Life is not always fair and it never was as a black woman. The American society in the early 1900’s did not encouraged women to be an independent and self-reflective person, contrariwise they were expected to be inferior to men. The epistolary novel “The Color Purple“ by Alice Walker, published in 1983, tells the story of a young black woman, Celie, who struggles with life but grows stronger and finally finds her way to herself. Sexual and psychological abuse by her stepfather and her husband, simply called Mister, shape herself as a person, and Celie is trying to find strength by writing letters to God. Eventually, she starts to write to her sister, Nettie, and finds support in Shug Avery, Celie’s friend and love interest.
The protagonist of The Bluest Eye is a young African American girl named Pecola Breedlove. She is introduced by Claudia, a young African-American girl with who Pecola builds a friendship, as a “girl who had no place to go” (16). Pecola struggles to accept her appearance and believes that the source of all the problems she encounters is her dark skin tone. In the book, Pecola chooses to hide “behind [her ugliness]” and be “concealed, veiled, eclipsed-peeping out from behind the shroud very seldom, and then only to yearn for the return of her mask” (39). She hid behind a mask in order to protect herself from the insults and discrimination she received from society.
Women in both the southern and northern regions were able to sympathize with what Jacobs had to say about her own personal struggles throughout her girlhood. In her narrative, Jacobs appeals to her audience’s sense of pathos through her use of metaphors, allusions, and figurative language in order to make the hard lives of female slaves prevalent. By comparing herself to an inanimate object through the use of a metaphor, Jacobs causes the reader to understand the fact that slaves were not viewed as humans, but rather as property. Jacobs lived her early years of life completely ignorant towards the fact that she was a slave. However, it was the loss of Jacobs’ mother when the former was only six-years-old that changed that forever.
And by writing a book based on secret interviews, she tries to understand the lives and relationships between black maids and white housewives, during the Civil Rights Movement. Celia Foot is also an important character; she is the new “white trash” woman in town who is childless and rejected by the other women because of her immodesties. Indeed, both of these women have strived to overcome the stereotypes of their time by refusing to conform to the traditional gender role of women in
This family consists of the mother Pauline, the father Cholly, the son Sammy, and the daughter Pecola. The novel’s focal point is the daughter, an eleven-year-old Black girl who is trying to conquer a bout with self-hatred. Everyday she encounters racism, not just from white people, but mostly from her own race. In their eyes she is much too dark, and the darkness of her skin somehow implies that she is inferior, and according to everyone else, her skin makes her even “uglier.” She feels she can overcome this battle of self-hatred by obtaining blue eyes, but not just any blue. She wants the bluest eye.
Annoyed Skeeter responds loudly and says ' 'Maybe we ought to just build you a bathroom outside Hilly ' '. With Skeeter 's loud outburst of that response, the reader sees that not everyone of Hilly 's high society friends are in support of the treatment of the black people. Later in the novel Skeeter says ' 'I want people to hear from your perspective ' ', through this declaration during one of her interviews with the maids, she willingly was ready to accept whatever happened if it meant for their perspective to be seen. With the evidence provided, Skeeter is seen to transition from a not so typical white woman to a rebel who wanted the world to hear the voices of the maids that
The bond of sisterhood is important, both literally in the persons of Celie and Nettie and metaphorically in the persons of Sofia and Mary Agnes, Celie and Shug Avery, and Tashi and Olivia. Celie is able to change her status of a sexually abused slave woman and free herself economically, physically and spiritually with the help of Shug. In The Color Purple Alice Walker‘s true intention from writing this novel is not only to give voice to black women but also to provide them a path to follow in order to get their freedom. Walker shows us the evolution of her major character, Celie, from being a sexually abused child to a passive wife and finally to a free woman. The ray of hope even in despair is the important aspect of the novel.
Walker is also one of the most affected and deprived African American women in that situation and in that period as she was one of the beginner poet contributor. Walker holds the position to support feminism that represents for all disadvantaged African Americans women ancestors. Walker shows her position in supporting feminism by giving a power to the voiceless mother Mr. Johnson to express the situation in her own understanding and way of expression. The narrator gives authority of narrating for the mother, for a female who didn’t have any place in the established development to influence the society towards freedom and equality. Walker gives Mama the power to lead, to control and use her own preferred
My Summer Project is on the novel Jane Eyre written by Charlotte Bronte. My project initially highlights the problems faced by a women in 19th Century. The issues come in the way of people when the two belongs to different class and status. It also highlights various themes, the writer has used in the novel and also how every theme is being shown with examples. The novel is about love and determination, which can be understood from the view of an orphaned girl, who apart from being a part of all the difficulties and problems of class and status, she always believed in love and was determined by it.
Alphonso has impregnated Celie twice, and marries her off to man she hardly knows. In The Color Purple, Celie, being a young African woman, never stood a chance of having a real education or value she wants for a dominant part of her life. The novel is centered on black woman liberation. The female characters are fighting for their freedom, standing up to black men, and taking a stab at level with rights. For African Americans, the 1920 's implied confronting financial battle, racial preferences, and sex generalizations.