Paradoxical Motherhood in ‘The Bluest Eye’ and ‘God Help the Child’

Abstract

This research study has been conducted on the title ‘Paradoxes of Motherhood in The Bluest Eye and God Help the Child’. The aim of the researcher, to conduct this research study, was to investigate the paradoxical factors and their after effects that how these factors affect the lives of black mothers and restrain them from nurturing their children as normal human beings. One aim of the researcher was to get the comparison of the black mother of the modern era and postmodern era in order to understand that either there was any change in the condition of the black mother or not. In order to investigate all these factors, two novels of Toni Morrison, the black writer, The Bluest Eye and God Help the Child have been selected. The argument of this thesis is that the experience of motherhood, especially, mother-daughter relationship gets complicated due to external factors like: slavery, racism, economy, sexism and the single parent motherhood. Because of these factors, mothers displace violence on their children in the form of abuse, emotional neglect and lack of nurture. This research study has used the lenses of Black Feminist theorists like: Patricia Hill Collins, Nancy Chodorow, Andrea O’Reilly and Bell Hooks. Primary source of data were both the novels, The Bluest Eye and God Help the Child, and the secondary sources of this study were different thesis, books, articles, and interviews of Toni Morrison. Therefore, the nature of this research was qualitative. The research findings are that the there is no change in the condition of the black mother of old times and post-modern times. Black mother still has to endure all the problems by her own as she used to suffer from breast feeding to nurturance. Morrison exposes the failure of American dream for black people in these novels. Factors like colourism, sexism, racism, residential discrimination and economic marginalization still exist in American society. All these factors put the coloured people, including African American, at disadvantage making the realization of the American dream impossible for them.