Mahnoor Saqib 

Professor von Uhl

FIQWS 10108

07 December 2019

Parents’ love help the psycho-sexual stages to develop

Life of African Americans in the late 20th century, right after the Great Depression. The difficulties that the African Americans faced in their lives for a long time and the sacrifices that they made for their family and their community. The novel, The Bluest Eye, written by Toni Morrison, published in 1970, focuses on the Breedlove family, narrated by few people, including Claudia, Morrison herself and some others. Toni Morrison is one of the finest writers and received the Nobel Prize in literature. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison is inviting the reader to visualize the realities that Cholly and Pecola faced due to the absence of parents’ love in their lives and how that affected their personality. She also discusses poverty within that time period. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison uses Cholly and his daughter, Pecola’s relationship to critique about the lack of family love in children’s lives within the African American community through Freud’s concept of psycho-sexual stages of development. 

In Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Cholly was raised by his aunt but not by his parents. Since Cholly was not able to have affection for his parents, he did not complete his psychosexual stages of development, the childhood stages (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital) that every child needs to go through (Freud 2230). Telling the reader the horrific childhood experiences of Cholly, the lack of love, affected him as an individual. This helps the reader to understand the importance of parents’ love at every stage of your infancy. Mary Williamson (an American author) wrote in her paper, “The importance of fathers in relation to their daughters’ psycho-sexual development” that according to Josephine Klein, “At a later stage, the infant discovers in the father a separate being, which is close but not merged with” (211). This is important because Cholly did not have that connection with his father during the later stages of pregnancy. In The Bluest Eye, Aunt Jimmy was telling Cholly that his father left before he was born (Morrison 133). It demonstrates that when the mother was pregnant with Cholly and the father left, there was no one to support the mother financially and mentally. She definitely went through emotional instability which also has effected Cholly’s.  Cholly was abandoned by his mother in junk heap when he was four days old and his Aunt Jimmy took care of him (Morrison 132). But the love that a child receives from his parent is different from the love that he/she receives from others because a child has a blood connection with the parents, includes a child’s feeling and emotion, that no one can change. Even though the aunt took care of him and played the role of a mother in Cholly’s life, but still the desire for a mother’s love will never get fulfilled because of the way Cholly acted later in life. All this lead to Cholly’s dysfunction that he did not have any sympathy for his home and his family. The relationship that he had with his wife was not great like other husband-wife. According to Kohut (1984), self psychologists argued, “to develop a healthy self, the child must have three needs adequately met: importantly mirrored by the parents, particularly the mother” (Williamson 213). This reflects because Cholly was not fostered by his mother and he did not suck his mother’s breast, did not go through the oral stage, that influenced him mentally that he burned down the family house and put his family outdoors, he physically abused his wife, named Pauline (Morrison 18, 43). His actions harmed his family intensely. Morrison reflects the time period of the 1940s in The Bluest Eye, right after the Great Depression, when African Americans were struggling financially. Cholly is one of them that Morrison is discussing, how he is going through financial problems.  Cholly making hard for his family to live, this shows that he did not have any sympathy towards his family because he on one had it for him, he never experienced it. It means does not have the ability to have strong relationships and caring for them. He did not think that if he burns the house where his family will go and how will they live because his parents did not think that how he will raise himself alone. It proves the brain dysfunction because of the lack of attention in life and not going through the stages completely. 

Cholly was all alone after the aunts died, he had no one to take care of him. Cholly went to find his father and when he saw his father, he tries to talk to him but he said, “Tell that bitch she get her money. Now, get the fuck outta my face!” (Morrison 156). Diana Ansarey, assistant Professor at ASA University Bangladesh, wrote in the “Treatment of the theme of Child Abuse in Tonn Morrison’s The Bluest Eye”, that “The children normally want the attention of the adults; they are looking for warmth and love which adults seem incapable of” (52). He went out to find his father and built a connection that he never had with his father. But his father rejected to take his responsibility and treated him like a stranger. When a child is being treated the way Cholly was treated at a very young age by his biological father, it definitely disturbs their mental health and later they do the same thing to others. Getting love from parents is part of the psychosexual stages and after aunt Jimmy’s death, Cholly wanted to have someone who cares about him. “The father is important as a ‘second object’, be there to turn to when the relationship with mother is difficult” (Williamson 208). However, Cholly received the love neither from his father nor from his mother. He went to his father, so he could have both the love of the father and the mother through him. Cholly did not even know who is his mother, but he knew the name of his father that his aunt told him. He went to his father, thinking that his father will love to see him and take care of him. But when he went there, the way his father treated him was unforgettable. He never received love from his biological mother and then his father also refused to take care of him. According to Freud, in his fourth lecture, “after an important course of development passing through many stages, they lead to what is known as the normal sexuality of the adult”. In Cholly’s case, he did not lead to his normal sexuality of adult and raped her daughter Pecola. When Pecola was washing the dishes, Cholly saw her, “the timid, tucked-in look of the scratching toe—that was what Pauline was doing the first time he saw” (Morrison 162). Cholly was not normal sexually that he desires to have sex with his daughter. He was not able to understand the difference between his wife and daughter. The lack of a parent’s love made him mentally sick. Morrison gives Cholly background, the way his father treated Cholly, helps the reader to understand how abused children shift into abusive parents (Ansarey 53). When a child sees their parents’ relationship with each other, they learn from it.  Parents play a major role in a child’s development and his behavior because most of the things that children do they lean from either their parents or any other adult. But Cholly did not live with his parents so he does not have any experience to understand the relationship of his parents with each other. 

Furthermore, The experiences that Cholly throughout his life, lack of parents’ love disturbed him psychologically. Cholly did not complete his psychosexual stages of development because of not being nurtured by his parents, therefore he struggled to raise his own children, especially his daughter, Pecola. Narrator Claudia narrates, “Having no idea of how to raise children, and having never watched any parents raise himself, he could not even comprehend what such a relationship should be” (Morrison 160). Cholly did not have any interaction with his father as a child, he did not know how a father’s love looks like. Even though when tries to get to his father, his father behavior very rudely with him. The lack of a father’s love in Cholly’s life influenced him as a father. It Proves, when Pecola asks her friend, Frieda, “how do you get somebody to love you”, she asked this when she got her first period and Frieda told her that it means you can have babies (Morrison 32). It means Pecola did not receive love from anyone in her life either, that is why she asked that question. Even though Pecola had both parents, not like Cholly, she still did not receive the love that a child deserves. ‘As Mitchell points out, Freud put out, Freud himself came fairly late to the importance of early maternal”, attachment when he talks about his female patient’s devotedly fond of her father (Williamson 209). But with Cholly’s case, it was the opposite, Pecola did not have that strong relationship with her father. Infact, the experience of sexual abuse that Cholly did to Pecola is unforgettable. Cholly did not do anything special that he should be called a father. Cholly was not the only one who did not love his children, also Pecola’s mother, Pauline, the way she treated her children was not great. Pecola’s parents work, Cholly works in the steel mills and Pauline started housekeeping (Morrison 116).  Pauline did not pay attention to her daughter and did not build a strong relationship with her. Mothers usually have a strong connection with their daughters because it reminds them of their own childhood. Ansarey argues that “Pauline Breedlove is unable to nurture feelings of self self-worth in her daughter” (53). When peculiar told her mother about being sexually abused by her father, her mother did not believe her, in fact, Pauline beat her up (Morrison 200). This shows that the mother did not have a strong bond with her daughter, that she cannot figure out if her daughter is lying and saying the truth. “What seems certain is that fathers are as important as mothers in the triangular relationship they form with their daughter” (Williamson 218). This shows that the father and mother both should have a strong relationship with their daughter, so when the mother is angry the daughter could share her feeling with her father and vice versa. When both parents are strict, to whom will the child divert their feelings. Using the ideology of Mary Williamson on the father-daughter relationship and Diana Ansarey on Child abuse, illustrating the lack of love and the abuse in both Cholly and Pecola’s lives, characterized in The Bluest Eye, written by Toni Morrison. Explore through Freud’s concepts of psychosexual stages of development the importance of parents’ love. Cholly was not nourished by his parents so when he had his own children, he did not know how to raise them since he never experienced the love from his father.

Works Cited 

Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York. Vintage International. 1970. PDF. 

Freud, Sigmund, “Five Lectures on Psycho-analysis.” 1955. PDF. 

Ansarey, Diana. “Treatment of the Theme of Child Abuse in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.” ASA University Review, Vol. 11 No. 1, January-June, 2017. PDF.

Williamson, Mary. “The importance of fathers in relation to their daughters’ psychosexual development.” Psychodynamic Practice, May 2004. PDF.