Introduction
This chapter describes the methodology that was used in the research, the literary, and textual or discourse analysis. It includes the Language used in the novel, the Oppression in the novel, the Setting, the themes, Symbolism and Authorship in the novel of Walker. The chapter lays down how women of color particularly African American women are not given the same type of humanity or treatment on literature.
This chapter will focus on how women are represented in The Color Purple by Alice as addressed in accordance with feminist notions of African American women’s marginalization in Literature. To research how The Color Purple is situated in black feminism, it is applied the black feminist theory to the novel in order to see how they complement each other, particularly using Black feminist scholar Patricia Hill Collins, the author of Black Feminist Thought. This Chapter will focus on the female characters as portrayed in the novel: Celie the Protagonist, Nettie Celie’s sister, Shug Avery the singer, Sofia Celie’s friend, Squeak, Corrine, Olivia the daughter of Celie, Tashi an Olinka village girl, Miss Millie the racist, Eleanor Jane and Kate.
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A Brief summary on the Author “Alice Walker
Alice Walker is a Pulitzer Prize-winning, an African American novelist and poet most famous for having written the epistolary novel 'The Color Purple. She was born to sharecropper parents in Eatonton, Georgia, in 1944, and she grew up to become a highly acclaimed novelist, essayist and poet. Alice Walker's career as a writer took flight with the publication of the novel, The Color Purple, in 1982. Set in the early 1900s, the novel explores the female African-American experience through the life and struggles of its narrator and protagonist Celie. The Color Purple is regarded as a feminist narrative by exposing the brutal treatment of the uneducated women in the South by men in an environment where the men are also victims of white racism and segregation.
Celie suffers terrible abuse from her father, and later from her husband. In 1985, Alice Walker's story was made to be a movie. And just like the novel, the movie was a critical success and received 11 Academy Award nominations. She explored her own feelings about the film in her 1996 work named, The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult. And later in 2005, The Color Purple became a Broadway musical.
Authorship by Alice Walker in relation to the Color purple
The fact that the author of the novel Alice Walker is female and African American influences the way black women are portrayed in her novel the Color Purple. To write the novel, Alice Walker was influenced by the period she grew up, where there was so much oppression and racism and domination of women by men. Alice Walker does not only represent the black women but all the African American people and the oppression from blacks to another black. She was only eight years old when she had a childhood accident that damaged her eye and that changed the way she interpreted the world and her own self. When she had the accident, her parents did not have a car at the moment, and a white motorist refused to pick up her and the parents to the hospital and she was treated home with folk medicine. That made Walker realise the differences and the segregations that surrounded her. When Walker was at college, after going through surgery to recover her eye, she was offended when asked to move to the back sits of the bus to Atlanta by being a black girl (White, 64-65). After that episode, Alice Walker gained the sense of continuing her education and take part in the civil rights movement and stop the segregation from whites to blacks.
Alice Walker in her novel attempts to bring hope and strength to the African Americans and give voice to the voiceless which are the poor and rural black women. As a female writer Alice Walker trough Celie’s voice tries to encourage the other women to develop abilities to stand up for themselves in acts of resistance. The author was also inspired from women like Rosa Parks, “A woman who was once arrested for refusing to sit in the back of a bus” to represent black women in her in her book. The representation of Celie in the Color Purple brings out Alice walker’s theme as a black women and encourages resistance of black women in to achieve freedom. The Color Purple fulfils African American Women’s need for a female hero and it demonstrates how true love can literally be capable to heal physical abuse and undo all the previous oppression and segregation, and she is one of the examples to change and she even got married to a white man the father of her children.
The Oppression
In the feminism, theory sexuality is regarded as the centre of oppression as stated in the Color Purple. “In feminist contexts, sexuality represents a central site of the oppression of women, the rape and the rape trial are its dominant narrative trope” (Hammonds, 134).
Patricia Hill Collins, a scholar on black feminism, identifies three approaches to conceptualize sexuality. She states that sexuality it can be at first examined as an independent system of oppression, similar to race, gender and class. The second approach stated by Collins analyses the way in which sexuality is manipulated within systems of oppression such as race, gender and class. And the third, the concept of sexuality can be approached as the junction or centre where intersecting oppressions meet (Collins, 128).
Celie in the novel represents the oppressed black women by man. Many women are violated, oppressed and assaulted by men and told to be quiet. The fact that Celie had no voice, she was obliged to keep quiet and never tell anyone else about the assault by the father. “You better not never tell nobody but God” “It would kill your mom” (The Color Purple-letter1) said the father after raping when she was only 14. This passage calls to the oppression faced by women in the color purple. The only one Celie trusted is God, the one she told her story through several letters.
The way which the letters are addressed to God by Celie instead of to a human being, underlines the issue that Celie is completely alone and confined by the conditions of her life as well as by the blame that she feels. This is intensified by the way that she believes that the man who has assaulted her is actually her own dad. From the starting point Celie shows up as an absolutely innocent victim, who feels that what has happened to her is on one point her own fault.
The manner in which she describes the assault makes the critic or the reader aware not just of her physical affliction or suffering and her mental shock, but of her weakness and vulnerability as woman. The fact that she is a woman and due to physical power she was not able to fight against the rapist.
'You got to fight them, Celie, she say. I can't do it for you.
You got to fight them for yourself.
'I don't say anything. I think bout Nettie, dead.
She fight, she run away. What good it do? I don't fight, I stay where I'm told. But I'm alive.' From the color purple (P 22)
In the novel, males look at females as objects to be controlled and it implies how women can gain confidence and empowerment by turning to other women. This is another passage from the novel which calls to oppression. And it also shows how women stand together and support each other in difficult moments. In this passage, Celie’s friend “Shug Avery” advised Celie to fight against her husband who treated her like maid. Shug advices Celie to take an action and fight for self-independence and never subjects herself to husband, father or son.
Celie says: “Pa beat me today cause he say I winked at a boy in church. I may have got something in my eye but I didn’t wink. I don’t even look at men.
That’s the truth. I look at women, tho, cause I’m not scared of them.
Maybe cause my mama cuss me” (letter 5 to God “The Color purple”)
Women are represented as powerless and they are supposed to totally obey their men and the men take control over them.
“Harpo ast his daddy why he beat me. Mr… say, Cause she my wife. Plus, she stubborn. All women good fo…he don’t finish. He just tuck his chin over the paper like he do. Remind me of Pa.” (letter 13 The Color Purple)
Celie hated her husband Alphonso for forcing her to have sex whenever he wanted and without never asking her how she feels. Celie wished her life with the husband was a dream and she prayed that one day she could wake up and disappear from his eyes. The passage bellow from the text shows.
“Never ast me how I feel, nothing. Just do his business, get off, go to sleep” (The Color purple p 81).
The hope and fight for freedom
Many people when experience struggles in life they tend to lose hope and give up on their dreams. Celie’s life begin to be active after she meets another woman, Shug who becomes her friend and tells her to stand up and fight for herself. Shug agrees to stay with Celie and their husband to keep him from hitting Celie. So though she has lost contact with her sister for a while, she forms this new relationship that serves as a kind of refuge from her home life for a while. Shug also helps Celie to find Nettie’s letters, so that she now knows that her sister is alive and trying to contact her. At first just like any other women who are abused, Celie feels that she is not confident enough to do that and she cannot risk her life too much. Still, there are very terrible moments that made Celie stand up and start fighting for her own self.
Celie’s letters writes three main types of letters: the first letters are written to God. The second letter are shared between her and Nettie the sister to exchange their experiences as young and black girls. The third letter are addressed to everything in nature were she states the hope she has to one day overcome the horrible situations she is going through. Celie finds her hope in God as illustrated in the passage below as Celie writes:
Dear God,
I am only fourteen years old.
I am I have always been a good girl.
Maybe you can give a sign letting me know what is happening to me (The Color Purple letter 1)
“Dear God. Dear stars, dear trees, dear sky, dear peoples. Dear Everything. Dear God” (The Color Purple 292). That makes the reader understand her deepest relation with God, God is everything, the central element to all her answers and the one who she most trusts to tell her story and she has hope that one day she will find the answers in him.
The Language in The Color Purple
In The Color purple the author creates a certain expressive style for the main character, the one who tells the story and writes letters to God. Alice Walker’s use of special language in the Color Purple creates narrative strategies, it brings out the unheard stories of women, and transforms traditional concepts of gender roles. In the novel, the readers can easily learn about the difficult life of Celie through her words and the direct experiences she has faced. That expressive style calls attention into a type of English for blacks or simply African American English (AAE). Alice Walker employs Black English as a way of manifesting her concern on the black cultural heritage and her challenge to the superiority of white people’s language.
Celie does not follow the English grammatical rules when she writes her letters. According to MUFWENE, Salikoko etall (African-American English 1998 p29), African English refers to a nonstandard form of American English characteristically spoken by African Americans in the United States.
Within the text, there is the domination of the so-called literary dialects. According to Sternglass, (1975) literary dialect refers to a specific local or social variety chosen by an author as the language of his text for the purpose of reproducing certain forms of speech. Alice Walker in her novel The Color Purple intends to inform the style and violence characterizing the language of the males’ protagonists. The author uses this type of language to make the reader feel more engaged in the drama lived by the Protagonist Celie in her story and most of the used vocabulary belongs to the rural South which was considered the black area. At the beginning of the novel it is shown the trial and errors made by Celie in the spelling of her very expressive letters. The language used by Celie is raw direct speech of language related to the blacks and uneducated Americans and it calls the reader’s attention on the fact that Celie was still young and did not go to school.
According to Coulmas Florian, (Trends in linguistics 1986), direct language is referred to the written or spoken language that communicates meaning as clearly, concisely and candidly as possible. It is used to as one of the most dramatic ways to convey a certain characters’ points of view or idea. Celie uses direct language to express her feelings and give meaning to her dramatic life. She uses brave language with the intent to communicate what she is going through without impressing anyone. For example:
Just say you gonna do what your mammy wouldn’t.
First, he put his thing up gainst my hip and sort of wiggle it around.
Then he grab hold my tities. Then he push his thing inside my pussy. (From The Color Purple p1)
The character also uses the so-called ordinary language. Ordinary language refers to the words and phrases that are used in our everyday lives and it does not follow the complex vocabulary to be easily understood. In some of her written letters, she uses also the so-called ordinary language. Some of the words in plural have irregular forms of ending for example men become mens in plural. “I may have got something in my eye but I didn’t wink. I don’t even look at mens.” (P1)
Themes
Within the Color Purple we can find some of the themes stated by Alice Walker to convey the meaning and significance of the novel.
The Power of Narrative and Voice
The author of the Color Purple, highlights within the novel the capacity to express one’s thoughts and emotions as crucial to developing a sense of self. By creating this theme, Alice Walker in her novel clearly desires to show the importance and significance of the power of narrative and speech to resist oppression.
At the beginning of the novel, Celie is completely unable to resist those who abuse her. Paying close attention to Alphonso’s warning that she “better not never tell nobody but God” about his abuse of her, Celie feels that the only way to persevere is to remain silent and invisible. Remembering Alphonso’s warning that she “better not never tell nobody however God” concerning his abuse of her, Celie feels that the only manner to carry on is to stay silent and invisible. Celie is actually associated with an object to Alphonso, as an passive party who has no strengths to advocate herself through action or words. By meeting Shug and Sofia, Celie finds on them friendly ears and she is thought lessons that enable her to find her voice and fight for her freedom. Celie starts to continue to expand her story by informing Shug and later on to Sophia. Celie gains voice when she discovers the letter from her sister Nettie which was hidden from her by her Husband. She finally expresses her anger to him and humbles him causing him to change his abusive life.
The Power of Strong Female Relationships
Alice Walker shows how female friendships and relationships can serve as inspiration and encourage another woman to open up, fight against abusive behaviors and overcome horrible situations. The novel sets out how relationships among women can form a refuge and provide reciprocal love in an environment surrounded by male violence. Just like a relationship from mother to daughter or from one sister to another, Celie found in female relationships the hope to believe in herself that she can be able to fight the oppression she was living.
The theme of Family
Celie finds in the love she feels about her sister Nettie the real significance of family. Even though the sister was separated from her for so long time, Celie maintained that strong affection and kept the love for her always in her heart. She later on discovers from Sophia and Albert that they can also be as part of her family and she refers to them as “my people”.
The theme of Religion and Spirituality
Celie writes a series of letters to God and she refers to him as “Dear God”. This shows the relationship between the novel and religion and spirituality and closely attending to a belief in a single God as a part of human happiness. That shows the transition of the old White men referred before as God to a God that exists everywhere and all around. Celie related God to the nature’s beauty and she believes He is more than white people say. Also Nettie has a strong relationship with church, she served as a missionary to the Olinka people and helped to spread Christianity. After the return of Nettie, Celie realized the manifestation of God’s power to her life.
The theme of Race and Racism
In the novel there is racism from whites to blacks and from blacks to another black. Celie believes she is ugly just because of her dark skin and she believes the whites are more beautiful and prettier than her. “Us both be hitting Nettie’s schoolbooks pretty hard, cause us know we got to be smart to git away. I know I’m not as pretty or as smart as Nettie, but she say I ain’t dumb” (From the Color Purple letter 8)
Celie is aware that the only manner to achieve freedom, get a job and be independent is by being educated and intelligent. Although Celie considers the sister to be prettier than her, Nettie gives her emotional support so that she can have belief in herself and gain her self-esteem. On the other hand, the people from Olinka in the novel, see the African American people as inferiors and poor to them because of being blacks.
Setting
The main setting regarded as primary in the Color Purple novel is among poor blacks in rural areas of the South in rural Georgia where Celie the main protagonist lives the majority of her life. As a poor black woman in the rural South, Celie is treated badly but people did not pay attention to what she was going through. Celie then had a moment of travel to Tennessee in Shug’s home where Celie had a brief sojourn. The other Setting of the story is Nettie’s place Western Africa. As the novel is epistolary the letters written from one character to another can contribute to many settings in the story.
Summary
This chapter comprised the textual analysis of the novel. It described the methodology that was used in the research, the literary, and textual or discourse analysis. It includes the Language used in the novel, the Oppression in the novel, the Setting, the themes, Authorship in the novel of Walker. The chapter layed down how women of color particularly African American women are not given the same type of humanity or treatment on literature.
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