A few posts ago I started exploring the role of names in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. Specifically, I looked at Soaphead Church’s letter to God and his questions, “What makes one name more a person than another? Is the name the real thing, then? And the person only what his name says?” By looking at Claudia and Frieda’s nickname for Maureen Peals and the ways that Pecola and Claudia differed in how they refer to Marie, I worked to examine the role that names have in Morrison’s novel. Today, I want to continue that discussion by focusing on Pecola’s mother Pauline.

Our first real introduction to Pauline comes during the second section of the novel, “Spring,” when Claudia and Frieda go to find Pecola at the Fishers’ house. Pauline works for the Fishers as a domestic. Claudia, Frieda, and Pecola all call Pauline Mrs. Breedlove, showing respect for her by referring to her in a manner that highlights the identity as a mother and adult figure, an identity that the girls place on her from their position as children.

When Claudia and Frieda come up to the Fishers’ house, they see Pecola on the stoop and start talking to her. This initial interaction informs what follows because this is where Claudia tells Pecola that “The Maginot Line” told her and her sister where to find Pecola. Pecola doesn’t know who Claudia is referring to and asks her, to which Claudia responds, “The big fat lady. She lives over you.” Pecola now realizes that they’re talkling about Marie and responds, “Oh, you mean Miss Marie. Her name is Miss Marie.” Pecola refers to Marie by her name while Claudia and Frieda refer to her by the name that the community gave her. I discuss this in the previous post.

As Pecola tells Claudia and Frieda what Marie and other women give her, Pauline looks outside and asks her daughter who the girls are she talking to on the stoop. Pecola tells her mother, “That’s Frieda and Claudia, Mrs. Breedlove,” and Claudia comments that Pauline “looked nicer than I had ever seen her, in her white unifoirm and her hair in a small pompadour.” This is the first time Claudia sees Pauline in her domestic uniform working in the nice house by the lake, and when they step in the kitchen, Claudia looks in awe at the cabinets, the countertops, and more.

Pauline tells the girls to stay in the kitchen while she goes to get the wash, and as they wait, a young, blonde, white girl in “a pink sunback dress and pink fluffy bedroom slippers” sticks her head into the kitchen and asks, “Where’s Polly?” The girl’s question causes a violent reaction within Claudia because her, Frieda, and even Pecola always referred to Pauline as Mrs. Breedlove. The little white girl, who is never named, refers to Pauline as Polly, a name that catches the other girls off guard and rings as an insult. Clauida tells the girl that Pauline is downstairs, and the girl yells, “Polly!” down the stairs.

The girls see a berry cobbler on the counter, and as Pecola reaches out to touch it she drops it on the floor, causing a mess. She gets some on her legs, burning herself, and she cries out in pain as Pauline comes back upstairs. Pauline doesn’t check to see if Pecola is hurt; instead, she “yanked her up by the arm, slapped her again, and in a voice of anger, abused Pecola” alongside Claudia and Frieda. She yells at her daughter for messing up “my floor,” even though the floor is not Pauline’s floor.

The commotion causes the white girl to cry, and Pauline looks at her, trying to comfort her. Pauline tells the girl, “Don’t cry no more. Polly will change it.” Pauline tells Pecoloa to pick up the wash and go outside, and she turns back to the white girl comforting her while chastising her own daughter. The girl asks, “Who were they, Polly?” Pauline simply responds, “Don’t worry none, baby,” and tells the girl she’ll make another cobbler. This is where the chapter ends, with Pauline comforting the white girl and berating her own daughter and ignoring her injuries. The young girl asks Pauline twice, “Who were they, Polly?” and this refrain drives home the ways that Pauline does not exist for the girl as a human but rather as an entity there to serve her every need.

The next chapter details Pauline’s move from Kentucky to Ohio and how she came to work for the Fishers. At the Fishers’ home, she felt jealousy as well as power. She was jealous of their wealth and admired it, dreaming of the day when she could afford a house like that. However, due to her race, it would only remain a dream. Yet, she enjoyed “[p]ower, praise, and luxury” at the Fishers’ home. The Fishers “even gave her what she had never had — a nickname — Polly.” Polly became her name with the Fishers, and it became her identity, even when her daughter experienced pain and suffering. Instead of being Pauline or Mrs. Breedlove, Pecola’s mother and protector, she became Polly, the young Fisher girl’s domestic servant. The Fishers even said about her, “We’ll never let her go. We could never find anybody like Polly. She will not leave the kitchen until everything is in order. Really, she is the ideal servant.”

The Firshers name Pauline Polly, choosing to give her a nickname instead of calling her by her given name. In this manner, they place their thoughts and beliefs onto her, just as Claudia and Frieda do to Maureen Peals and as Pauline and Caludia’s mother do to Marie. Through this, Pauline, Marie, and Maureen exist in relation to their name, not to their actually reality. The name becomes the person. This occurs with Soaphead Church as well. While individuals can determine their own nicknames and monikers, throughout The Bluest Eye, others place their own thoughts and ideas onto others, thus using names to formulate their identities. In this manner, make they impact the individuals and their psyche. As Hortense Spillers writes when talking about stereotypes that refer to African American women, “they are markers so loaded with mythical prepossession that there is no wasy way for agents buried beneath them to come clean.”

What are your thoughts? As always, let me know in the comments below. Make sure to follow me on Twitter @silaslapham.