Friday 4 January 2019

"Black hair, blue eyes, and white skin! What a strange man!, and yet - quite handsome."

Myriad Responses to Beauty in Literature – IV

So akin to Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, where, ‘blue eyes, blonde hair, and pale white skin’ were the definition of beauty to the black girl Pecola Breedlove, whose avowed dream was to be beautiful, we have a much similar strand woven into Maya Angelou’s autobiographical story, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, where, yet again, Maya, the narrator has internalized the idea that blond hair is the yardstick to beauty, and because she is a fat black girl, who ain't a blond, she ain't beautiful to look at. Hence she feels quite unwelcome and ugly!

In her way with the counterfactual, she imagines –

Because I was really white and because a cruel fairy stepmother, who was understandably jealous of my beauty, had turned me into a too-big Negro girl, with nappy black hair, broad feet and a space between her teeth that would hold a number-two pencil.

When Maya’s father Bailey takes her to St. Louis to see her mother Vivian, Maya  poignantly gives out her musings on her momma, on how beautiful and charming she was, in Chapter 9 of the book!

To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow. We were both fearful of Mother’s coming and impatient at her delay. It is remarkable how much truth there is in the two expressions: “struck dumb” and “love at first sight.” My mother’s beauty literally assailed me. Her red lips (Momma said it was a sin to wear lipstick) split to show even white teeth and her fresh-butter color looked see-through clean. Her smile widened her mouth beyond her cheeks beyond her ears and seemingly through the walls to the street outside. I was struck dumb. I knew immediately why she had sent me away. She was too beautiful to have children. I had never seen a woman as pretty as she who was called “Mother.” Bailey on his part fell instantly and forever in love. I saw his eyes shining like hers; he had forgotten the loneliness and the nights when we had cried together because we were “unwanted children.” He had never left her warm side or shared the icy wind of solitude with me. She was his Mother Dear and I resigned myself to his condition. They were more alike than she and I, or even he and I. They both had physical beauty and personality, so I figured it figured.

There is here a demarcation that’s made so subtly between the culturally defined image of self, vis-à-vis her real view of her ‘self!’ Now, since the culturally defined image of self, is to Maya, a product of the patriarchal milieu in which she is placed, she has a painful realization that she is not beautiful based on the normative handed down to her creed in society, and hence she tries to construct for herself, an alternate self, devoid of these normatives!

Hence, there’s a disastrous fragmentation of her identity, which results in raising apprehensions about her own ‘subjectivity’ status in society! Eventually, there arises a fear and disdain of her body, which, results in somatophobia, which is defined as a morbid fear and devaluation of one’s own body.

On the other hand, there’s yet another portrayal of a black ‘royal slave’ by name Oroonoko, the titular hero of the poignant tragic novel, written by Aphra Behn, way way back in 1688!

Well, although there are many many claimants to the sobriquet, ‘father of the English novel’, they all have made their mark and their work, their name and their fame only at a very later stage, whereas Aphra Behn wrote Oroonoko as early as in 1688! So much for the Power – knowledge connect and its sway over society! But that’s another story!

Moreover, the concept of the ‘noble savage’, owes its origins chiefly to Oroonoko and his famed beauty! 

[Although the term ‘noble savage’ has now attained a pejorative label to it as a racist invention, it was once, a romanticized stereotype of the indigenous people, and hence was also a popular theme in western thought!] 

Coming back to our premise, as a black, Oroonoko still continued to enjoy all respect and attention from the English colonizers because of his unusual physical beauty and royal bearing, along with his endearing manners and graceful social etiquette.

The narrator highlights the fact that, Oroonoko distinguishes himself starkly from slaves of his own ilk, kith and kin by his European characteristics, with his straight hair, Roman nose etc, which exemplifies a Eurocentric vision of beauty!

Giving y’all snippets from the rich descriptions of this black beauty!

This great and just character of Oroonoko gave me an extreme curiosity to see him, especially when I knew he spoke French and English, and that I could talk with him. But though I had heard so much of him, I was as greatly surprised when I saw him as if I had heard nothing of him; so beyond all report I found him. He came into the room, and addressed himself to me and some other women with the best grace in the world. He was pretty tall, but of a shape the most exact that can be fancied: the most famous statuary could not form the figure of a man more admirably turned from head to foot. His face was not of that brown rusty black which most of that nation are, but of perfect ebony, or polished jet. 

His eyes were the most awful that could be seen, and very piercing; the white of 'em being like snow, as were his teeth. His nose was rising and Roman, instead of African and flat. His mouth the finest shaped that could be seen; far from those great turned lips which are so natural to the rest of the negroes. The whole proportion and air of his face was so nobly and exactly formed that, bating his color, there could be nothing in nature more beautiful, agreeable, and handsome. There was no one grace wanting that bears the standard of true beauty. His hair came down to his shoulders, by the aids of art, which was by pulling it out with a quill, and keeping it combed; of which he took particular care.

Nor did the perfections of his mind come short of those of his person; for his discourse was admirable upon almost any subject: and whoever had heard him speak would have been convinced of their errors, that all fine wit is confined to the white men, especially to those of Christendom; and would have confessed that Oroonoko was as capable even of reigning well, and of governing as wisely, had as great a soul, as politic maxims, and was as sensible of power, as any prince civilized in the most refined schools of humanity and learning, or the most illustrious courts.

This prince, such as I have described him, whose soul and body were so admirably adorned, was (while yet he was in the court of his grandfather, as I said) as capable of love as 'twas possible for a brave and gallant man to be; and in saying that, I have named the highest degree of love: for sure great souls are most capable of that passion.

Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles offers a different perspective to beauty, albeit from another planet altogether!

When humans plan a mission to outer space, they intend to begin with the red planet, Mars! A female Martian by name Ylla (or Mrs K) has dreams of explorers from earth, named Nathaniel York and his co-astronaut, Bert. She also has romantic inclinations towards him, much to the chagrin and envy of her husband! She also tells her passive husband of her dreams, in which she gives out her perspectives on beauty, and how the earthy Nathaniel had a great sway over her!

Over to Ray Bradbury for y’all! [As usual, just snippets, and no spoilers though!]

Mr. and Mrs. K were not old. They had the fair, brownish skin of the true Martian, the yellow coin eyes, the soft musical voices. Once they had liked painting pictures with chemical fire, swimming in the canals in the seasons when the wine trees filled them with green liquors, and talking into the dawn together by the blue phosphorous portraits in the speaking room.

Her husband appeared in a triangular door. "Did you call?" he asked irritably.

"No!" she cried.

"I thought I heard you cry out."

"Did I? I was almost asleep and had a dream!"

"In the daytime? You don't often do that."

She sat as if struck in the face by the dream. "How strange, how very strange," she murmured. "The dream."

"Oh?" He evidently wished to return to his book.

"I dreamed about a man."

"A man?"

"A tall man, six feet one inch tall."

"How absurd; a giant, a misshapen giant."

"Somehow"- she tried the words - "he looked all right. In spite of being tall. And he had - oh, I know you'll think it silly - he had blue eyes!"

"Blue eyes! Gods!" cried Mr. K. "What'll you dream next? I suppose he had black hair?"

"How did you guess?" She was excited.

"I picked the most unlikely color," he replied coldly.

"Well, black it was!" she cried. "And he had a very white skin; oh, he was most unusual! He was dressed in a strange uniform and he came down out of the sky and spoke pleasantly to me." She smiled.

"Out of the sky; what nonsense!"

"He came in a metal thing that glittered in the sun," she remembered. She closed her eyes to shape it again. "I dreamed there was the sky and something sparkled like a coin thrown into the air, and suddenly it grew large and fell down softly to land, a long silver craft, round and alien. And a door opened in the side of the silver object and this tall man stepped out."

"If you worked harder you wouldn't have these silly dreams."

"I rather enjoyed it," she replied, lying back. "I never suspected myself of such an imagination. Black hair, blue eyes, and white skin! What a strange man, and yet - quite handsome."

"Wishful thinking."

"You're unkind. I didn't think him up on purpose; he just came in my mind while I drowsed. It wasn't like a dream. It was so unexpected and different. He looked at me and he said, 'I've come from the third planet in my ship. My name is Nathaniel York  -'"

"A stupid name; it's no name at all," objected the husband.

"Of course it's stupid, because it's a dream," she explained softly. "And he said, 'This is the first trip across space. There are only two of us in our ship, myself and my friend Bert.'"

"Another stupid name."

Mr. K touched a pillar. Founts of warm water leaped up, steaming; the chill vanished from the room. Mr. K's face was impassive.

"And then," she said, "this man, who said his strange name was Nathaniel York, told me I was beautiful and - and kissed me."

to be contd...


Images: Amazondotcom

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