Womanism In Alice Walker's The Color Purple

They say don’t judge a book by its cover, yet everyday people are judged just based on skin color, gender or anything else that sets them apart. Walker’s pulitzer prize winning novel “The Color Purple” talks about the struggles of an African American woman, Celie, and the journey she goes through in order to overcome the barriers of sexism to become a stronger woman and discover her independence. Similarly, “In Love and Trouble: Everyday Use” - also written by Walker - goes into a story about an African American woman, Dee, and her struggles with sibling rivalry, racial identity, and racism during a chaotic period of history. Through narrator point of view, symbolism, setting, and imagery, Walker illustrates the prominence of discrimination

women into consideration. It works in both the theoretical and activist ways to empower black women against the intersectionality of racism, sexism, gender and class oppression. It plays an active role in demystifying the various negative controlling images perpetrated against black women since slavery. The prominent images are mammy, matriarch, jezebel, sapphire and breeder woman. The paper is an attempt to analyse Margaret Walker’s neo-slave narrative Jubilee as presented from the perspective of slave women. It argues how the slave women resist the controlling images and lead an artistic life with values of humanism.

In conclusion, The Color Purple teaches many lessons involving both the past and present. By banning this book, readers would miss out on a novel that illustrates the reality of life for African-Americans in the twentieth century and the significance of appreciating small gifts in life. Although

Walker’s essay shows the dehumanization and abuse that black women have endured for years. She talks about how their creativity was stifled due to slavery. She also tells how black women were treated more like objects than human beings. They entered loveless marriages and became prostitutes because of the injustice upon them. Walker uses her mother’s garden to express freedom, not only for her but for all the black women who had been wronged. Walker described her mother as radiant when she was planting, her work outshining the wrongdoings done to her and the people before her. The garden was where her mother could make truly make “art.” The garden was also a representation of the creativity of the women who hold a talent close to their heart

What is something that every single person in the world cherishes? What is something that people long for? The Color Purple by Alice Walker stretches the answer to that question with a series of letters between two sisters that spans forty years. A story of women joined together by love and hardship, The Color Purple depicts the value of family. But ever since it has been published, the book has gained a reputation for being inappropriate, and not suitable for schools. The Color Purple by Alice Walker should be kept in school libraries because it conveys the importance of family, shows examples of overcoming hardship and discusses serious topics such as rape and death. The Color Purple is an inspiring, beautiful, and powerful read for teens.

The Color Purple is a 1982 epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker that focuses on the

Stylistics is one of the eminent branches of linguistics. It is a linguistic approach that closes to literary criticism. In addition, stylistics involves both linguistic and literary studies. In the last few years, there has been growing interest in Stylistics as it has been gaining its importance and becoming most frequently used. Qualitative and quantitative approaches are deemed as the most two substantial methods for Stylistics. Initially, Stylistics was a qualitative field but after developing computer software it began to be a qualitative-quantitative filed. According to Dawson (2002), the research methodology mainly depends on its method which is considered the device the researcher uses to collect data and information (p.14). The two literary texts (novels) that the researcher is going to work on are The Color Purple and The Handmaid’s Tale. The African- American novelist Alice Walker is always concerned with presenting the problems of females especially black women because they are doubly oppressed due to their gender and their color. In order to portray their struggle, she wrote one of the marvelous novels The Color Purple which was published in 1982.

Alice Walker had a lot to say about family in her book, The Color Purple, in this book family had loose conditions and was often inter tangled. Celie’s friends and family were remarkably confusing and complicated at times, because many people were sleeping with people they were not married to and that was married to their friends. However, no family is perfect, so why would this one be, in the end it was all Celie and everybody else really needed. Family is shown throughout this book as the people who stick with a person, a biological relative, and these people in turn contribute to Celie’s development as a character.

Shirley Chisholm once claimed, “The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, ‘It 's a girl.’” Throughout history, women have been told that they are not smart enough, pretty enough, or strong enough to do what is classified as “male work”. In more traditional environments, women are expected to hold certain jobs such as nursing or cleaning. The possibility to obtain the more “advanced jobs” such as a doctor or a lawyer was unsubstantial. This harsh stereotyping enables women to capitulate to their male counterparts causing the oppression of women. The theme of oppression of women is exemplified in the novels The Color Purple and Fried Green Tomatoes. Both novels illustrate a woman who weak, due to the oppression by males, undergo a metamorphosis into an impregnable woman with assistance. Thus, in the novels The Color Purple and

In one of her interviews, Alice Walker identifies three cycles of Black Woman she would explore in her woman’s writing:

First, once you are in adult hood, some began to believe they would never be free of slavery. This brought, thoughts of suicide, murder, or escape. Celie in “The color Purple” by Alice Walker, contemplated about murdering her slave master many times. This book is based off of a true story. Many women who worked closely with their owners were fed up with abuse and dehumanization by their adult years. Many took murder or suicide as their last resort to freedom. On the other hand, some women took adulthood as a stance to remain strong for their children. Many of these women either continued to work or try to save money, or escape with hopes to return and buy their children. Incidents in the life of a slave girl, Linda decided that running away or escaping was her only way of freedom. Unlike most women, she was successful in her

In the novel The Color Purple written by Alice Walker, Walker exposes how life was like to feel ugly versus the life of being pretty in the early 1900s. In the beginning of the novel, we are abruptly introduced to Celie as she is brutally getting raped by her stepfather. Her mother is half dead and therefore can no longer give the man what he wants. Once mother dies, pa continues to use and

Introduction To the book:The Color Purple is a 1982 epistolary novel by afro American author Alice Walker.

There are many instances in the novel in which feminist ideology is visible. Traumatized by her childhood experiences, Celie seeks acceptance and fulfilment in relationships built with women. As has been mentioned in the first chapter, Alice Walker states that women may love other women “sexually and/or nonsexually” (1983). This passage becomes one of the main statements defining the term womanism discussed previously in the thesis. Walker supports and develops this term with the representation of the relation between Celie and Shug. Celie’s growth as a woman is visible in her relation with Shug Avery who teaches her how to enjoy life and to accept herself wholly. Some researchers support this argument by stating “Walker always emphasizes the importance of sisterhood in black women`s emancipation” (Singh & Guphta, 2010: 218). Shug introduces Celie to same-sex relationships and masturbation. At this point, the protagonist begins to address her letters to her sister Nettie rather than to God in order to tell her about her experiences.

　　　The Color Purple is a novel written by an American author Alice Walker and was published in 1982. It won numerous awards in literature and film as it had many musical, film and radio adaptations, particularly the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction. It primarily involves the subject of feminism and addresses issues in sexism and racism in the early 20th century in the United States. The story is all about a girl named Celie, a black woman who lives in the Southern part of US. It tells about how Celie’s life became a very hard one because she had undergone severe maltreatment, abuse and sorrows which started on her adolescent years until her married life. This essay will tackle the subject of feminism inspired from the story of Celie and how she was able to transform herself from a weak and vulnerable girl into a brave and self-sufficient woman who could prove her abilities to cope life’s struggle and became aware with her equal rights in the society.