Problematic of Racism and Sexism

Abstract

Physically bruised and psychically maimed, Black Americans had long writhed in silence, earnestly waiting for the arrival of a messiah, a deliverer who would take up their baton and speak with and for them, championing their crestfallen condition. However, worser was the scenario for women who were dubbed as the coloured ‘other’. Although exalted as sexually desirable by the White male gaze, such a desirability seamlessly gives way to brutal forms of racist and sexist oppression, both by white and black males. In this light, “The Bluest Eye”, an award-winning text of the Black Afro-American Nobel laureate, ToniMorrison, might be analysed as essentially a feminist narrative that follows the heart-wrenching one –year in the life of Pecola Breedlove as she slowly passes into psychic dementia and the readers can’t but help being filled with pathos at the loveless life of Pecola Breedlove.