In the introduction to In Search of
Our Mothers' Gardens (1983), Alice Walker defines a womanist, in part, as
"a black feminist or feminist of color" who "values tears as
[the] natural counter-balance of laughter" Although the novel is much more
bleak in nature because it deals with social facts such as oppression, rape,
violence; yet the comments of Celie adheres to a different sense of humor,
unlike the traditional ideas of fun and witty joyous instances. Though The
Colour Purple doesn’t elicit heart laughters from the readers of the novel, yet
it cannot be totally dismissed that there is a comic element in it, since the
character or nature of comic itself cannot be assessed based on the laughter
inductive factor. Alice Walker can be said to have used comedy of ideas this
novel probably due to the fact that it is subversive in nature in contrast to
pure tragedy. High comedy is often not too funny, but quite effectively
explores and reflects on the conditions prevalent in society that need not be
just or that can be criticized in a discreet way so that may be something can
be ltered to bring into effect a better social reality that probably would be a
bit more acceptable to society in general so much so that they can face the
realities directly rather than receiving it in a sugar-coated form. Wylie
Sypher goes so far as to suggest that the comedian refuses to make . . .
concessions to actuality and serves, instead, as chief tactician in a permanent
resistance movement, or rebellion, within the frontiers of human experience. By
temperament, the comedian is often a fifth columnist in social life.
Alice
Walker's novel, The Color Purple, does not despair of "man" either,
for it incorporates these elements of comedy: it makes the incongruous
congruent to a larger pattern; it refuses to accept the limitations imposed on
its fictional society; and it posits a new order which is presented in the
novel as ideal. Even its tragic elements are not anomalous. The male and female
characters of The Color Purple do not live in a polished and sophisticated
society, nor do they engage in what is traditionally considered sparkling and
witty repartee. And the violations of social norms and decorum that occur are
not perpetrated by foolish, stupid, or dandified characters but by female
characters with whom we are expected to sympathize. However, the conventions of
the comedy of manners are so clearly inverted in The Color Purple that we
cannot but suspect it to be deliberate. Walker writes from the point of view of
an outsider who is rebuffed by a closed social order; yet in her novel she
transcends these social restrictions and envisions a world in which they cease
to exist. The Color Purple is an intellectual comedy in that it is a comedy of
ideas : it dramatizes possibilities and completes itself in a vision of an
ideal world2 — a world which is matriarchal, a parody of the boy-gets-girl
endings of most comedies and fairy tales. This world is also an ideal one which
is in direct opposition to the rigidly closed society that is in evidence in
the opening pages of The Color Purple. However, the tragic elements so apparent
here are necessary to Walker's idea, since she must work through the
limitations of the closed order to give credence to the Utopian possibilities
of her open, womanist world.
She
dramatizes the crippling social order through the character of Celie- a social
pariah, and the instances that she faces. Being a black lesbian she is thrice
alienated from acceptance in the male, white heterosexual social superstructure
which seems to exclude realities outside of the familiar normative doctrine and
social stratification based on ascribed statuses of sex, colour of skin and
more. She also questions the continuously perpetrated gender roles. The very
foundational and basic structural element of society, i.e., the family is put
to question through the picture of children being raped and abused. "First
he put his thing up against my hip and sort of wiggle it around. Then he grab hold
my titties. Then he push his thing inside my pussy. When that hurt, I cry. He
start to choke me, saying You better shut up and git used to it". The
first three letters suggest that Celie's "father" kills her mother
through abuse, at which point he ominously be- gins to eye her favourite
sister, Nettie. Clearly, "a girl child ain't safe in a family of
men" and no woman in the household
is inviolable. Nor is marriage a safe haven for Celie; it merely be- comes an
extension of her unhappy home life. Ironically, she is offered to Mr. like a
slave on an auction block, and Mr._____ is more interested in her dowry than in
her: "Mr. say, That cow still coming? He say, Her cow" . In
turn, Celie's wedding day is equally desolate, "I spend my wedding day running from the oldest boy. He twelve". Marital sex is brutal and
animalistic, and Celie later equates it with defecation, since it is hardly an
act based on mutual fulfilment : "He git up on you, heist your nightgown
round your waist, plunge in. Most times I pretend I ain't there. He never know
the difference. Never ast me how I feel, nothing. Just do his business, get
off, go to sleep". From the above references to the novel it is evident
that the position of black women aren’t all that cool, rather it’s like life
becomes a mere existence! Even in case of Celie’s step-daughter-in-law, an
independent woman we can see how the paradigms of justice and power are biased.
Sofia becomes a victim of social injustice when she refuses to respect
authority in the person of the white mayor's wife, who wants Sofia to work as
her maid. When Sofia responds with a "hell no" , a brawl ensues and
the police are called. The dangers of fighting back are clear since Sofia's
punishment is hardly "just" or merited by her crime.
Thus
we can see the deep satire prevailing
despite the melancholy, and there is a transformation towards positivity as the
novel makes progression with Sophie accepting Squeak’s children, the nuclear
family being more understanding and empathising and not stringent on old
patriarchal norms, God being universal, free of colour and other
discriminations; the fact that the social system is questioned and satirized
and rejected and later on in the final stages rejuvenated imparts the idea that
it is the limitations that make society closed to individual differences and
diversity. The clothes that Celie and Mr. design celebrate rather than restrict
people; they become a symbol of the humanist or womanist utopia manifested at
the end of the novel. Indeed, this utopia becomes an Edenic paradise, as
Thadious M. Davis suggests, for the arrival of Celie's son, Adam Omatangu, and
the rest of her family from Africa signals the continuity of generations, the
return (ironically per- haps) to the 'old, unalterable roots.' Their return is
cause for a larger hope for the race, and for celebration within the family and
community, because they have survived 'whole,' literally since they
miraculously survive a shipwreck and symbolically since they have acquired
definite life-affirming attitudes.
This
is precisely the note on which the novel ends, since the new order, the order
that opens to the once segregated, is celebratory :"White people busy
celebrating they independence from England July 4th, say Harpo, so most black
folks don't have to work. Us can spend the day celebrating each other". To
paraphrase Martin, in Walker's comedy, the female/black incongruous is seen to
be more congruous than the white patriarchy, which made them incongruous in the
first place by denying them entry into its closed society. Therefore, while it
may seem "incongruous" to classify The Color Purple as a comedy, it
cannot truly be called anything else, for it seeks to improve society by
eliminating the limitations prescribed by the societal norms. Meredith
stresses that where "the veil is over women's faces, you cannot have
society, without which the senses are barbarous and the Comic Spirit is driven
to the gutters to slake its thirst". In The Color Purple, the
"veil," of which Meredith speaks, is lifted, the barriers between the
sexes are razed, and a new world is erected on the ruins, in which the sexes
meet on an equal footing and celebrate each other, life, and humankind.
References
·
Harris, Trudier.
"Chapter 1." South
of Tradition: Essays on African American Literature. Athens: U of Georgia,
2002.
·
Taylor, Carole Anne.
Preface. The Tragedy and
Comedy of Resistance: Reading Modernity through Black Women's Fiction.
Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania, 2000.
·
Woodard, Helena.
"Expressions of "Black Humor": Laughter as Resistance in Alice
Walker's The Color Purple and Zora Neale Hurston's Moses, Man of the
Mountain." Texas Studies
in Literature and Language 36.4,
Geography, Gender, Risibility, and Race in American Writings (1994): 431-35. JSTOR. Web. 29 Aug. 2014.
·
Walker, Alice. The Colour Purple. N.p.:
Phoenix, 1992. Print.
·
Taylor, Carole Anne.
"Humor, Subjectivity, Resistance: The Case of Laughter in The Color
Purple." Texas Studies in
Literature and Language 36.4,
Geography, Gender, Risibility, and Race in American Writings (1994): 462-82. JSTOR. Web. 29 Aug. 2014.
