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Ayushi Jain

Thinkal Hansan

B.A. (Hons.) English [2018ENG1064]

Women’s Writing

10 November, 2020

The Color Purple: A journey to self-exploration, realization and liberation

In this novel, Alice Walker depicts the battling life of black individuals in an

extremely comprehensive manner. The text seems, by all accounts, to be an impression of

slave narratives. It is not just a novel in which women of color make a hostile male climate

amiable to their development and improvement, it is additionally a novel in which black

women take a structure generally unfriendly to oral societies, the written word, and change

it, making it, as well, receptive to their necessities. What Alice Walker impacts in this

narrative is a revamping of this progressive system, so that blacks may limit their abuse by

whites, ladies may liberate themselves from the predominance of men, and oral articulation

is not anymore oppressed by written articulation. The story turns into an account of how

regardless of having all such struggles Celie substantiates herself and sets up her own

character bringing about her quest for self. Celie’s tale of miserable sufferings and

struggles to self-realization and emergence as a liberated woman can be traced by drawing

parallels between various instances in the text.

Walker begins the text with Celie writing letter to a Male White God as advised by

her Pa, “You better not never tell nobody but God. It’d kill your mammy.” (Walker 3) It

shows the domination of males over females and how Celie believed that nobody but God

can be her only listener which she further accentuates, “Never mine, never mine, long as I
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can spell G-o-d I got somebody along.” (Walker 19) This in itself turns into the primary

example where a white and male God figure demonstrates the meticulousness with which

whites and men have stated their authoritative disposition in her psyche. Celie's mentality

about herself and about God is unmistakably obvious through the letters which she

addresses to God to assist her with enduring the transcendental, sentimental, and somatic

maltreatment she endures because of her stepfather. She has just her letters to God as a

method for offering vent to her agony. Soon she realizes, on the intuitive level, if her

content, her making of selfhood, is to continue, the male content of the divinity must be

overruled and modified in female terms. And this idea of Male supremacy in the form of

God is rejected by Celie herself on the account of realization of worthlessness of God due

to various reasons as mentioned by Celie, “he give me a lynched daddy, a crazy mama, a

lowdown dog of a step pa and a sister I probably won’t ever see again.” (Walker 173) “The

God I have been praying and writing to is a man. And act just like the other mens I know.

Trifling, forgetful and lowdown.” (Walker 173) This marks the turning point where she

realizes the powerlessness of God and says,” If he ever listened to poor colored women the

world would be a different place” (Walker 173) and this incident becomes the biggest

occurrence of her liberation and recognition. And this marks her beginning of further

addressing her letters to Nettie, “I’m writing to you instead of to God.” (Walker 179)

And it is through the letters exchanged between Celie and Nettie that the story of

Celie’s realization of power takes its further course. Within this novel, two women of

color utilize a tool generally utilized by a white male culture to guarantee its position.

The bigger content shows the weaving of more than one lady's voice and exhibits the

methods by which females have been quieted and their semantic forces appropriated. The
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presence of male predominance in the sisters' reality in a sexual form alongside

connotations of education as a component of strength is apparent. At the point when

inspired by sexually narrow-minded cravings, their stepfather concocts the accompanying

straightforward rationalization to Albert, "I can't let you have Nettie.... I want her to git

some more schooling.... But I can let you have Celie." (Walker 9) Here her stepfather

serves as a model that does not just have the ability to bargain them into marriage, but he

additionally possesses, the ability to choose the accessibility of education to them.

Turning to historical context, during American enslavement, blacks were denied

admittance to the institution, and literacy was utilized adequately to sustain an exacting

racial and in this way sexual chain of command of men which Celie turns in her favor by

the end of the novel. In Celie's grasp, an unsympathetic tool once used to annihilate and

curb her now turns into an instrument aiding her most profound self-assessment. It is

critical to note here that Celie's increased cognizance and mindfulness grows out of a

coupling of her voicing through letters and the perusing of Nettie's letters.

Upon the disclosure that Albert has concealed the letters and after Shug puts the

letters in profane series for Celie, the solidarity, connection, and ordinance which Celie

looks for in her life starts to occur. . The first line of the first letter of Nettie reads,

“You’ve got to fight and get away from Albert. He ain’t no good” (Walker 114) which

becomes the stepping stone for Celie towards a new life. It is through Nettie that Celie

begins to see the world outside of her domestic sphere. They withdraw Celie from her

rustic climate and help her to increase attention to African life, of a land where obscurity

and blackness conveys various pictures, where towns experience the ill effects of white

abuse, and where ladies submit quietly to male mistreatment. The letters play a
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significant function in uncovering the significant concealed insights like the news about

pa being the stepfather and Adam and Olivia being Celie's children. So in this manner

The Color Purple speaks in the direction of the topic of the creation of a text by a woman

of color. With this work, Walker has made an eloquent creation in which language is

basic to the molding of vision.

Nettie in her letter informs Celie concerning their objective which they are

working for: “the uplift of black people everywhere.” (Walker 122) This in my view

paves a way for Celie to stand and speak for her own freedom. Nettie’s letters becomes

important in arising sense of realization and self-awakening as evident from the contrast

between Celie’s reactions at the beginning of the novel and by the end of it. In the

beginning she silently accepts the violent behaviour of Albert, “I make myself wood.

That’s how come I know trees fear man.” (Walker 23) She readily accepts herself as a

wood with no identity of her own which is shown in contrast to her dialog, “I think I feel

better if I kill him” (Walker 129) on knowing the fact that Albert has hidden Nettie’s

letters from her. From Celie for whom the only thing that mattered was survival and

endurance, “I don’t fight, I stay where I’m told. But I’m alive” (Walker 22) to Celie who

speaks for herself for her survival in the truest form, “You a lowdown dog is what’s

wrong. I say. It’s time to leave you and enter into the Creation. And your dead body just

the welcome mat I need” (Walker 180) comes a long way in the fight for identity and

emergence as a woman who moves out of a male-centric space, removing herself from

figurative system. It is at this point that Celie, like a considerable lot of different women

in the novel, goes off on ventures in Memphis, leaving Albert and accomplishes new
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opportunities and additionally strength from the experience. From here we see an all the

more remarkable, more vocal Celie who knows her value and knows to take her stand.

Creation has a greater role from a symbolic perspective. Creation represents

Celie's advancement from indifferent, passionless, worthless living being to a working

passionate lady who converts a homegrown, domestic meaningless activity into a

business, “I sit here thinking bout how to make a living and before I know it I’m off on

another pair pants.” (Walker 192) “Then orders start to come in from everywhere,”

(Walker 193) nullifying the words of Albert at the time she was leaving the house,

“You’ll be back, he say. Nothing up North for nobody like you.” (Walker 186) But her

inventiveness is apparently boundless, resulting from and supported by Shug's confidence

in her.

And these important creative awakenings are accompanied by another important

transformation, as Celie ceases to address Albert as Mr- and finally addresses him as

Albert by the end of the novel. Toward the start, she cannot name male figures. She

alludes to her dad as "Him," and the underwriting of his name adjusts him suitably with

God. Albert is alluded to as Mr-, and even Samuel, the generously reverend and

stepfather to her kids, is assigned as the Rev. Mr-. The content causes to notice the way

that, for Celie, all men are non-separated powers that exert control over her, and their

names are diminished to a suitable semiotic line but it changes by the end when she

understands her capacity and her power and position in the society.

Secondly, The Color Purple becomes the emergent text in the context of

realization and acceptance of sexuality by the central character Celie. We come across a

hint of Celie’s sexuality and interest in women when firstly she talks about how she does
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not look at men at church, “That’s the truth. I look at women.” (Walker 7) And secondly

when she sees the picture of Shug Avery and says, “The first one of a real person I ever

seen.” (Walker 8) Shug Avery becomes the important aid to Celie’s emergence. It is after

her marriage with Albert that Celie meets Shug. Through Shug, Walker has made a figure

who does all that which is for the most part denied to an American black woman. She

declines in literary terms to be connoted. She has battled to try not to turn into the

casualty her mom has been. What Shug has rather is a liberty that has consistently been

associated with versatility and sexuality. Shug is the character who resists all the pre-

constructed standards of the general public, fighting against patriarchy from the earliest

point of the text. She has the audacity to say to Albert on his face, “Good thing I ain’t

your damn wife” (Walker 69) which Celie could never. She is a vocalist and Celie

characterizes her tunes as being "like what the preacher tells you its sin to hear." (Walker

51) What's more, these melodies become the initial move towards Celie's mindfulness

and awareness as she says, "First time someone made something and name it after me."

(Walker 70)

Shug underpins Celie from the start by helping her in asserting her sexuality and

arising as an influential woman and even ensure that she won't leave "until I know Albert

won't even think about beating you." (Walker 72) She further helps Celie in

acknowledging her body bringing about her psychosexual development. Even a few

scenes later Celie admits, “I think, I don’t care who Albert sleep with” (Walker 73) which

marks the instance of Celie accepting her sexuality. Apart from this, Shug becomes

another person who makes Celie feel loved after Nettie, “If you was my wife, she say, I’d

cover you up with kisses stead of licks, and work harder for you too.” (Walker 101)
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Along with Celie, Shug becomes an aid to the liberation of an auxiliary character,

Squeak later called Mary Agnes. At the start of the story, she is quiet, accommodating.

Her assertion to a positive personality is through her body, her yellow skin, which makes

her an all the more explicitly, racially, and consequently socially satisfactory article.

Also, it is after her assault that Squeak changes into someone else. The assault has

isolated her from a bogus personality, while her expressions about it, her story, make

another character for her, one that serves to join her with her family. Walker upholds this

new personality by having her pronounce: "My name Mary Agnes" She further makes

choice for herself that, "I want to sing." She starts to create her own tunes resisting the

pecking orders of worth measured by color and sexual magnetism by the white man-

centric world, accordingly making another, bona fide text of herself.

Celie's experience with secondary characters like Sofia somehow or another aides

in her emancipation from subjugation. Sofia simply like Shug has been a self-assured

lady from the beginning. Sofia marries Albert’s son Harpo and challenges the notion of

gender roles by engaging in physical activities and arguments. Celie even admits to her

when she goes up against her on offering guidance to Harpo to beat her that, “I say it

cause I’m jealous of you. I say it cause you do what I can’t.” (Walker 39) In answer to

this Sofia prompts Celie to come up from submission and persecution and says, “You

ought to bash Mr- head open, she say. Think bout heaven later.” (Walker 40) Sofia time

to time has indicated how an emphatic lady ought to be. She knows about her value as

she says, "I am never going to be no white woman's nothing, let alone maid." (Walker 89)

Sofia achieves an enormous change in her. She is a consistent reminder to Celie of the

quality that she lacked. Sofia's ability to get away from sex discrimination by leaving her
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husband, Harpo and her dissent against sexual and racial misuse is unmistakably

portrayed in the novel. Sofia goes about as a medium in Celie's comprehension of herself.

Apart from Celie, the text marks the change in the male characters of the novel.

The way that she can explain her considerations and can converse with Albert shows how

their relationship has changed and how he has begun to see Celie as a person with her

own personality and identity. A similar change is found in Harpo who toward the starting

complained about working at home calling, "Women work, I'm a man" (Walker 22) to the

occurrence where he says to Celie on being inquired as to whether Sofia can work, “What

I’m gon mind for? It seem to make her happy. And I can take care of anything that come

up at home.” (Walker 254)

The subsequent last letter denotes her final lesson when she tells Albert, “If she

come, I be happy. If she doesn’t, I be content. And then I figure this the lesson I was

suppose to learn.” (Walker 257) And it shows how she has begun to see herself as a

whole. She is her own lord and has taken in her significance in the society. Consequently,

we can summarize that The Color Purple speaks in the direction of the emergent text

about an emergent woman. With this work, Walker has made a really new-fangled text;

that is, a book which is a closely-knit narrative of finding voice by a person of color. She

has made a novel that shows the power a subjugated individual holds. The women

become fearless, outrageous, and determined to show strong-willed behaviour. In this

manner, The Color Purple impeccably deals with racism and sexism, revamping the

history by women. The characters Celie, Shug Avery, Sofia, and Nettie in the text have

womanist qualities through which Walker proposes that women can get an advantage

eventually by testing the authority of their spouses and oppressors, and try to conquer
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their adversities. More or less, Alice Walker has endeavored to exemplify her own

specific vision of black feminist rights in a work that rises above belief system.
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Works Cited

Alice Walker: The Color Purple (1982). Weidenfeld and Nicolson (2014).

Lindsey Tucker: Alice Walker’s The Color Purple: Emergent Woman, Emergent Text.

Black American Literature Forum, Spring, 1988, Vol. 22, No. 1, Black Women

Writers Issue

(Spring, 1988), pp. 81-95

Obure Mark: Black Feminism in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (2018)

Valerie Babb: The Color Purple: Writing to Undo What Writing Has Done. Phylon

(1960- ), 2nd Qtr., 1986, Vol. 47, No. 2 (2nd Qtr., 1986), pp. 107-116