Finding Yourself in Purple

Today, I will talk about The Color Purple written by Alice Walker. 

Enjoy with reading!

Alice Walker who is African-American writer was born in 1944 in an environment that full of racism and poverty. She did not give up and fought for her and African-American people’s lives. She went to school and then became an activist in the Civil Rights movement. She wrote poetry and novel which had traces from her family life, African American life and their culture. Her novel called The Color Purple which she won Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award are much more important from the others because it became one of the American classics. The book is about Celie’s life, her struggle with poverty, racism, sexism, and violence in 20^th century. Yet, one thing, much more important and dominant than the other issues, is the female companionship that empowers her.

Let’s begin with a summary of Celie’s sexual alteration. Beginning of the novel, Celie is raped by her father- actually he is not her real father but we don’t know at the beginning of the novel- and she gets pregnant twice before her twenty. Her father threatens her not to tell anybody. She has both raped and had incest relationship. Then she is forced to marry Mr.___, but she does not get rid of male oppression and responsibilities of the house. She has to take care of children, serve her husband, and satisfy her husband with sexual intercourses, as well as those responsibilities, he beats Celie frequently. Celie has to obey heterosexual and male dominant society’s rules. She does not have her voice or act like whatever she wants. After a while, Mr. ____ brings her old mistress named Shug Avery home because she is ill. Celie has to take care of her and if she attempts to live, Mr.___ threatens Celie to beat her. Shug promises not to go until Mr.___ stop beating her. One day, Shug and Celie have a chat; Shug learns that Celie does not take pleasure having sex with Mr.___. Then, Shug tries to teach how she can get pleasure from sex. Yet, it is understood that Celie likes women because of that she feels nothing for Mr.___. Shug and Celie have sex and it is the first time that Celie has sexual pleasure. In time, they begin to like each other. When Celie learns that Mr.___ hides her letter coming from Nettie, she leaves him and goes with Shug to Memphis.  Then Celie begins making pants and in time she improves herself and receives lots of orders. After this, Celie discovers her sexuality and becomes free from the male dominant society and she earns her own money.

Adrienne Rich who wrote about lesbianism and compulsory heterosexuality in her “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence”  questions whether all women are naturally heterosexual or not.  According to Rich, women are pushed to be lesbian, lesbianism is not a choice. Lesbians are seen as a disease, deviant, abnormal and less natural. Normality is being heterosexual I mean that men and women can be together both sexual and marital.  Yet, Rich combines heterosexual women with lesbian women and she uses two words to identify them which are compulsory heterosexism and lesbianism. “Lesbian existence suggests both the fact of the historical presence of lesbians and our continuing creation of the meaning of that existence. I mean the term lesbian continuum to include a range-through each woman's life and throughout history-of woman-identified experience; not simply the fact that a woman has had or consciously desired genital sexual experience with another woman.”(Rich, 135) She means that lesbianism means not only sexual desire but also bonding together, helping each other. It is a resistance against male patriarchy and shaping her womanhood. When we look at the story, except Shug and Celie, there are two important woman figures that are Mary Agnes and Sofia. These four women help each other and protect each other.  For example, after Celie finds Nettie’s letters which Albert- Mr.___- hides them from Celie, leaves home with Shug and Mary Agnes decides to go with them. She wants to sing, create her personality and earn her own money. When Mary Agnes tells that “I want to sing” Harpo gets surprised and objects her request but Mary does not give up and Sofia supports her saying that “[g]o on ,sing.., I’ll look after this one (her daughter) till you come back. (Walker, 183-5)

When we analyze the story in the scope of female companionship and lesbianism, we see that African American women empower with each other not only sexually but also physically and emotionally against male oppression and patriarchal society. Lesbian continuum and relationships are important for Black women because

Black women have a long tradition of bonding together ... in a Black/women's community that has been a source of vital survival information, psychic and emotional support for us. We have a distinct Black woman-identified folk culture based on our experiences as Black women in this society; symbols, language and modes of expression that are specific to the realities of our lives. ... Because Black women were rarely among those Blacks and females who gained access to literary and other acknowledged forms of artistic expression, this Black female bonding, and Black woman identification has often been hidden and unrecorded except in the individual lives of Black women through our own memories of our particular Black female tradition. (Rich, 140)

Black women have spiritual creativity but they can’t reveal their desire for creation because of male oppression. Yet, when women come together they can resist against them, like Shug, Mary Agnes, Celie and Sofia resist against Harpo and Albert.  Albert, who is Mr.___ for Celie humiliates her attempting to go Memphis with Shug. Since, he seems her as ugly, poor, black, talentless and woman. And Celie says “I’m pore, I’m black, I may be ugly and can’t cook, a voice say to everything listening. But I’m here.” (Walker, 187) She realizes herself and accepts her as she is and reaches her inner peace.

I find two different critics about The Color Purple who are Margaret D. Kamitsuka and Linda Abandonato. Firstly, Kamitsuka criticizes the novel on the basis of women theologians’ opinions about lesbianism and female friendship.  According to her, “the lesbian and bisexual body invisible is the practice of characterizing Celie and Shug’s relationship as primarily friendship or sisterhood.” (Kamitsuka, 57) According to her, their friendship is the key to the divine-human relationship. Celie calls for help from God from the beginning of the story and until she notices that God is also male and has patriarchal opinions and He does not answer or give a sign for her calling help, so she through the end of the novel addresses her letters to Nettie. When she finds Nettie’s letter, she believes in Nettie because she teaches Celie African culture and gives new knowledge to her via her letters. Yet,  her survival is thanks to Shug Avery, not because of real love, because of sisterhood, friendship or maybe motherhood, like mother-infant exchange “then I feels something real soft and wet on my breast, feel like one of my little lost babies mouth... Way after while I act like a little lost baby.” (Walker, 103) Kamitsuka also argues heterosexual paradigm over Adrienne Rich. She says the natural heterosexual paradigm is collapsed. Celie’s lesbianism seems quite stable and natural comparing with Shug because Shug is bisexual and fluid. Walker tries to destabilize the natural heterosexual relationships with those women, and she shows lesbianism as normal and legitimate as heterosexism.

Beside Margaret D. Kamitsuka, Linda Abbandonato also criticizes lesbian relationship in the novel. She says “the narrative is about the breaking silence.” (Abandonato, 1106) She means that the narration of the story takes over from male to the female character, so unbalanced power in the story changes. Abbandonote mostly mentions that women have to create own language except talking or writing with male language. “Celie, by contrast, refuses to enter the linguistic structures (and strictures) of white patriarchy, commenting that "only a fool would want you to talk in a way that feel peculiar to your mind...” (Abbandonote, 1109) If they continue to write or talk with male language, they cannot change the male canon in the literature or survive from male dominant society. In the Color Purple, Celie breaks her silence and gets activate herself and her creativity. Women cannot destroy taboos because of that society is shaped by men and according to their request, everything except them has to obey. Sexual desire of women towards women is one of the taboos and therefore women cannot reveal their loves or desires towards women. A woman marries a man and has sex with her husband but she cannot take pleasure from that intercourse, then she falls in love a woman and she keep it as secret. Yet, in Black culture, friendship or close affairs are not an extraordinary thing because women survive with holding each other. Also, Abbandonato argues survival of Celie by Shug as Kamitsuka mentions, “Celie is rescued from an identity crisis by Shug, who tells her, "Us each other's people now"; the two women have mothered each other and now elect to be woman-identified women. Implicit here is an escape from patriarchal law.” (Abbandonato, 1111)

Both Kamitsuka and Abbandonao criticizes male patriarchy, God the patriarch, lesbianism, and bonding of female friends with referencing different theorists like Adrienne Rich, Irigaray, Lacan, and Freud. We can expand lesbianism and companionship with different subjects. Yet, I try to put the novel in a specific frame which is Celie’s lesbianism and friendship among women in the novel with Adrienne Rich’s theory. At the end we see that, patriarchy is collapsed by women and “the transformation of God from the "old white man" to a new form of otherness, the ungendered creator of the color purple, is one of the major metamorphoses of the novel.” (Abbandonato, 1113)

To sum up, through history, women have been inferior, poor, dependent, trapped by male both psychological and physical because women have been powerful and more intelligent than men. They can do whatever they want, especially when they are together. Therefore, Albert sends Nettie when Nettie resists against him. He does not want them to be together because they are powerful and he cannot stop Celie and Nettie.  Especially, Black lesbianism is much more important because they have spiritual bonds and creativity. Celie also has talents making pants, Nettie becomes kind of teacher, Shug is a singer, Mary Agnes is also a singer, except Sofia, they all have talents and earn their own money but Sofia is a powerful woman and has influence over men, like Harpo. They have repressed power and to reveal that power is dependent on them. Alice Walker is one of the creative people who have spiritual bonds to create something beautiful and beneficial to all women. Her novel leads to other women not only Black all ethnic, all various religious women. She briefly says, women are powerful and can do whatever they want, don’t give up and fight!

Works Cited

Abbandonato, Linda. “A View from Elsewhere’”: Subversive Sexuality and the Rewriting of     

              the Herione’s Story in The Color Purple. Modern Language Association, (Oct.,  

              1991). Vol. 106, No. 5, pp. 11106-1115.

Kamitsuka, Margaret D. “Reading the Raced and Sexed Body in The Color Purple:

              Repatterning White Feminist and Womanist Theological Hermeneutics”. Indian 

              Uni. P., (Fall, 2003). Vol. 19, No.2, pp. 45-66.

Rich, Adrienne. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence”. Feminism and

            Sexuality: A Reader: Edited by Stevi Jackson and Sue Scott. Edinburg UP,1996. Pp.

            130-43.

Walker, Alice. The Color Purple.  Women’s P., 1983.pp.262. print.