Depiction of the mindset of the people : The Color Purple

Book by Alice Walker

The color purple written by Alice Walker revolves around the life of a uneducated, poor young black girl residing in the Southern America. She has gone through many traumatic experiences in her life where she is constantly subjected to physical as well as mental trauma. Though this is all narrated from one person’s point of view, we get a good description of all the other characters that are a part of her life. Each of these characters are able to portray how reality was during that time and therefore ,through each of the characters and the social scenarios that are narrated in the letters, we are able to gain a social as well as a psychological insight into the minds of the people during that time. Though this piece is considered as fiction, Virginia Woolf in "A Room of One's Own" talks about how fiction may not always contain facts but they contain truth. Each character in this novel represents a larger group of people and their mindset and through the various social scenarios that are presented; we can know what the nature of the social situation is. Therefore through this essay, i attempt to understand the mindset of the people during that time and what are the reasons behind it.

Celie the protagonist and narrator of Color purple in the beginning , writes to god about the abuse she is going through where she was being raped by her father(actually step-father though she was not aware of it). Here we see that people during times of pain and sorrow would look on to god for comfort. Any problem or issue that the people would go through during that time, look upon god to make them feel better to know someone is watching and will listen to their prayer and will make life better for them. In one of the letter she mentions that her father (Step Father) is giving dirty looks at her sister and she said that she would take care of her with god's help. So this is a clear depiction of faith in god even though the misery in her life never ended. After she was married off to a man introduced as M.r _____ initially, later on known as Albert would abuse her and treat her the same way her father (Step Father) would. The abuse she was subjected to by her father initially and her husband later is a symbol of how women were treated by the men in their lives and we see that she would not resist much to this abuse as she believed that it if she had resisted, the family would break down which she believed was worse. Nettie's letters to Celie was also hidden from Celie by Albert where he attempts to reinforce his power over her. This is symbolic of how the women were treated by men in society and how men always wanted to be the ones in power. This also they way in which they  look at family, they would do anything to keep it from breaking down which is very sad because they are ready to put up with all the misery just to keep the family together. We see that even the women don't always respect other women. We see how Celie was cursed and shouted upon by her mother for being fat, not being able to move fast,etc. We see that even Celie has no respect for women when we see that she herself encouraged her Step Son Harpo to dominate over his wife Sofie. So this is all an indication of how even the women were patriarchal and did not respect other women and believed they should be dominated upon.

Abert’s mistress Shug Avery represents the women who are more independent and open about themselves. Though she was portrayed to be very selfish, her change in attitude is also brings out a very important fact that people change with the different people that come into their lives. On Shug falling sick and Celie taking care of her as her husband did not want to attend to Shug then , we see a homosexual relationship developing in the course and Celie has finally found a women who can cater to her emotional and sexual needs. Shug was able to get her to enjoy love making and was a lot better than with her husband. This shows how the women were denied of having pleasure. Women were finding it hard to come out and later on we see that celie becomes a lot more confident about herself and leaves with Shug to stitch pants. Here we see a dipiction of women trying to be independent away from men. Though later on we see Shug leaves Celie for a man , Celie goes back to her husband Albert who becomes a changed man and they lead a better relationship compared to the last one. So from her we can see that the women, though they were subjugated to a lot of oppression , they could achieve what they wanted to if they changed the way they would conduct themselves and they way they would think about themselves. One of the Celia was always subjugated is because she would not resist, she had a victum mentality and a slightly conservative mentality where she would place the wellbeing of her family over her own wellbeing.

We can see that the change in the mentality of Celia is what made the big difference. As we know that characters of fiction also depict a lot of truth, Celia represent the women who are able to get out of that mentality and making a living of their lives and be more independent and confident. We could see that Albert could not stop Celia from leaving him because she did not have the same mentality as she had before and there was nothing that Albert could do about it. He just had to see her leave him for Shug and he could do nothing but feel upset about it. Even after Shug left Celie for another man, Celie was still able to control her emotions and not let that stop her from still finding love.  It is Celie changing her mindset from being a victum to being a more indipendent and confident person which made all the difference in this story and which is inspirational for many other women, to give them a feeling that they can also make a difference if they make an attempt to change themselves and the way they think.

References :

1.www.sparknotes.com/

2, www.cliffsnotes.com/

Dheeraj Banerjea

IIPSEng

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