Womanism In The Color Purple By Alice Walker

WOMANISM IN THE NOVEL OF ALICE WALKER

Dr. Sushil Kumar Mishra, Associate Professor & Head

Department of English

SRM University

Sonepat, Haryana

[e-mail]

ABSTRACT

Just as Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States preserved the Union during the U.S.

Civil War and brought about the emancipation of slaves, similarly Alice Walker also brought about a

great emancipation of women. Alice Malsenior Walker (born February 9, 1944) is an American author

and activist. She wrote the critically acclaimed novel The Color Purple (1982) for which she won the

National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

There

are varying interpretations on what the term womanism means efforts to provide a concise and all

encompassing definition have only been marginally successful. The ambiguity within the theory allows

for its continuous expansion of its basic tenets.

At its core, womanism is a social change perspective based upon the everyday problems and experiences

of black women and other women of minority demographics, but more broadly seeks methods to

eradicate inequalities not just for black women, but for all people. The self-authored spirit of activism,

spirituality, and the women's relationship with herself, other women, and her surroundings comprise an

essential part of the ideology. The term womanism was first coined by author Alice Walker in her 1979

short story, "Coming Apart". Here Walker describes the protagonist of the story as a womanist.

Although Walker is credited for the term, there are other contributors to the womanism movement.

These contributors developed their own womanism theories independently of Walker's womanism.

ORIGIN

A need for the term "womanism" arose during the early Feminist Movement, which was mainly led

During this time, womanism was embraced, debated, and dismissed by academics, mainly due to

its perspective on the African-American experience. The 1990s presented a new kind of challenge with

the proliferation of black feminism within women's studies. As a result, womanism fell beneath the radar

of the public eye, but academic discourse progressed, and scholars continued to contribute to and explore

the discipline. By the early 2000s, womanism had resurfaced as a unique social change perspective. This

was further cemented by the publication of The Womanist Reader in 2006, a collection of womanist essays

and critiques.[6]

Author and poet Alice Walker first utilized the term "womanist" in her work, In Search of our Mother's

Gardens: Womanist Prose. She explains that the term womanist is derived from the southern folk

expression "acting womanish."[7] The womanish girl exhibits willful, courageous, and outrageous

behavior that is considered to be beyond the scope of social norms. She then goes on to say that a

womanist