“From the bluest eye to a lesser I? Spaces of invisibility in Toni Morrison’s writing”.

• Autor(a) principal: Relvas, Susana Rocha
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Simão, Ana Sofia, Rodrigues, Ricardo Miguel P.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.19/7808
• topic: Espaço; literatura; lugar e não-lugar; heterotopia; topofilia e topofobia; topofrenia

The Bluest Eye, written by Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison takes place in the early 1940s in Ohio, where most of the community is African and impoverished. The story follows the Breedloves, a family that is characterized by violence, both sexually and physically, instability, lack of respect and who does not display any demonstrations of love or care either, especially as far as the parents are concerned (and contrarily to what the name breed love suggests). On the other hand, the story shows another family, the foster home of Pecola, a total opposite of her original family. The MacTeer’s home, who are also black, is stable, loving and they teach their children to be aware of their own worth. These two different spaces play an important role in shaping Pecola´s future. In her foster home, Pecola finds a sort of protective shell (Bachelard:1958) and the love she receives increases her self-esteem and helps to create a more positive image of herself. Thus, one concludes that even though she was thrown out of her home due to the fact that she was pregnant by her father, she moved from a topophobic to a more topophilic environment(Fu-Tuan: 1977). What rests to be known is whether the stability of the foster family will be enough to save her. Keywords: topophilia, topophobia, eye versus I, Afro-American literature and culture, spatiality