Character Analysis : Shug Avery

Submitted to: Dr. Arya Aiyappan, lecturer,
                    Department of English,
                    Christ University

Submitted by: Aaiz Ahmed Rasheed, 1313201
                     3PSEng

                             CIA III – COLOUR PURPLE
                 CHARACTER ANALYSIS: SHUG AVERY

         An empowered woman in a oppressive society.

Maybe one of the reasons why Alice Walker’s colour purple assumed the phenomenal state that it did assume, in American Literature is because in spite of the presence of central character in the novel, most of the main characters had a story to tell. And not just that, the stories of all these main characters were also important to portray to the reader, the message Walker wants us to get. The socio-cultural situation of the Negroes/African-American people, gender inequality, gender discrimination and abuse and the themes of love and sexuality are brought about by the lives of these characters as well as Celie’s interaction with them. Shug Avery as a character and Shug Avery’s relationship with Celie takes us closer to seeing this portrayal. In this paper, I hope to understand and present Shug Avery’s personality, early life experiences and the roles she played in the novel, especially in context to the main character.

Early life:
As is with most of the female characters in the story, Shug’s childhood was also in shambles. Her birth name is Lillie which she discarded in favor for Shug, which is short for ‘sugar,’ Her mother did not like her touching her or any form of affection in that sense. Her father on the other hand, liked to hug and kiss her which her mother was abashed by, suggesting that there is a sexual motive behind it. (“She never love to do nothing had anything to do with touching nobody, she say. I try to kiss her, she turn her mouth away”/ “My daddy love me to kiss and hug him, but she didn’t like the looks of that”) Shug’s parents particularly her mother, hated her for her independent, outgoing spirit and her sexual activeness. (“One thing my mama hated me for was how much I love to f***”)

So she was craving for affection by the time, she met Albert. She said she loved Albert and loved having sex with him as well. But he was too weak for her to marry him but she kept coming back to him. She had her three babies with Albert. She had all three at home and finally, her mother kicked her out so she went to her aunt who was exactly like her. (“She just like me, Mama say. She drink, she fight, she love mens to death She work in a roadhouse. Cook. Feed fifty men, screw fifty five.”) This comparison between her and her aunt further reveals Slug’s character to us as well.

She was heartbroken when Albert did not stand up for their relationship in front of her father and married another girl. She went on to become a popular blues singer. Her stories tell her, she has seen a lot of the world in her travels. She also earned the title Queen Honeybee. When we first meet Shug, she has fallen victim to a disease which most regarded as a ‘nasty women’s’ disease.  Nobody wanted to take her in, not her mom or her dad or anyone. Finally Albert does.

Summary of events in the book:
At first when Shug Avery comes to Celie’s house, she is mean to her. (“You sure is ugly”) were the first words that she speak to her and later treats her in the same way. But over time, she softens up to Celie’s affection towards her. The two continue to become closer and when Shug had to go, Celie told her that Albert would beat her again Shug’s absence so Shug decides to stick around until Albert promises not to do so. Shug finally does leave to pursue her singing career again and she gets married to Grady. She comes back and during her stay, she and Celie falls in love. She helps Celie discover the letters from Nettie explore a physical relationship with her and pushes Celie to sew herself pants and start wearing them. When Shug leaves, she takes Celie with her and instigates her to set up her own pants company. When Celie goes home, Shug falls in love with a 19 year old and goes travelling with him as well as to visit her children. Shug does come back eventually. She does still love Celie but not only her. According to Celie, that is alright as they were like family now.

Physical Description
Shug Avery is described to be a very attractive looking black woman. She wears flashy clothes and makeup and is tall and skinny. According to Celie, when she first sees Shug’s picture, her eyes do not match her confident looking cheerful demeanor. She says her eyes look serious. (“Her face rouge. Her hair like somethin tail. She grinning with her foot up on somebody motorcar. Her eyes serious tho. Sad some”) Shug’s most dominant feature maybe how stylish she is. (“She so stylish it like all the trees around the house draw themselves up tall for a better look”)

Personality
There are multiple dimensions to Shug Avery’s personality. She is unconventional. She can be seen as the model of the typical blues woman. She has a glamorous singer lifestyle. She has a lot of wisdom that can only be gained by travelling and seeing the world and she shares this with Celie. Her singing is very important as it is often an off shoot of her. It is particularly seen when she sings at Harpo’s in appreciation of Celie nursing her back to health. This gives Celie a feeling of vitality that she often doesn’t get.

She maintains a tough exterior and can sometimes come off as unpleasant and arrogant. This may be due to her tendency to speak out the truth as it is, without softening it or added laces of diplomacy. She is brutally honest and direct. For instance, when she first meets Celie, she says, (‘You sure is ugly.’) But then this may very well be because she was jealous at first of Celie being Albert’s wife. But then she is compassionate too for the ones she cares about. This can be seen for the most part of the story as she is seen to be kind and caring towards Celie and on top of that, she also looks out for Albert as well and tries to be there for everyone that needs her. She gets Harpo a source of income, gets Mary Agnes started off in her singing career and tries to help out when Sofia is in jail.

And even though, she is regarded as arrogant and a bit thick skinned at certain points, she is actually appreciative for those that help her. She had a lot of jealousy towards Celie but she grew to appreciate the way Celie takes care of her and she in turn reciprocates and starts taking care of Celie, looking out for her, being there for her forming a bond of female solidarity that goes beyond jealousy due to a man.

Another aspect of Shug’s personality is her tendency to love. She did not love based on the attractiveness of the person or what it offered her. She loved indiscriminate of gender, color or age. She loved those who needed the love and she loved those who touched her. She loved Albert for all those long years because of the man she knew, the one who danced and amused her. She loved Celie because she was vulnerable and lonely and she needed someone’s love. Despite her loving, caring nature she can also be seen as frail, when it comes to intimate relationships. She slept with whoever she pleased and had a string of affairs throughout her life. She slept with Albert while he was married and she ran off with a 19 year old when still with Celie. The lack of affection, she got as a child had quite possibly left her thirsty for that love and physical communion or affection. Hence, no relationship was ever enough for her but she did honestly love and care for Celie and even Albert despite her frailty or not.

Shug Avery is very liberated in terms of her sexuality and as aforementioned, her world views. She doesn’t feel obligated to live up to any feminine roles when talking about intercourse. She informs Celie that she is still a virgin, because she still has not enjoyed sexual pleasure which in itself is very revolutionary in that age and time as women were not supposed to be having sex for pleasure and they were definitely not supposed to be talking about it. She also openly embodies actions and characteristics that is often considered as masculine in that age. She is dominant and takes control in most of her relationships. We see how much of a patriarch Albert is but, she keeps him in check. As a woman in that age, she was revolutionary: having a successful career and a well off home of her own, travelling at her whim, openly enjoying sexual relations with both men and women. While she is not exempted from criticisms which women of her colour did get, she was less restricted or inhibited by it.

As far as her world view is concerned, we already know from the above paragraph how progressive she is. She also tries to bring this out in Celie, advising her and encouraging her to start up her own business. She also openly is defiant of men and gets away with it. But maybe the most striking is her views about God. She rises above the restraints of organized religion and finds her spirituality in physical pleasure. She rejects the notion that a God would condemn people being happy as sins. According to her, any God would condemn you for not enjoying the small pleasures of life. She also believed that God is everywhere, that God is everything, the spirituality that revolves the whole world. So she considered pleasure to be spiritual and thereby, something which would please God. All in all, Shug Avery can be seen as the personification of colour purple. She is the combination of red, standing for life and change and blue, standing for misery and disappointment. In union, it becomes colour purple.

Roles
Shug Avery assumes many roles for the main protagonist in this novel. She is first and foremost a source of change. She invokes actively and inactively, a sense of love, self-esteem and a desire for the pursuit of happiness in Celie. She opens Celie up to the world and teaches her to be her own person. She also assumes a maternal role for Celie, taking care of her, teaching her the ways of the world. She is also Celie’s confidante, hearing out all her woes and troubles and being loyal to her. As a friend, she stands up for her to Albert and helps her find out about her sister, Nettie. She acts as a mentor to her, teaching her various life lessons she did not know and encourages her to set up her own business. She is also Celie’s lover, teaching her to love herself and truly love someone else as well.

In being all that for Celie, her own sense of maternal love and family develops too. Even though she had three illegitimate children with Albert, she never felt any sense of bond with them or her family of orientation for that matter. But with Celie she finally does find that. ‘We each other’s people now,’ she said.

Conclusion
Shug is a free spirit. However much we analyze her as a character, we get that much more top talk about. She cannot be bound by labels and positive or negative attributes. Even to call her a lesbian or a bisexual would be an unrequited limiting of her personality. She did as she pleased and being with Celie was one of those things and she was in love with her and she was in love with Albert too. There is no point on fixing labels into that. She is truly one a kind. A very liberated Black Woman in a time where both Negroes and women were persecuted by the patriarchal white dominated society.

Reference
1. Alice Walker. The Colour Purple. 3rd ed. London: The Orion Publishing Group, 2004. Print.
2. Cliff Notes. "Shug Avery" Cliff Notes. n.p., n.d. Web. 22 August 2014.
3. The Best Notes. "Character Analysis" The Best Notes. n.p., n.d. Web. 22 August 2014.
4. The Lit Notes. "The Colour Purple" The Lit Notes. n.p., n.d. Web. 22 August 2014.