
chatting about her blue eyes, Pecola talks
with an imaginary friend who emerges as
soon as she believes she possesses a pair of
beautiful blue eyes:
...
No. Really. You are my best friend. Why
did‘t I know you before?
You didn‟t need me before.
Didn‘t need you?
I mean ... you were so unhappy before. I
guess you didn‟t notice me before.
I guess you‘re right. And I was so lonely
for friends. And you were right here.
Right before my eyes.
No, honey. Right after your eyes.
... (Morrison, 1972: 152).
The quote indicates how Pecola now
lives in a world of her own, created by
herself, and lived in by herself and the
imaginary friend.
Her false consciousness and how she
carries it out in a daily life result in certain
impacts on her social life. Generally
considered insane, the common reaction of
the community is to avoid her. She is
expelled from school: ―I don‘t know. After
that first day at school when I had my blue
eyes. Well, the next day they had Mrs.
Breedlove come out. Now I don‘t go
anymore. But I don‘t care‖ (Morrison, 1972;
153). The school, its teachers and students,
which formerly ignore her and/or ridicule
her physical condition and appearance, now
completely ban her from their environment.
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Her deep involvement in her own
imaginary world makes her lose contact with
the ‗natural‘ social life. She shuts herself out
from the outside world, leaving her alone in
her own imaginary world. However, in her
own created world, Pecola is also finally left
by her sole imaginary friend. This happens
when the imaginary friend finally felt fed up
by the only topic of their chatting, namely
the imaginary blue eyes of Pecola:
I‟m not going to play with you anymore.
Oh. Don‘t leave me.
Yes. I am.
Why. Are you mad at me?
Yes.
Because my eyes aren‘t blue enough?
Because I don‘t have the bluest eyes?
No. Because you‟re acting silly.
... (Morrison, 1972: 158).
Pecola‘s obsession and its imaginary
fulfilment leave her utterly alone in the end.
Nobody, real or imaginary, wants to be her
friend.
The final impact of being completely cut
off from social life, real or imaginary, is that
Pecola‘s existence now—the physical level,
consciousness level, or social life level—is
jumbled confusingly with no more
coordination among the three levels:
The damage done was total. She spent
her days, her tendril, sap-green days,
walking up and down, up and down, her
head jerking to the beat of a drummer so
distant only she could hear. Elbows bent,
hands on shoulders, she flailed her arms
like a bird in an eternal, grotesquely
futile effort to fly. Beating the air, a
winged but grounded bird, intent on the
blue void it could not reach—could not
even see—but which filled the valleys of
the mind (Morrison, 1972: 158).
Like a completely broken, unwanted,
thrown away thing, Pecola is stranded in the
place for such undesirable things, the
garbage area. Her unnatural physical
movement like a bird trying to fly indicates
her unconscious effort to transcend her
unworthy real existence. The futility of this
action represents the futility of her effort to
escape from her devastating existence. The
sound heard only by herself and made her
obsessed shows the confusion in her mind
being invaded by the idea of beauty myth
that she can not meet but desires so much.
Pecola’s Resistance of the Beauty Myth
on her Existence
As a human being with emotion and a sense
of pain, Pecola shows certain resistance to
the implication of the beauty myth.
However, her resistance falls into one
category, namely passive resistance. This
can be seen from the following incidents.
When Pecola is insulted by her
schoolfriends on two occasions, she only
cries and covers her ears or eyes: ―... crying
... and covered her eyes with her hands ...
pulling in of her neck, as though she wanted
to cover her ears ...‖ (Morrison, 1972: 55,
60). She also cries when entrapped by Junior
and scratched by the panicked cat: ―The
tears came fast, and she held it shut with her
hands‖ (Morrison, 1972: 74). There is no
retaliation or other forms of active reaction.
Her passive resistance is driven by her
situation. Feeling inferior to her physical
condition and appearance as well as feeling
friendless, Pecola feels helpless to resist the
insults. That is why she just accepts all the
unfair treatment although it hurts her, both
physically and mentally.
When she is ignored by the owner of the
candy shop, she is overcome by an intense
Asmarani, Ratna. 2016. The Impacts of the Beauty Myth on the Existential Freedom of Pecola in Toni
Morrison‘s The Blue Eye.
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191
shame: ―Outside, Pecola feels the
inexplixcable shame ebb‖ ((Morrison, 1972:
43). When she is thrown out rudely of
Geraldine‘s house by Geraldine herself, she
feels so inferior: ―Pecola backed out of the
room, ...‖ (Morrison, 1972: 76). She does
not show any strong reaction or active
resistance at all. She keeps her emotional
hurt to herself feeling that it is useless to
show it.
The same resisting reaction is shown by
Pecola when she is avoided by the
community because of her physical ugliness.
She just accepts all the humiliation, the
gossips, or the avoidance. She becomes
apathetic and thinks that her ugliness cannot
be avoided forever.
And Pecola is somewhere in that little
brown house she and her mother moved
to on the edge of town, where you can
see her even now, once in a while. The
birdlike gestures are worn away to a
mere picking and plucking ... She,
however, stepped over into madness, a
madness which protected her from us
simply because it bored us in the end‖
(Morrison, 1072: 159).
Thus, Pecola is the helpless and hopeless
victim of the beauty myth.
CONCLUSION
Pecola‘s existential freedom is blocked by
the widely spread beauty myth. Black, poor,
and dirty, Pecola is not at all considered
beautiful by those worshipping the beauty
myth. Not beautiful equates not valuable as
a human being and not accepted in social
situations, while beautiful means having the
power to be seen and admired. Classified as
not beautiful, Pecola loses the freedom in
her existence. On the physical level, she
experiences physical pain, insults, and
abandonment. On the consciousness level,
she has no chance to develop her critical
thinking. On the social level, she suffers
social avoidance. The combined impacts of
the beauty myth result in Pecola‘s totally
broken existence which finally lands her
together with the other thrown away things
in the garbage area outside the community‘s
supposedly respectable living place.
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