Many scholars and scientists truly believed that physical beauty and grace were indicative of other "internal" traits, and that the "less beautiful" races (i.e. all non-whites, though there were gradients established in this regard) were of poorer moral quality and intelligence, and had other undesirable internal characteristics as well (Gibson 1990). This means that the concepts of beauty that are expressed in the book have both direct and symbolic implications.

This is evidenced in the fact that Pauline, Pecola's mother -- and one of the primary characters by which Pecola learns that "standards" of beauty -- is only truly happy when she is in the presence of rich white people that typify what she thinks of as "proper," "beautiful," and accomplished. Even though she herself was an Afircan-America, the indoctrination into mainstream society that she had lived through -- in a past that was arguably as disruptive and horrible as...
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