Treatment of Sex:
Introduction:
Toni Morrison presents treatment of sex in the novel “The Bluest Eye”. The novel The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison presents a powerful and deeply unsettling exploration of sexuality, not as a source of pleasure or freedom, but as a site of trauma, power, and social distortion. Set in a racially oppressive society, the narrative examines how marginalised individuals—especially Black women and girls—experience sex in ways shaped by violence, poverty, and internalized racism.
In this novel, Morrison challenges conventional or romanticised notions of sexuality. Instead, she portrays it as something often imposed, misunderstood, or abused. Through the tragic story of Pecola Breedlove, the text reveals how sexual exploitation and abuse can destroy innocence and identity. The treatment of sex is closely tied to issues of power, domination, and the dehumanisation of Black bodies, particularly female bodies.
Moreover, Morrison connects sexuality with broader cultural forces, such as white beauty standards and societal neglect, showing how these influences distort personal relationships and self-worth. By doing so, The Bluest Eye offers a critical commentary on how sex, rather than being a natural or positive human experience, becomes a tool of oppression in a deeply unequal society.
Thus, the treatment of sex in the novel is not merely a thematic element but a crucial lens through which Morrison exposes the psychological and social damage inflicted by racism, patriarchy, and cultural alienation.
Tony Morrison’s ‘The Bluest Eye’ is an untraditional novel having no plot of traditional nature. The whole story rotates round an ordinary man named Cholly who later on rapes his own daughter named Pecola. The whole story is divided into sections named after seasons: Autumn; Winter; Spring; Summer. The novel is thus based on a minor’s rape by her father. It is the worst depravity of sex. Besides it, Toni Morrison deals with other aspects of sex also.
Cholly’s First Sexual Experiences:
The novelist records how an adolescent develops sexual awareness. When Cholly was a child and a midwife named M’ Dear was called to treat sick Aunt Jimmy.
Seeing M’ Dear Cholly felt surprised. She was over six feet tall. Her soft black face was impressive. She looked down at Aunt Jimmy’s wrinkled face and ran her left hand over her body. She looked closely Aunt Jimmy’s fingers and nails. She declared that Aunt Jimmy had caught cold in her womb.
M’ Dear’s treatment succeeded and Aunt Jimmy gained strength. Cholly could not forget M’ Dear’s face. One night in his sleep his hands reached between his thighs. In a dream his penis changed into a long stick, and the hands caressing it were the hands of M’ Dear.
Cholly’s first intercourse suggest that the girl named Darlene was active while Cholly was a passive partner. Cholly had no courage to do anything but Darlene put her hands under his open shirt. She tickled his ribs with her finger tips. They were on top of each other in a moment. He digged his hands under her dress. She looked serious when he got his hand in her bloomers. Cholly was frightened enough to withdraw his hand but she began to kiss his face and mouth. She pulled down her pants. Cholly too dropped down his pants to his knees. Their bodies began to make sense to him, and it was not as difficult as he had thought it would be. She moaned and it increased his excitement. Suddenly he felt she was frozen. She cried out. He looked back and found two men standing there with a spirit lamp. Cholly jumped and got his pants up all in a motion. The men had long guns. They laughed and asked him to get on. Cholly searched for a shelter but his body was paralyzed. Cholly pulled Darlene’s dress up and lowered his underwear. The men laughed. She put her hands over her face. Cholly tried to begin again but failed.
Later on, he begins to feel that every girl is ever willing to be fucked. The feeling is strengthened when three women call him. He goes to where they are. Inside it is dark and warm. They give him something to drink. They give him back his manhood. Now Cholly is free dangerously free. He is free to feel fear, guilt, shame, grief and pity. He is free to take a job as well as to leave it. He has already killed three white men. He is free to take a woman’s insults. He is free to be gentle when she falls sick. When he is in jail, the jailor’s wife takes interest in him. He has to satisfy her when he visits her for domestic work.
Lively Description of Sexual Union:
Toni Morrison writes about sex and writes freely while narrating Pauline’s sexual experience with her husband Cholly, all the books of pornography are left behind. She narrates:
He puts his fingers in mine, and we stretches our arms outwise like Jesus on the cross. I hold on tight. My fingers and my feet hold on tight, because everything else is going, going. I know he wants me to come first. But I can’t. Not until he does. Not until I feel him loving me.
Pecola’s Menstruation:
It seems Toni Morrison has decided to make the novel a guide book in sex for the young ones. Pecola’s menstruation is a part of that.
It is Sunday and the three girls are not able to decide how to spend the time. Just then Pecola’s eyes are filled with terror. Blood begins to run down her legs. Claudia asks if she had cut herself. There is blood all over her dress. She keeps crying with her legs far apart. She fears that she is going to die but Frieda consoles her by saying that she knows it. It is menstruation. It means now she can have a baby. Frieda has learnt it from Mildred and her mother. Frieda asks Pecola to sit down and directs Claudia to bring some water. Pecola is crying. Frieda asks her to be silent. Frieda opens the back door and takes Pecola to the side where bushes are thick. She asks Claudia to wash the steps. Frieda sits on her knees and pulls Pecola’s pants off. She takes a piece of cotton and asks Pecola to keep that between her legs. Now she pins the ends of napkin.to Pecola’s dress. Rosemary watches them and reports to Mrs. MacTeer that Pecola and Frieda were playing nasty behind the bush. The mother rushes to beat them. Without knowing the truth she beats Frieda who says sobbing that Pecola is bleeding and she is trying to stop that. She feels sorry for beating Frieda and asks Rosemary to get out. The mother takes Pecola into the bathroom. Claudia asks Frieda if they should beat Rosemary. That night Pecola asks Frieda if it is true that now she can have a baby. Frieda replies if someone loves her.
Claudia and Pecola have discussion on the topic with other girl Maureen also. Maureen tells them about her friend who is sixteen yet does not menstruate. Maureen informs that she has started two months ago. Pecola asks if Maureen knows its purpose. Maureen gives a comprehensive answer that it is for babies. “Babies need blood when they are inside you, and if you are having a baby, you don’t menstruate. But when you are not having a baby, then you don’t have to save the blood, so it comes out.” She tells it also how the baby gets the blood through the belly button. Hearing it Pecola asks that boys too have belly buttons but only girls have babies. She replies that boys have all sorts of things they don’t need. She asks if Pecola has ever seen a naked man. Pecola replies that she would not even look at him for that is dirty. According to her nobody’s father would be naked before his own daughter.
Appearance of Prostitutes:
Three whores live in the apartment above Breedloves’ store front. They are China, Poland and Miss Marie. Pecola loves and visits them. They too love her for she does their minor jobs. Pecola likes Poland’s singing. Marie scolds Pecola on seeing her without socks. These whores have no respect for women and call them ‘sugar-coated whores’. When they talk of making love, Pecola thinks how do grown-ups act when they love each other. Into her eyes comes the picture of Cholly and Mrs. Breedlove in bed. She concludes that producing strange sounds in bed is perhaps the act of making love. Claudia and Frieda see Henry with these prostitutes. They find him licking their fingers.
There are some girls better to be called ‘Mobile’. Such girls live in quiet black neighbourhood where everybody is gainfully employed. These sugar brown Mobile girls move through the streets without a stir. They have slim ankles; long, narrow feet. They do not drink, smoke, or swear. They go to colleges and schools. They learn how to do the whiteman’s work with refinement.
They never like to have boyfriends but always marry. A mobile girl does not permit children to enter her yard even to take their ball. But for men there is no restriction. She is ready to give him her body too. He may lift her nightgown but only to her navel. Besides he should not hurt her breasts while making love.
While he moves inside her, she wonders why he does not put the necessary private parts of the body in some more convinient place like the arm-pit or the palm of the hand. Such a place may work without undressing. She wishes to remain dry between her legs. She hates making sounds when she is moist. She makes rapid movements when she senses some spasm about to grip him. She presses her finger nails into his back and pretends she is having an orgasm. She might wonder again what it would be like to have that feeling when her husband’s penis is inside her.
Minors-As Victims of Sexual Atrocity:
Toni Morrison shows how minors fall a victim to sexual atrocity by insane elders. Mr. Henry presses little Frieda’s breasts and Soaphead Church kisses breasts of little girls. Soaphead Church writes a long letter to God to bless the girl with blue eyes. In the letter he accounts for Pecola’s little breasts. They look like buds. He wishes to touch, taste and feel them. He says that little girls are his weakness. When he touches their little sturdy tits and bites them a little, he feels he is being friendly. He does not want to kiss their mouths or sleep in the bed or take a child bride for his own. He wishes to feel playful and friendly. He has not such instincts that newspapers say or people whisper. They don’t understand his feelings. He gives these girls mints; money and they eat ice-cream with their legs open while he plays with them.
No doubt its worst example is created by Cholly who rapes his own daughter Pecola. Toni Morrison describes the foul act without hiding any fact.
Cholly bends his knees and looks at the foot of his daughter. He raises his hand and catches the foot in such a way that her balance is lost. Pecola falls but Cholly supports her hips with the other to save her from falling on the ground. His mouth trembles at the firm sweetness of her flesh. He closes his eyes. His fingers dig into her waist. He feels excited and a bolt of desire runs down his genitals, giving it length, and softening the lips of his anus. He wants to fuck her-tenderly. But the tightness of her vagina is more than he can bear. He makes gigantic thrusts into her. Removing himself from her is so painful to him, he cuts it short and snatches his genitals out of her dry harbor of vagina. She appears to have fainted. He hates her too much to pick her up. His tenderness forces him to cover her.
Charge of Obscenity:
Toni Morrison can’t escape the charge of being obscene for she narrates sexual activities in detail without hiding even a bit of action. For example, Pauline’s experience with her husband. But the charge seems unjustified when we realize the novelist’s noble purpose of understanding the psychology of a man who having such a great delightful sexual experience falls to rape his minor daughter. It should be marked that Toni Morrison tells about the psychological development of the person also. For example, she tells about mental stage of Cholly before he rapes Pecola.
Cholly’s whole life is passed in an abnormal way. He has no experience of father’s love. When he tried to be familiar to his father he got rebukes. In a way the feeling of love was absent in Aunt Jimmy also. Her behaviour towards Cholly was inspired more by pity than affection. Cholly has got love only from his beloved wife Pauline but she too with the passing of time has grown fed up of him. She is devoted to her masters more than to her husband and children.
Cholly’s son Sammy has no respect for him and beats him like a beast. Now Sammy is young and Cholly old. Besides it, Cholly has weakened himself by drinking in excess. He has a daughter Pecola but he does not feel any affection or responsibility towards her. He has no idea how to behave with children.
It is a Sunday afternoon. Cholly comes home in a drunken state. Pecola is working in the kitchen. She is washing dishes. Her small back is towards Cholly. It is difficult to teli what he sees in her or what he feels. But he feels upset. Suddenly his discomfort dissolves into pleasure. He thinks why she looks so worried. She is a child and she has no burden. She should look happy. His misery is responsible for it. Either his should get rid of misery or this girl. He wishes to break her neck. But then the mind passes through a conflict between guilt and impotence. He can do nothing for her. He can give nothing to his eleven-year-old daughter. She is washing a frying pan. Her hands are going around and around the pan. By chance she scratches her foot with the toe in the manner in which Cholly had found Pauline in his first meeting with her.
Cholly remembers how attractive Pauline was looking leaning over a fence. Her creamy toe was scratching her velvet leg. He remembers how affectionately he had kissed her leg and she had showered a treasure of love on him. He forgets that Pauline is not there. He fails to mark that his own daughter Pecola is there.
Psychological Impact of the Act:
Toni Morrison puts stress on the point that physically rape does not affect much. The child takes birth and dies. But its psychological impact is irrevocable. Pecola grows insane and her whole is ruined. It is the novelist’s attempt to make people aware of grave consequences before committing sexual atrocities on minors.
Thus, Toni Morrison has treated the subject like a doctor who has to uncover the body before finding out the source of illness.