Hitha maureen, 1313228, The enduring impact of the lesbian relationship between celie and shug.

The enduring impact of the lesbian relationship between Celie and Shug.

HITHA MAUREEN, 1313228, II PSENG

     

           In the later part of  the novel,  Celie falls in love with her husband’s, long-time girlfriend, Shug Avery. The relationship between Celie and Shug grows into an intimate and sexual relationship that stands the test of time. This beautiful relationship between the two women leads to transformation in both the individuals . In Shug, Celie discovers her beauty and is able to see herself in a different light, as a woman with feelings, talents and intellect. Through Celie, Shug is able to see  herself as a woman independent of men and the male attention.

For many years, criticisms on this book revolved around many themes with the most common being Walker’s  detailed descriptions of rape and incest, her failure to place the story in a specific historical context and her take on black men in the book. Shockingly, very little criticism was brought about on the intense homosexual relationship between Celie and Shug. Instead, the relationship was  ignored or changed  beyond recognition by both academics and critics .The meaning of the bond between the two women was often changed to represent friendship, maternal love or as a metaphor for self-discovery, rather than an explicitly sexual relationship. In an interview  by Megan Rosenfeld  of Washington post, Walker justifies the lesbian relationship between Celie and Shug and refers to it as a physical and emotional relationship. She also seemed unconcerned about the criticism generated by their relationship. Even when  her interviewer states  that lesbian love is “unusual.” Walker says, “There may be some people who are uncomfortable with the idea of women being lovers. But I feel they should outgrow that. Being able to love is more important than who you love. If you love yourself as a woman, what’s to prevent you from loving another woman? I think many women feel a sense of liberation about that part of the story” (Megan Rosenfeld, Washington post, 1982). She continues by arguing that Celie and Shug’s relationship is not something accidental, “The people are conscious of the choices available, and they make good ones. They look at everything and they choose each other.” (Megan Rosenfeld ,Washington post, 1982).

In 1997 Renee Hoogland, in her work ‘Lesbian Configurations’, criticises The Color Purple from a lesbian perspective.Written almost a decade after the book’s release, Hoogland sucessfully brings out many central themes that  previously had been ignored by scholars including the significance of the title as well as the detail in which Celie and Shug’s relationship is told. “By choosing The Color Purple as a title for her novel, Alice Walker, without actually having to utter the ‘forbidden’ word, implicitly—yet unmistakably—places the issue of lesbian sexuality at the focus of her narrative, as well as at the centre of Celie’s epistolary coming-into-being” (Hoogland, 1997, pg.13). According to Hoogland, the color purple also has a  historical reference to the lavender menace of the 1970s,which was a protest by a group of radical lesbian feminists against the exclusion of  lesbian issues from the feminist movement at the Second Congress to Unite Women in New York City, 1970.

Hoogland also believed that, Celie’s struggle  against patriarchy, and her expression of sexual  freedom as well as her gaining of financial independence suggest that she not only overturned the heterosexual relationship between herself and Albert but also with patriarchy as a whole. It is then evident that creation of Celie’s character is more than just a story of one woman’s empowerment but instead it is an outright dynamic story of Celie’s homosexual identity development. Therefore the feministic ideas in the novel help in highlighting rather than diminishing one of the central themes of the novel, Celie’s discovery of her lesbian identity. This is further emphasised by the fact that Celie’s sexual discovery happens at the particular moment of her orgasm i.e she does not think about her sexuality— instead it is instantaneously revealed to her.“Lesbian desire in The Color Purple is thus not accidental to the overarching plot of female development, or a somewhat peculiar private preference on the part of the protagonist. Since nothing in novels—unlike real life—is either incidental or unpremeditated, Celie does not simply ‘happen to fall in love’ with a woman. Her sexual orientation, her passionate investment in a female Other from whom she gradually begins to derive her sense of Self, structurally informs the story of her subjectivity, her empowerment as subject of speech and writing, and eventually also as a social agent” (Hoogland, 1997,pg.19).

Alice Walker refuses to see the novel as lesbian fiction, it is clearly evident in Walker’s use of the term “womanism.” While this term really caught on as the definition of black feminism at that point of time, Walker tried to stay away from its  controversial part of “women who love other women sexually and/or nonsexually” (Walker, 1984). Walker’s refusal to admit her novel as lesbian fiction, through her silence on the subject, leaves the lesbian community out in the cold. A book that could be looked upon as a tale of female homosexuality has been reduced  to a story about male and female relationships, intimate friendships and motherly love. Nevertheless, The color purple is still a thematically lesbian novel as Bell hooks rightly said “Walker makes the powerful suggestion that sexual desire can disrupt and subvert oppressive social structure because it does not necessarily conform to social prescription, yet this realization is undermined by the refusal to acknowledge it as threatening—dangerous”(Hooks,1988, pg 217). Therefore the true essence of all the feministic ideals put forth in the book corresponds to the central theme of  freedom of female sexuality, i.e the lesbian relationship between Celie and Shug.

REFERENCES

Shultz. (2011).The Lesbian Problem: Celie and Shug in The Color Purple.University of Michigan.

Walker, A. (1982). The color purple.Washington Square Press.

Rosenfeld, M. (1982,). Profiles in purple & black: 'womanist' alice walker and the love of life. The Washington Post

Hoogland, R. (1997). Lesbian configurations. (pg. 11-23). Columbia University Press.

Hooks, b. (1988). Modern Critical Views: Alice Walker (pg. 215-228). Chelsea House Publishers.