Nikhil Shankar
II PSEnglish
1313211
CIA 3- American Literature
II PSEnglish
1313211
CIA 3- American Literature
A Critical Appraisal of 'The Color Purple- Silences and Stereotypes'
It
is a fact that ‘The Color Purple’ is a critically acclaimed novel. It has been
canonized, and won a Pulitzer for its story. It is a remarkably written story
about a woman’s journey of self-realization. It has been claimed to be a
pinnacle of black feminist literature. However, there are also opinions (often
unspoken) prevalent among scholars that the story itself in reality manages to
do the exact opposite of what it is supposed to- it reinforces racist and
feminine stereotypes. In this context, I will be summarizing a research paper
by Afro-American scholar Trudier Harris, titled ‘On The Color
Purple, Stereotypes, And Silence’.
Described as one of the
‘harshest critics of The Color Purple’, Harris provides a detailed, objective
explanation of the drawbacks of the novel, substantiating each of her points
with examples. An admirer of Alice Walker’s works, Harris’s primary issue with
the novel is the fact that the novel is open to large audience out of which
most of the readers do not truly identify with the protagonist “and do not feel
the intensity of their pain, stand back and view the events of the novel as a
circus of black human interactions” (Harris, 1).
Her proclamation“The
Color Purple has been canonized. I don't think it should have been.” (Harris, 1),
hence stems from this point. By creating such a hype about the novel, Harris
categorically proves that the media in itself is racist, since it has chosen
one piece by one Afro-American author to
present its opinions on the plight of all Black people of that time, and the
piece itself is constructed in a manner so as to reinforce racist and feminist
stereotypes. In fact Harris during her endeavour of showcasing the true effects
of the novel claims that “One white woman commented that, if she had not been
told the novel had been written by a black woman, she would have thought it had
been written by a Southern white male who wanted to reinforce the traditional
sexual and violent stereotypes about black people.”( Harris, 4)
Harris consistently is
preoccupied with the fact that only a black woman could truly understand the
many little problematic elements in the novel. To any white or non-black
person, this novel is simply information to how a black woman’s life is and
this information is false. The novel’s popularity silences many of the black
women critics who actually have something to say against the novel for two
reasons. First, a sense of “treason” emerges against a fellow black woman
author and second, there seems to be nobody who accepts such criticisms against
the novel. “There are many black women critics in this country who would rather
have their wisdom teeth pulled than be accused of objecting to it.”( Harris, 1)
One of the most
important problems with the novel, in Harris’s perspective, is the
characterization of the protagonist Celie. Harris finds it inconceivable that
any black woman would refuse to fight and stay suppressed for that long. As an
Afro-American woman herself, Harris speaks about how she has interacted with
several female scholars as well as Afro-American men and women and all were of
a unanimous opinion that a Black woman is never submissive, her natural
instinct is to fight. ‘Silences’ becomes an issue also in the fact that
Afro-Americans do not want to voice out their issues with Celie. To be in
disagreement with the prevalent opinion of the novel is blasphemous. The
persona of the story has become so commonplace a framework to view the
Afro-American woman, even Afro-American women don’t want to contradict it.
‘With great power comes
great responsibility’, is one of the most universal truths out there. Having been
granted the power of the pen, Walker could have actually come up portraying
true black woman struggles and the accurate characterisation of a black woman
like Celie. Instead, Walker seems to have misused this power by irresponsibly
showing a weak black woman character and also the character of every black man
in the novel seems to be negative. Completely unlike the true situations, even
during the time the novel has been set, every black man in the novel seems to
be beating up and raping women. Harris explains, “All the men (...) fit into
that froglike perception Celie has of them. And the problem with these frogs?
None of them can turn into princes.”( Harris, 6)
The problem, in
Harris’s opinion is therefore the fact that no reader looks at this novel as a story
of a specific black woman, in a specific black family of a specific black
society. Almost every white person when asked (in fact myself too) tend to
generalise the situations and struggles of Celie to the female black
population. This problem can also be applied to the image of black men as
portrayed in the novel. The lack of contextualization in the novel hampers the
Black woman’s status more than help it. This is a major problem, especially
since Walker herself claimed that the novel is a realist fiction. To have done that, and then written a story that
is anything but real, is nothing short of unforgiveable.
This contextualization
is very important for several reasons. One of these is the fact that critics of
Harris would claim that Celie’s character makes perfect sense, since she was
constantly and consistently abused by her father since the age of fourteen, and
her subsequent opinions of men all stem from there. However, the average Black
woman is not like that; it is the context of Celie’s upbringing that makes
her that way. Her story is not the story of every Afro-American woman.
I
liked this article because Harris is very objective in her opinion. She does
not make claims simply because she wants to, rather, she backs her claims with
strong arguments. For instance, when she talks about the characterisation of
Celie in the story, she simply does not say that she has a problem with Celie’s
character because her own life was never like that, but she explains how she
spoke to many black women about this issue and also held many discussions with
varied groups of people on multiple occasions. In fact Harris keeps mentioning
how she herself read the novel several times every time she heard someone
appreciate the novel to reconfirm her own idea of the novel. Though I think
Harris could have been a little less harsh in her language in the paper and
could have mentioned a few things she appreciates about the novel, these are
very minor criticisms, almost nitpicking in that sense. I am sure she does see
a few positives in the novel and has simply refrained from mentioning them. For
example when she says that other black women appreciated the language used in
the novel, Harris doesn’t have any objection unlike other times where she
refuted any appreciation to the novel. In my opinion her silence regarding
various aspects of the novel is actually subtle appreciation. Harris
undoubtedly has a very different perspective to the novel, an authentic, yet
unconventional one, and one that is extremely brave, considering the popularity
of the work she chose to criticize. Her writing however, is honest and on
point, and compels one to listen to her.
Therefore, while the
linguistic prowess of the novel cannot be denied, along with the fact that the
story Celie’s journey in life towards assertiveness is inspirational, it is an
incorrect representation of the lives of Afro-American men, women and children
in the Jazz Age South in the USA. It does not encapsulate the complexities of
their lives, and must not be treated as an authoritative work on the African-American
way of life.
Works Cited
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