THE COLOUR PURPLE AS A FEMINIST TEXT
Alice Walker commented in one of her interviews that Black woman has a different ‘angle’ of looking at things. Elaborating her perspective, she said, Black women ‘see things from a different point of view’. Black women, have to look out and through all those people who have traditionally been on top of them. ‘The Black man, the White woman, and the White man’. Alice Walker has not vividly mentioned about this perspective in her novel but it is subtly present in it. The protagonist, Celie has a different way of looking at reality.
Afro-American critic Barbara Christian has contributed exhaustively to the development of Black women’s writing and its relevance to the Black community. In her essay, “Creating a Universal Literature”, Christian affirms that Black women’s literature reveals a ‘basic truth of our society’. The truth according to Christian is that in ‘every society where there is denigrated other whether that is designated by sex, race, class or ethnic background, the other struggles to declare the truth and, therefore creates truth in form that exist for him or her. The creation of that truth also changes the perception of all those who believe they are the norm’. The Colour Purple can be read as a Black feminist text where the protagonist is the ‘denigrated other’ and in the process of declaring her truth she also speaks on behalf of women like her and thus challenges the belief of a dominant, patriarchal society.
Celie’s narrative is closely linked to the stories of Sofia, Nettie, Shug and Mary Agnes as well as Harpo and Mr._____. This is an area of
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Black feminist studies that is different from white feminism of the 80s. The willingness include all the people in the community redress woman-centric issues, and the need supportive kinship structures which prevent Black feminism from being a separatist enterprise. Celie’s family dinner at the end of the novel is a good example of this point. It is at this point that Black feminism ceases to be merely a kind of feminism and becomes womanism.
The woman writers of the 1970s delineated Black women as ‘wounded heroines’ who inevitably had to return to their communities to work out their resistance. But writer of 1980s explored sexism in Black community and the role of ‘community of sisters’ who rise above to alter the scenario. In The Color Purple, Celie and Sofia are victims of Black community’s sexism and they are portrayed striving against known sexism is also prevalent in tribal communities through the letters of Nettie where in Olinka tribal culture genital mutilation was a practice, women having no access to education and shackled in traditional roles.
Women novelists of 1980s according to Barbara Christian showed mobility in their fiction. Celie begins her narrative as a cowering, docile girl but finally is a female entrepreneur with a house and a successful business to her name. The Color Purple had become so popular because women everywhere related to the authenticity of the treatment of violence in man-woman relationships and the documentation of a lesbian relationship as an empowering and liberating one. Celie’s relationship with Shug runs the entire gamut from infatuation to intense erotic pleasure, to intellectual companionship
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stable commitment—and at the end Celie is the she is because she loves Shug who had helped her to love herself and to appreciate God in the details of life.
Black feminism extends to the community as well. Emancipation is only possible if the community aids in the healing process. The healing is also extended to Harpo and Mr._____ who were previously stereotypical Black men, abusive and oppressive. After realisation and healing process, they become models of ‘feminist masculinity’. Feminist masculinity is a term coined by African-American critic bell hooks who applies it to men who value their emotional selves and make a conscious decision to go against the prescribed codes of patriarchal masculinity that endorses aggression and violent behaviour.
The Color Purple is a feminist text which portrays the struggle of Black community at large. It challenges male hegemony, dominant power group, abuse and oppression.