Madness by Social Isolation in the Yellow Wallpaper and the Bluest Eye

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The final step in Jane’s descent into madness comes as she begins to distrust those around her; Jane becomes suspicious of her husband and sister in law, Jennie. Jane has now isolated herself after being forcefully isolated. She shows this by creating someone who isn’t actually there, the woman in the paper; “sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over” (Gilman). Creating this woman, or women, is a mental response to being isolated; Jane has gone mad.

Set more than two decades after women gained the right to vote, the unofficial end of the women’s rights movement, The Bluest Eye is still set in patriarchial American society. In Morrison’s story, Pecola Breedlove is a young African American girl growing up poor in the 1940’s. She is socially iolated by her age, race, economic clas and gender.

The Breedloves lived in an abandonded store front which “foists itself on the eye of the passerby in a manner that is both irritating and melancholy” (Morrison 33). The Breedlove’s home is basically one room in which the family is comingled, yet despite the physical closeness, or perhaps because of it, the Breedloves show no sign of being a close family, actually, it is the opposite. One morning while Pecola’s mother and father fight, she and her brother try to remain invisible; “Sammy was awake now too, pretending to be asleep. Pecola still held her stomach muscles taut and conserved her breath” (Morrison 41). Pecola wants to stay invisible to avoid her parents fights, but they fight as though their children were no there anyways. Ruth Rosenberg argues that this is because there is an emotional barrier between children and adults in The Bluest Eye. Whether Pecola stayed invisible or not, she would only be entitled to whatever communication her mother wanted her to receive; “communication is hierarchically structured, one way transmission” (Rosenberg 437). While Pecola tried to stay invisible, her older brother would run away, “once he got to Buffalo and stayed three months. His returns, whether by force or circumstance, were sullen. Pecola, on the other hand, restricted by youth and sex experimented with methods of endurance.” (Morrison 43) Because she was a young girl, Pecola couldn’t leave, she wanted to be isolated, she needed to endure, “’please god,’ she whispered into the palm of her hand ‘please make me disappear’” (Morrison 45). Pecola’s desire to disappear reprents the emergence of the reoccurring theme of helplessness and superiority. Pecola lives in a world, as most children do, where her actions are limited.

There is more than one occasion in which it is clear that Pecola would like to disappear. After being embarrassed and teased by Maureen, the girl seen as “the high-yellow dream child,” (Morrison 62) Pecola “stood a little apart from us” (Morrison 73). The physical distance between Pecola and her friends is not accidental. Pecola needs to be isolated, she feels unworthy of attention. When Maureen says “I am cute, and you ugly,” (Morrison 73) Pecola knows this to be true. She knows that the definition of cute is the girl whose face appears on candy wrappers and cups, the face with blue eyes; she knows that this is not her, and she would rather be invisible, isolated, Maureen doesn’t really see her anyway.

It is not simply whether or not Pecola is cute that isolates her, it is that fact that she is so poor, even amongst those who are poor. When another child, Junior, invites her inside for the sole purpose of tormenting her, Pecola is not even able to defend herself when Junior tells his mother Geraldine that Pecola killed their cat. What good would defense do for someone who is invisible to those around her?

“Geraldine went to the radiator and picked up the cat. He was limp in her arms…she looked at Pecola. Saw the dirty torn dress, the plaits sticking out on her head, hair matted where the plaits had come undone, the muddy shoes with the wad of gum peeping out from behind the cheap soles, the soiled socks…She saw the safety pin holding the hem of the dress up. Up over the hump of the cat’s back she looked at her. She had seen this girl all of her life” (Morrison 9).

It wasn’t that Pecola was less cute than a light skinned girl; it wasn’t that she was a child instead of an adult; It wasn’t that she was black and not white. Geraldine knew that Pecola was less than her, Pecola was poor and “nasty” (Morrioson 92). When Pecola left without saying a word, it is because she is invisible anyway, isolated because she is poor and “nasty.”

The ultimate act of isolation occurs when Pecolas father rapes her. Cholly Breedlove doesn’t see his daughter as the innocent girl she is, he sees her as a representation of her mother; A woman he once loved and now hates. As he looks at Pecola washing dishes, Cholly thinks of how his wife looked when they met, “the timid tucked in look of the scratching toe- that was what Pauline was doing the first time he saw her in Kentucky” (Morrison 162). Debra Werrlein argues the thematics of childhood innocence in The Bluest Eye, (52) but if innocence is an important theme running through this novel then equally important is how Pecola’s innocence is stolen by her father, further isolating her from her family.

Pecola’s progession of isolation leads to madness, the start of which can be pinned to her request for blue eyes. When Pecola seeks out a man who is “a true spiritualist,” (Morrison 173) she asks him for blue eyes. This request is not surprising since it is abundantly clear that Pecola thinks that blue eyes, the likes of Shirley Temple, will make her beautiful. Pecola tells Soaphead “I can’t go to school no more. And I thought maybe you could help me” (Morrison 174). Pecola is isolated from school, the essential social environment for children, and she thinks blue eyes will solve this.

Pecola’s final step into madness comes as she believes that she does have blue eyes, but not blue enough. Having been totally socially isolated, Pecola converses with someone who isn’t there, and even then is afraid to be alone; “Don’t go, don’t leave me. Will you come back if I get them?...the bluest eyes.” (Morrison 204).

Both Gilman and Morrison have presented complex female characters who go mad. The question of course is why. The Yellow Wallpaper is now a well read work in the American literary canon because of its realism, and the absorbing way Gilman’s character progresses. Gilman was certainly not writing some sort of auto biographical account through her main character, however Gilman clearly drew from her own life experiences in developing the character.

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