Alice Walker’s The Color Purple

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Recommended: Contribution of women in literature

Change is the law of life. A person goes through different stages of life, and at every stage there is transformation in the personality of the person. This new individual is entirely different from the previous one. For this change, different circumstances and events are responsible. Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Monica Ali’s Brick Lane are two texts of feminism in which we find the theme of evolution among the life of the characters like Celie and Nazneen who, happened to highlight the oppression of women in universal phenomenon irrespective of caste, creed, culture and nation. My paper is an attempt to study these two characters and see how their personality is evolved because of the different circumstances of life.
Nazneen and Celie both belong to different culture, religion and nation, but they both are women, the weaker sex. They both belong to that gender which is always identified with the man. Therefore, they both are identified by their respective husband Chanu and Albert. Clara Nubile writes: “In childhood a women should be under her father’s control, in youth under her husband’s and when her husband is dead under her sons. She should not have independence” (1).
Nazneen, who is just sixteen years old is married to Chanu aged forty years. It a case of mismatch marriage. This decision is taken by her father after her elder sister Hasina elopes with nephew of the saw mill owner. As passivity is expected from young girls at the time of marriage, Nazneen accepts this match made by her father. There is no resistance on her part. She reaches England with her husband. Here she has everything. She has well- furnished house, food to eat and above all an educated husband. A husband who is the identity of a women. Monica A...

... middle of paper ...

...er. Becoming financially independent is the biggest achievement of both of them. They can live alone and make their own identity in the world. They realize their importance as an individual.

Works Cited

Ali, Monica, Brick Lane. Great Britain: Scribner, 2003.
Print.
Gaur, Rashmi.Women’s Writing: Some Facets. New Delhi:
Sarup and Sons, 2003. Print.
Hall, Devon Campbell “Subversive Migrant Labour in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane and Zadie Smith’s WhiteTeeth.”Nation in Imagination.Ed.C. Vijayasree et.al. Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2007. Print.
Nubile, Clara. The Danger of Gender: Caste, class and Gender in Contemporary Indian Women’s Writing. New Delhi. Sarup and Sons, 2003. Print.
Walker, Alice. The Color Purple, New York: Pocket Books, 1982. Print.
---The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult. London: Phoenix, 2005. Print.

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