The Melancholic Subject and The Bluest Eye

Abstract

Julia Kristeva, the Bulgarian-French critic, claims that the melancholic subject has a sense of loss and s/he cannot share it with other people as s/he considers it private. S/ he is stranger to her/his mother tongue and cannot express her/his feeling through language; however, s/he should use language in order to get rid of her/his sense of loss. In The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison devotes herself to the slaves' experience. She believes that the slaves suffer from their past and feel a sense of loss, and they should use language to express their feeling. This article intends to apply Julia Kristeva’s theory of the melancholic subject to Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and shed light on the fact that through language the characters become able to deal with their past.
Key words: Julia Kristeva; The melancholic subject; Toni Morrison; The Bluest Eye; Language; Loss