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The color purple alice walker literary analysis
The color purple alice walker literary analysis
The color purple alice walker literary analysis
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It was something she had to learn to be in able to survive. She had to fight off her father, brothers, and uncles while they sexualized and assaulted her as a child. This fight she had instilled in her from childhood was taken with her into marriage. This fight is also why she ended up in prison. The mayor’s wife asked Sofia to be her maid and she said no. She kept saying no and because she was black, she was put in prison for fighting against what the mayor’s wife asked.
The Olinka women that are in the village where Nettie, who is Celie’s sister, travels to is where the women in this book are mistreated the most. While the mistreatment of the Olinka women horrible it is still different to Celie’s. There is article titled Walker, Alice 1944– that has been edited by Jelena O. Krstovic
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that discusses this.
“Nettie's letters allow her to gather and convey her understanding of cross-cultural gender parallels and differences” (Krstovic 382). What Celie and the Olinka women have in common is not getting an education. The Olinka people won’t let the girls in their village get an education. This is similar to how Celie doesn’t get an education. She was aloud to get an education when she was younger, but when she became pregnant she wasn’t aloud to go to school. When one of Olinka girls tries and that is Tashi. Tashi is one of the girls in the village and she tries to go to school with all of the boys. The Olinka people try and take her away from getting that education. They do this because they don’t believe in women getting an education; that is what their husbands are for. In The Color Purple, a letter written by Nettie to Celie says, “The Olinka do not believe girls should be educated. When I asked a mother why she thought this, she said: a girl is nothing to herself; only to her husband can she become something” (Walker 156). They think the women are nothing
without a man. Women are capable of doing the same things as men. This is why Nettie is changing the way the Olinka people view education for women. She is able to convince the Olinka people that girls should be allowed to go to school alongside the boys. One thing Nettie says in a letter to Celie is, “The world is changing, I said. It is no longer just a world for boys and men” (Walker 161). Nettie is telling the Olinkas that women have a place in the world, it’s not just men. This is true too. Women do have a place in everything with the world. They can hold jobs that affect the world. Women can come up with brilliant ideas that change the way the world works for the better. This is what Walker was trying to portray women as. Instead of being incapable of contributing to the world, she is saying they can. The transformation of how Celie started off as being put down by her “father” and her husband, Mr., completely changes at the end. Instead of Celie just taking what people do to her she becomes independent. She moves away from Mr. and makes her own business of selling pants. In The Color Purple a letter written by Celie for Nettie Mr. and Celie are talking, “He say, I notice everybody in the family just about wearing pants you made. But you mean you turned it into a business? That's right I say” (Walker 258). Instead of relying on a man which is what she had to do for most of her life she is able to take care of herself. The big thing is that she gets ownership of the house of her late father. Before this she had no ownership of anything of value. Celie didn’t need to rely on a man for her to take car or herself. In the article The Color Purple edited by Marie Rose Napierkowski which discusses many things about The Color Purple. Some of the this is the themes of The Color Purple. One of the themes it talks about is sexism. What the article has to say about Celile becoming independent is, “By the end of the story, Celie is an independent businesswoman, and Albert is her assistant. Celie has also learned to speak up for herself, claiming her house when her stepfather dies” (Napierkowski 55). She doesn’t just become independent from Mr., whose first name is Albert, but also becomes more powerful than him. She doesn’t just become independent she gets Mr. to start sewing for her. In the beginning of The Color Purple Mr. was ordering Celie around and having dominance over her but the roles have changed. This is a way Alice Walker’s female characters were breaking stereotypes of women. Alice Walker had the female characters in her book grow stronger after being oppressed by men for years. Walker’s female characters overcame all the struggles that they had to face with great strides. Her characters weren’t the stereotypical female characters. They became women of power. Celie started off being mistreated by all the men in her life. She was beaten, raped, and put down in every aspect of her life. She overcame all of this and became an independent woman. Celie started her own business of making pants and then got ownership of land. Sofia is another strong female character who defied the stereotypes of the time. Instead of being like most women in the 1920’s and not fighting back Sofia stood up for herself. Nettie was another women who was fighting back. She was fighting the oppression the Olinka people views on how to educate their women. Walker wrote these three women to be role models that women don’t have to be the stereotype of a what a woman was expected to be in the 1920’s; they do not have to be weak and submissive.
...nspired to make a change that she knew that nothing could stop her, not even her family. In a way, she seemed to want to prove that she could rise above the rest. She refused to let fear eat at her and inflict in her the weakness that poisoned her family. As a child she was a witness to too much violence and pain and much too often she could feel the hopelessness that many African Americans felt. She was set in her beliefs to make choices freely and help others like herself do so as well.
The unconditional love within families can be enough at times to keep people going during the hard times that they experience. This holds true between sisters. In The Color Purple Nettie and Cellie's unconditional love for one another helped them deal with the troubles they both faced. There unconditional love was shown through Cellie’s relentless writing hoping that one of her letters would get through. At no point did she ever give up. This love helped Nettie live with her verbally and physically abusive husband, Albert. Desiree on the other hand not being blood related to the women she called her mother; Madame Valmonde still had a tremendous amount of love for her. When Desiree’s husband told her to leave her mother said to her, “ Come home to Valmonde; back to your mother who loves you”. This is showing that it doesn’t take blood to create a strong bond and that no matter what; unconditional love will always help you get through hard times.
In today’s society, gender issues are often discussed as a hot topic. In literature, feminist views are used to criticise “societal norms” in books and stories. Two popular pieces by authors Kolbenschlag and Hurston paint two very different views on women. One common assumption in the use of a feminist critical perspective is that gender issues are central. Kolbenschlag who wrote the literary criticism “Cinderella, the Legend” would most likely disagree with this statement, she feels that women bare greater burdens in society and are more largely affected by social norms.
The Color Purple is about Celie’s life. In the beginning of the novel, we learn that Celie was raped by her father. We also learn that Celie’s mother is ill and is unable to take care of the family. Celie is forced to cook and clean for her family. Celie conceived two children because of her father’s continuous raping. She never sees her children and believes that her father killed them. A man from town wanted to take Celie’s sister Nettie as a wife, but her father convinces the man to take Celie instead. Celie is now forced to marry an older man who already has children. Celie’s husband constantly beats and rapes her without any remorse. He even made Celie nurse Shug Avery, his mistress, when she was ill. It is now that Celie learns from Shug Avery about love. Shug Avery encourages Celie not to take the abuse from her husband anymore and that she deserves better. Celie would finally leave her husband when she found out that he kept her sister’s letters from her. Nettie was the sole reason why Celie had managed to survive. Celie could not tolerate any more abuse and left with Shug Avery and Mary Agnes. Mary Agnes was Celie’s stepson’s mistress. Celie eventually meets up with Nettie and her two children whom she believed to be dead. She than goes back to her husband who has drastically changed since Shug Avery and Celie left.
Within The Color Purple by Alice Walker, women are treated as inferior to men therefore they must obey them. Through the strength and wisdoms Celie gains from other women, she learns to overcome her oppression and realize her self worth as a woman. The women she has met throughout her life, and the woman she protected since young, are the people that helped her become a strong independent woman. Sofia and Shug were there for Celie when she needed someone to look up to and depend on. Nettie was able to push Celie to become a more educated, independent person. The main source of conflict in this book is Celie’s struggle with becoming an independent woman who needs not to rely on a man. Throughout the book we see her grow as a person and become independent in many ways through her experiences with the powerful women in her life.
These women authors have served as an eye-opener for the readers, both men and women alike, in the past, and hopefully still in the present. (There are still cultures in the world today, where women are treated as unfairly as women were treated in the prior centuries). These women authors have impacted a male dominated society into reflecting on of the unfairness imposed upon women. Through their writings, each of these women authors who existed during that masochistic Victorian era, risked criticism and retribution. Each author ignored convention a...
Sisterhood does not only bring women together, it also helps make women stronger individuals in a patriarchal society. For instance, The Women of Brewster Place is an African American novel by Gloria Naylor that takes place in 1982 in Brewster Place. This novel contains several stories which focus on the lives of each of the seven women that live there. These women come to Brewster Place to find comfort. Eventually, the women build bonds that help them deal with the negativity of the society that they live in. In addition, The Color Purple by Alice Walker is an epistolary novel that takes place in rural Georgia during the 1980’s. Celie, who is the protagonist in The Color Purple, is a poor and uneducated fourteen year old African American girl. She is constantly physically and mentally abused by the men in her life. She forms strong friendships with women whom she idolizes and women who stand up to the social norms of society. In the end she gains confidence and becomes a stronger individual. The women in the novels The Color Purple and The Women of Brewster Place have shown that the only way to survive in a patriarchal society is through sisterhood.
The woman in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and the woman in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire both struggle with discrimination. Celie, a passive young woman, finds herself in mistreatment and isolation, leading to emotional numbness, in addition to a society in which females are deemed second-rate furthermore subservient to the males surrounding them. Like Celie, Blanche DuBois, a desperate woman, who finds herself dependent on men, is also caught in a battle between survival and sexism during the transformation from the old to the new coming South.
Women had no choice but to follow whatever society told them to because there was no other option for them. Change was very hard for these women due to unexpected demands required from them. They held back every time change came their way, they had to put up with their oppressors because they didn’t have a mind of their own. Both authors described how their society affected them during this historical period.
...lie make decisions in her life. Nettie's letters embrace and strengthen Celie's own identity, by showing her the world outside of Georgia, and this opens many possibilities for Celie (Bracks 87). Although she has all of these characteristics, Nettie is very lonely, because she has no one to talk to while in Africa, and no sister to be around to listen to her stories. Nettie's letters show that the oppression of men on women is universal, even in Africa. The imperial, racial, and cultural conflict and oppression Nettie encounters in Africa parallel the smaller-scale abuses and hardships that Celie experiences in Georgia. With these many influences and characteristics to observe, it is easy to see how this one novel, The Color Purple, stirred up enough conflict and interest, to become one of the most famous novels depicting the struggles of a black women's lifestyle.
...heless, regardless of the changes that are seen within society in the the Color purple , there are still places within the world where females will never be able to live freely or handle their ‘’own’’ .The African tribe of the Olinka do not believe in educating their women, and regardless of the fact that there are no reports of abuse towards females by males in the letters that Nettie sends, female subservience is unchallenged, and the debasing initiation ceremony continues without from the females contest except from Nettie and her family. Also known as the combined female initiation ceremony, each of these operations has their functions. By scarring the womans face, the woman instinctively keeps her head ‘down,’ as Tashi does daring not to look up. While the women keep their heads down the men keep theirs aloft, and in doing so the power structure is conserved.
The Color Purple depicts the struggle within the life of the female protagonist, Celie. Celie, a clear victim of abuse, narrates the story through a collection of writings that starts with her confession of “Dear God.” Celie’s story encompasses around her life and the characters that breaks the common gender depiction. The story heavily addresses the subject of social and behavioral standards for either men and women. It raises an issues on traditional marital subjects, family patriarchy, and social topics. In a traditional take of the family structure, the man often exhibits the dominant male figure head with the final say. The father provides the money and security for the wife and children as well as claim authority over the family. He becomes very work oriented and cares for the children only in times of need. On the other hand, the woman acts to be passive and pleases her husband. She plays a major role in raising and educating the children in every way possible. Often times, the woman takes a small part in maintaining a profession; although, she holds responsibility for all house work. The societal perspective of the patriarchal family system relies so heavily on gender roles that it becomes an expectation and the regulated norm. The Color Purple disrupts this gender norm by introducing characters that faces marital issues due to being the opposite of the typical gender role. Because they embody the opposite gender’s likely attributes, it becomes a questioning issue that leads to striving to live up to social norms or dealing with society disapproval. Within the progression of the novel, the women possess a sense of empowerment while as the men accept how things are in the world. The introducti...
The novel explores the idea that domestic violence is a trait that is passed on from generation to generation but can be unlearned. Domestic Violence was one of the most important and most critical topics that were explained in The Color Purple. The book begins as Celie describes her initial family. Her father beats her mother and proceeds to rape Celie after her mother becomes too ill to satisfy her father’s sexual needs. She lives in constant fear of “him” and makes it her underlining goal to protect her sister Nettie from him at all costs. In the story her father states to Celie “You better never tell nobody but God. It’d kill your mammy” (Walker 1) making it clear that she is forced to comply with all his needs. Celie’s father impregnates her and when she is to give birth her father takes the infant away from her, and makes it seem like he has killed the baby in t...
Frances Burney’s Evelina values the struggle of a woman enduring the harsh patriarchal society of Great Britain in the eighteenth century; Evelina is constantly attacked, verbally or physically, by men and women alike and it is because of her active refusal to be made into a victim that many people label Burney’s work as a feminist novel. While Burney is making many claims about the ill treatment of women, she never claims that women should be equal to men. She directly writes Evelina under the care of Villars and later in a marriage with Lord Orville, both of whom are strong patriarchal figures. Because Evelina remains under the care of such men, she is excused from her malign treatment by men. Readers find her worthy of sympathy, which encourages
In the book Second Class Citizen, Emecheta Buchi uses gender and sexuality to express the many ways in which society treated women and the obstacles that they had to overcome. Buchi uses this book and the many issues discussed throughout the book as a tool in the argument of gender and sexuality as a social construct; however, the ways of the world and the views of society do not see how the way women were treated back then as anything but normal. Adah, the main character of the book is a child who wants a Western education but is denied the opportunity to get one because the mere fact that she is a girl and the privilege of school goes to the boys of the family even though she is the one that wants the education. The theme that is openly used throughout the book is one of vehement animosity of gender discrimination that is often found in the culture of Adah’s people. Buchi portrays the way that African women are discriminated and victimized by the men and older women in their lives.