The Bluest Eye – The Dolls

"I destroyed white baby dolls" (22)

Claudia makes her hatred for all things white, (conventionally) beautiful, and Shirley Temple-esque very clear in the novel's opening section. In many ways we as readers empathize with Claudia. We, like her, hate the idea of conforming to externally imposed standards of self-valuation. No one likes (or at least no one ought to like) being told who to be.

However, this negativity surrounding Claudia only breeds more of its kind within her. Claudia's hatred for Shirley Temple is born from a (well-founded and legitimate) envy of her dancing with Bojangles. She "destroyed white baby dolls" as a result of this hate. And she even expresses a desire to do the same to "little white girls" (22) and to hear their "fascinating [cries] of pain" (23). This may seem like an extreme sentiment: and it surely is. However, that does not make its examination and understanding any less legitimate. If anything, it greatly increases its relevancy to the novel as a whole.

Why, then, does Claudia feel so drawn to violence? Simple anger is not sufficient: people become angry all the time without expressing a desire to physically harm others. The root of Claudia's violent temptations lies in the way she has been made to feel by the Shirley Temple beauty standards. She, her sister, Pecola, and every other young black girl of the time has been systematically and repeatedly made to believe not only that their worth is inextricably linked with their physical attractiveness, but that such attractiveness is, for them, all but impossible to attain. 

Black America has been contorted and twisted into a fundamentally ugly thing. Claudia, then, wishes to do the same to white America, one dismembered doll at a time.