Summary
This chapter recounts Mrs. Breedlove’s story. She grows
up in Alabama as Pauline Williams, and when she is two years old,
she impales her foot on a nail. Forever afterward, she walks with
a slight limp, and she believes that this accident determined her
destiny. During her childhood, she is isolated from other family
members, and therefore cultivates her own pleasures. She enjoys
arranging things, creating order and neatness out of clutter. Her
family later migrates to Kentucky, where they move into a sizable
house with a garden. Pauline is put in charge of caring
for the house and her two younger siblings, Chicken and Pie. She
enjoys this life, but once she turns fifteen, she becomes restless
and melancholy. She begins to dream of a stranger—a man, or a god—who
will take her away with him.
Then one day, a stranger arrives. Pauline is standing
in the garden and hears a young man whistling. Suddenly she feels
him tickling her bad foot and turns to meet the gaze of Cholly Breedlove.
They fall in love, and he treats her with tenderness. They decide
to marry and move up north to Lorain, Ohio, where there are more
jobs. Then life becomes more difficult. Pauline feels lonely and
isolated, and she is surprised by how unfriendly the other women
are. They are amused by her country ways. She begins to long for
clothes that will make the women look at her differently, and she
and Cholly begin to argue about money. Cholly’s drinking becomes
a problem.
At this point, Pauline takes her first job as a housekeeper
in a white woman’s house. The white woman is well-off but petty
and foolish. Her family has dirty habits. One day, Cholly shows
up at the woman’s house drunk and demands money, and Pauline leaves
her job. The woman will not give her the job back or the rest of
her pay unless Pauline leaves Cholly. Pauline refuses and is left
without money for cooking gas.
Soon thereafter Pauline realizes she is pregnant. Cholly
is happy and their marriage improves, but Pauline is still lonely
in their apartment. She takes refuge in the movies and develops
destructive ideas about physical beauty and romantic love. She tries
to make herself look like a movie star, but then while chewing candy
at a movie, she loses one of her front teeth. From then on, she
feels ugly, and she and Cholly begin to fight again. Her first baby
fails to fill the hole in her life. She talks to her second baby
in the womb, vowing to love her no matter what. When she gives birth
in the hospital, a doctor tells a group of students that black women
do not feel pain while giving birth; they are “just like horses.”
Despite this insult, Pauline is pleased with her new baby, Pecola,
but knows the baby is ugly.
Pauline then takes on her identity as martyr. She joins
the church and becomes the family breadwinner, securing a job with
the Fishers, a wealthy family who appreciate her good work. She
loves her work because it allows her to make things beautiful and
orderly. She begins to neglect her own house and family. At times,
she remembers the good times with Cholly, when their lovemaking
turned everything into rainbows. Now their lovemaking occurs while
he is drunk and she is half-asleep.
Analysis
Morrison uses the technique of shifting perspectives to
allow us different ways of judging characters. In this chapter,
we are given a new take on the story that is unfolding, the perspective
of Pecola’s mother. In the previous chapter, she behaved terribly
toward her daughter, and we are ready to condemn her. But now we
learn why she behaves the way she does, and our perception of what
took place becomes complicated by her past. Like every other character
in the book, Pauline is partly a victim of circumstances and has
partly chosen her own fate. Though we may condemn some of her choices,
we now sympathize with the experiences that have made these choices seem
necessary.
