Coerced obedience, lack of self-assertion, and suppressed anger often undermine

the culturally defined and sanctioned notion of manhood. As he deflected his frustration

and fury by directing them toward his partner, a helpless black girl, Cholly now

strategically exercises his masculine assertiveness and aggression within the safe

boundary of his home against the easiest target, his wife. By doing so, he manages to

maintain his seriously jeopardized narcissistic ego and feel "manly," at least temporarily

within his home. Like Pauline, he uses his spouse, his denigrated selfobject, both to shore

up his precarious, poorly mirrored self and to protect himself from his own rage that

would otherwise consume and destroy him. As Morrison tersely sums up this

complicated interpersonal dynamic, "Hating her, he could leave himself intact" (42).

 Both Cholly and Pauline are locked in hatred of each other, perpetuating the

vicious cycle of emotional wounding. In his analysis of intensely cathected "loving hate"

relationships, Bollas argues that hatred may be the type of object relation formed in a

situation where people feel convinced that love is not possible and that intense hatred, in

that case, helps them preserve the connection with their objects. "Hate," Bollas

continues, "emerges not as a result of the destruction of internal objects but as a defense

against emptiness." 112 In The Bluest Eye, Morrison's depiction of the Breedloves and

their pattern of distorted object relations poignantly foregrounds the desperation and

desolation plaguing the dysfunctional family, since a semblance of connection with each

other is barely maintained only through intense mutual hatred and the constant fights they

engage in with a "darkly brutal formalism" (43).

 Traumatic Encounters: Desymbolization and the Creation of the "Othered" Self

 The odd deformation of love in the Breedlove family takes a heavy toll on Pecola's

psychological development. Her exposure to a series of shaming incidents and the