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Post-Colonial Analysis of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple in the light of Edward W. Said’s and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s Post-Colonial Approaches
Female marginalisation is a major theme in The Color Purple, with Celie’s emancipation from repressive male patriarchy being the culmination of the plot. In The Color Purple there is physical as well as psychological violence and the female characters are struggling with both gender and racial oppression. When discussing the way narrative method and perspective are used within the novel to address these themes, it is useful to make comparisons and contrasts with a different text. Themes like gender relations, gender oppression, colonial subordination and identity seem to be salient in the story. The novel can be seen as feminist as well as postcolonial, and postcolonial feminist criticism. The female protagonist is doubly oppressed, that is, both subordinated as women and as colonial objects. The paper focuses how patriarchal and colonial oppressions are expressed in the novel. The female characters in Alice’s The Color Purple show their destiny in relation to God, the coloured woman’s position in relation to man, society, white people, financial freedom, sexual freedom, and identity. The main theme of the book is triumph of good over evil that is the first indication of oppression followed by liberation. Key words: gender, post colonial, racial oppression
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The horrible experiences of slavery and racism have elicited various responses, which have found expressions in the literatures (oral and written) that have marked the landscape of history and contemporary experience. The responses have differed according to the writers’ respective contexts. In the very early oral forms, for example, specifically the Negro spirituals, Africa stood out as the symbol of the freedom that was a constant dream. Accordingly, “Canaan” and “the promised land” became metaphors that expressed that yearning, while “Egypt” and “Pharaoh” respectively described America the land of their harsh experiences, and the slave masters themselves. With time, however, Africa gradually ceased to hold the same attraction to all Blacks in the Diaspora. Some began to see Africa merely as a romantic object of pedigree curiosity. Their lands of Diaspora had come to stay not merely as adopted homes but as home.
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Journal of Literature, Languages and Linguistics
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Abstract The Black women have always been the victims of racial and gender discrimination. The marginal space they occupy in the society, have made them aware of a need for sisterhood or bonding between women. The narrative in the black-womanist fiction acts as a resistance to the oppression suffered by them. These womanist discourses empower them and heal them. This paper attempts to mark these nature and music discourses that grant them self-esteem and individuality. These women “sing to the earth and to the sky and to their cassava and groundnuts. Songs of love and farewell.” Alice Walker defines the term ‘womanist’ as “womanist is to feminist as purple to lavender”. (Walker: xi-xii). These womanists “love music, love the moon, love the spirit… Love struggle. Love the Folk. Love herself.” The color purple spreads through out the novel and the blues music provides individuality to the black women. The fight for self-respect is frightening for Celie, the protagonist. She transforms herself in to a tree in moments of pain. “I say to myself, Celie you a tree.” Shug Avery, the Blue singer names Celie in her song, “Miss Celie’s Song” and thereby empowers her. These black women create an alternate garden, where they can celebrate blackness. The role of music and color purple as therapeutic, resistance, womanist discourse would be examined in this paper. The adaptation of this novel as a movie also uses color purple as a major visual tool to bring in to the viewer’s mind, the spirit of the black women. These visuals of color purple in the movie would also be examined as a narrative artifice in the marginalized discourse
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Indo-Western Research Journal
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- formal education shapes her worldview?
A Study of Epistolary Form: The Color Purple is written in epistolary form, meaning that the story is conveyed through a series of letters. When read together, Celie’s letters advance plot events and develop characters and themes in ways that make for an entirely different reading experience than that of a conventional novel. Analyzing the novel’s epistolary form opens up a rich exploration of the storytelling and characterization therein.
- For discussion: Compare and contrast the reading experience of an epistolary novel and a conventional novel. How does the plot unfold? How are characters introduced and developed? Do you prefer one over the other? Which one, and why?
- For discussion: Many of the letters in The Color Purple are never received by the people they are intended for. Why are letters so frequently hidden or simply not read by the intended readers? What would be the impact if Mr. ____ did not hide Nettie’s letters to Celie?
- For discussion: The epistolary form typically limits readers’ understanding of the plot to a single character’s point of view. As a result, certain details about events or about other characters may be influenced by bias or prejudice. Is Celie a reliable narrator? How about Nettie, whose letters are sometimes included with Celie’s? Why or why not? What would be the impact if Walker chose to use an omniscient narrator or a typical first-person narrator instead of letters?
- For discussion: Compare and contrast the styles of Celie’s and Nettie’s letters. How does the epistolary form enable Walker to convey information about her characters? How might the intended recipients of the letters impact their style and content?
An Examination of Gender Roles: The gender roles assumed by men and women are important in the world of the novel, especially in the context of family life. Men are expected to perform manual labor, whereas women are expected to attend to housework and childcare while obeying the patriarch of the family. The novel invites readers to question the validity and necessity of these fixed roles.
- For discussion: Compare and contrast the different responsibilities of men and women in the novel. How is each gender supposed to behave? What types of jobs or roles do they fulfill? How do they treat each other?
- For discussion: Describe the relationships between men and women in the story. How do men and women relate to each other? Why do so few positive relationships exist?
- For discussion: How do the social and historical contexts of the story shape the ways men and women relate to one another? How do those contexts shape the roles men and women adopt?
- For discussion: Nettie and Shug Avery are two of the novel’s only characters who do not lead traditional lives expected of women by society. How are Nettie and Shug different from most of the traditional women in the story? (How) Do they escape the confines of gender roles?
Additional Discussion Questions:
- Ask students to trace events in the novel to actual historical occurrences. How is Celie’s experience reflected in history? What do her letters reveal about what it was like to be a black American woman in the middle of the 20th century? Which of her experiences seem to be reflected by current events?
- Which abusive characters are reformed by the end of the novel? Which characters finally learn to empathize with the people they have treated so terribly? Why do they seem to feel bad for being abusive? What roles do violence and abuse have in developing the themes of the novel?
Tricky Issues To Address While Teaching
Content Notice:The Color Purple describes specific occurrences of rape, sexual assault, and domestic violence. The novel as a whole deals with racism, misogyny, and violence.
The Vernacular Diction and Syntax May Be Unfamiliar: The novel’s narration—in the hands of both Celie and Nettie—draws on vernacular words, phrases, sentence structures, and punctuation. Such vernacular language may prove challenging to some students, especially upon first encountering the text.
- What to do: Encourage students to highlight any passages or linguistic patterns that are particularly difficult to parse. As a class, discuss the denotative and connotative meanings of the highlighted language.
There Is a Popular Film Adaptation of The Color Purple:As is common with influential texts, some students might have already seen the film version of The Color Purple before reading the novel. Still others may watch the film instead of reading the book.
- What to do: Remind students that movies and books are different media, so even if a movie recounts a text faithfully, reading the text will be an inherently different experience from watching the movie.
- What to do: Point out to students that the movie conveys a subjective interpretation of the story and is not an exact reconstruction. Therefore, the film cannot be substituted for the text.
Alternative Approaches to Teaching The Color Purple
While the main ideas, characters, themes, and discussion questions above are typically the focal points of units involving teaching The Color Purple, the following suggestions represent alternative readings that may enrich your students’ experience and understanding of the novel.
- Focus on the character of God. Celie’s relationship with God changes significantly over the course of the novel, especially under Shug Avery’s influence. Compare and contrast the character traits Celie ascribes to God at the beginning and at the end of the novel. What kind of God does Celie initially believe in? What is he like? How do her beliefs change? How does Celie’s relationship with God relate to white supremacy and, later, to nature?
- Focus on names and identity. Many characters in The Color Purple have nicknames. Celie implies that to be called by anything other than one’s name erases some degree of one’s identity. Why does she advise Squeak to insist that Harpo call her by her real name? How might calling people by their given names be a sign of respect? Why does Celie refer to her husband as Mr. ____ until the end of the story?
- Focus on the inversion of the Adam and Eve story. The Olinka believe in an inverted myth about Adam and Eve, the biblical first man and woman. What does the Olinka’s version of the Adam and Eve story suggest about how they feel about white people, especially the Europeans who have been actively colonizing their land? How might their Adam and Eve story be empowering?
- Focus on entertainment as an acceptable occupation for women. There are few roles for women in The Color Purple aside from marriage and motherhood. However, Shug Avery and Squeak gain their independence by singing in bars. Shug is so successful that she becomes wealthy. Given that women have few professional opportunities in Celie’s world, why might entertainment be considered an acceptable profession? What does this suggest about how Celie’s culture values women?
- Focus on relationship dynamics between women. Celie and the rest of the women in her community endure significant oppression and abuse. Much of Celie’s self-hatred arises from how terribly men have treated her. However, Celie’s relationships with women become especially important as she begins to form an identity outside of the one that Pa and Mr. ____ forced her to assume. Which relationships with other women are the most important to Celie? Why? How would you characterize those relationships? What does she learn from them?
The Color Purple By Alice Walker: Feminist Criticism Approach
This essay sample was donated by a student to help the academic community. Papers provided by EduBirdie writers usually outdo students’ samples.
Feminism in a layman language is giving equal rights and status to women. Unfortunately, women across the world are deprived of their basic rights. The woman is always considered as a “Secondary Sex”. (Quyoom 2017) “As a social movement, feminist criticism highlights the various ways in particular women have been suppressed, oppressed, and repressed …” (Bressler 2001). However, according to (Tyson 2008) feminist criticisms occurred in three main phases, firstly the feminine phase, secondly the feminist phase, and thirdly the 120 phase to present in which this phase characterized by the rediscovery of women’s text and womanhood. The story “The Color Purple” can say to be categorized in the third phase of feminist criticisms. The different waves of feminism from the beginning of time have demonstrated various occasions the challenges included when endeavoring to increase equal rights. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker, exhibits some of these hardships. The women’s approach focal point goes about as a tool for altogether analyzing Walker’s depiction of women. Walker describing herself as a womanist, a “black feminist or feminist of color, Walker strives to explore the oppressions, the insanities, the loyalties, and the triumphs of black women and to sustain their creativity. The Color Purple novel is composed of letters, in the first portion of the novel, these letters are written by the protagonist, Celie, to God; the second portion are letters from her sister, Nettie in Africa, and the third section is a correspondence between both Celie and Nettie.
The Color Purple is dedicated to black women’s rights. A significant part of Walker’s novel is gotten from her very own understanding, experiencing childhood in the provincial South as an uneducated and abused child. Walker deliberately makes female characters that are not the same as one another to make a comprehensive perspective of femininity. This brings us to the novel, this novel is a diary of a girl named Cecile who has gone through many hardships during her life, and also the life of one girl who over case hurt and suffering over and over, to make her a truly wonderful person in the end. The main character in The Color Purple Celie is also a protagonist a colored lady with little to zero education. She is one who has been utilized and mishandled by every one of the men throughout her life, and as a result of these men, she has almost no mental fortitude or aspiration in her life. She has so little mental fortitude, that all she needs to do is simply endure. Through the different ladies, she meets for the duration of her life like Shug, her sister, and Harpo’s significant other, she figures out how to have fun, gain mental fortitude and joy.
Walker at the beginning of the novel depicts the severity of female injustice, by describing the repercussions of the main character Celie being raped and abused. At the beginning of the book, the Color Purple Celie is exacted to physical, verbal, and sexual abuse. “He beat me for dressing trampy, but he does it anyway”. Celie does not resist the abuse from her stepfather she in fact thinks abuse is the natural way things should be. However later on in the novel, we see from the influence of such females like Shug, Sophia, and Avery, Celie develops confidence that reaches its peak towards the ending of the novel. However, Celie can’t call her husband by any other name than ‘Mr__’. Physically Celie imagines herself to be a tree when she is beaten or sexually used by her husband and sees her life to be one of the pleasing others rather than herself. Heaven, she believes, will last always, while life on earth will ‘soon be over.’ Sofia’s strength and their developing friendship help Celie to see that a woman can stand up for herself but it is Shug Avery’s dedication to ‘Miss Celie’s Song’ that marks the beginning of Celie’s realization that she exists and that her existence has value.’ The confidence that Celie develops throughout the novel can be attributed to the bond of sisterhood that Celie built with Nettie, Shug, and Sophia. The women in the novel, even those who have interests in the same men, nevertheless came together to support and sustain one another throughout this entire novel from start to end. The bond of sisterhood is so important, both literally in the persons of Nettie and Celie, Sofia and Odessa and metaphorically in the persons of Mary Agnes and Sofia, Albert’s sister and Celie, Tashi and Olivia, and of course Shug Avery and Celie, who embody the twin roles of sisters and lovers in their relationship. This act of empowerment between these ladies in the novel through emotional teamwork is very suggestive of the importance of the collaboration between women.
Furthermore, Shug Avery another female character in the novel is characterized as the most ‘liberated’ of the women in the novel, although she constantly suffers from obnoxious attacks from the elders in her church because of her lifestyle. Her career as a blues singer enables her to experience much more freedom than the other women whose lives are bound by home, work, and child care. She is likewise considerably more explicitly freed than numerous different females, having various illicit relationships and making the most of her sexuality without any limitations or false guilt. She has, additionally, a solid faith in God which is liberated by the show, and her association with Celie is a focal theme of the novel. It is Shug who frees Celie in all parts of her life, managing her into enthusiastic, sexual, and financial autonomy and consolidating the jobs of sister, companion, and sweetheart. Snug possesses equality because of her own integrity as a person, and she passes this on to Celie. It is no mishap that the venture which gains Celie her independence is, paradoxically, a ‘woman’s job’- sewing – but the product is trousers, for women to wear.
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Masculine and feminine nature is also discussed in the novel. Shug is described by Albert as being ‘more manly than most men’, but as Celie rightly shares with him, those qualities of honesty, independence, and integrity are equally well-grounded as qualities of females. The disturbance of gender roles also played a major role in the novel. Walker shows in the novel where Harpo’s insecurity about his masculinity leads to him having marital problems and his attempts to beat Sofia. In addition, Shug’s confident sexuality and resistance to male dominance cause her to be labeled as a tramp in the novel. However, what the novel also argues is that individuals’ men and women are both weak and strong, and gender should not dictate perceptions of qualities that are essentially human-like.
Besides, the portrayal of ladies in ‘The Color Purple is one that exhibits the invalidation of ladies’ agency inside a patriarchal culture. Walker outlines in her novel that the voice of the lady was decreased by the way in which men treated most ladies and furthermore that a few ladies just lived for breath. Although some of the women in the text gained some form of agency, it is clear that patriarchal power still had a lot of dominance and still sought to maintain the silencing of women.
Celie is an example of the most silenced woman in the novel since there is evidence of her having incorporated within herself being a silenced individual. In the initial introduction of Fonso, Celie’s step-father is that of being forceful towards Celie’s mother. An act of choking Celie and the first words he says in the text is ‘You better shut up…” The men are already being illustrated as violent and forcefully subduing the female figure. Celie’s inability to speak proper English can likewise be connected with being hushed in light of the fact that it is through language that individuals can reason with one another. Furthermore, Fonso sexually abuses Celie she gets pregnant and she gives birth to two children who are sold by Fonso without the consent of Celie or her mother. Celie says that God took away her first child but the use of God being the cruel being in this part of the reading just shows that Celie could not do anything about what Fonso did. However, Shug and Kate who is Albert’s sister gave Celie advice to not depend on a man and also to fight for herself and be independent, she stated “I don’t fight, I stay where I’m told. But I’m still alive. Such words as what Celie stated make us the readers quite aware that Celie had actually made peace with her oppressed situation and that all she was grateful of merely breathing, even at the price of patriarchal cruelty. We can state and see that because of Celie’s actions and statements she makes that she is psychologically destroyed due to the men in her life. Additionally, throughout the novel, the author likewise gives the men a chance to express certain words and pose questions that ladies don’t react to or answer to. This act of the silence of women lays more emphasis on the portrayal of the ladies’ situation in society. In the novel, Celie barely responds to any of Albert’s questions all the more particularly on the grounds that they are ordinarily belittling of her and he is always commanding Celie to do something. The clarity of female abuse in ‘The Color Purple is irrefutably sustained by men and it drives the quieting of ladies just as builds the roles they are required to fulfill as women. The harsh treatment implemented by the patriarchy for the sake of female accommodation doesn’t just give men the scepter of injustice yet, in addition, keeps ladies from becoming moms and spouses as the male-centric framework anticipates. However, it likewise destroys the passionate association between families.
Conclusively, The Color Purple is the perfect novel to describe the Feminist Criticism Approach. Walker wrote about three different black women, and how each of them was criticized for being of the opposite sex. The male domination over women in every part of life is illustrated, but in the course of time, women want to release themselves from the abuses of men and be independent. They are succeeding in their aim and we see the traces of female domination in the name of Celie, the protagonist. We see the male domination over women in every part of life, but in the course of time, women want to release themselves from the abuses of men and be independent. They are succeeding in their aim and we see the traces of female domination in the name of Celie, the protagonist. However, Shug Avery was depicted overall as the ultimate feminist symbol through of her liberal approach to life. The feminist approach is seen solely through these females characters depicted in the novel by Walker.
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