THE COLOR
PURPLE
Alice Walker
The Color
Purple is a story of how one of those American heroes came to be recognized
herself by recovering her identity and rescuing her life in spite of the
damaging effects of a particularly dreadful and personal sort of harassment.
The novel pays most of its attention on Celie, a woman bumped by waves of deep
trouble—abandonment, physical and emotional abuse and tracks her successful
journey to self-discovery, womanhood, and independence. Celie's story is a
pointed summons of the men in her life. Men who betrayed and abused her, worked
her like a mule and suppressed her independence—but it is also a moving
portrait of the emotional bonds that exist between women and the enduring
nature of the human spirit.
This is a
quote from the book colour purple:
Harpo say, I
love you, Squeak. He kneel down and try to put his arms round her waist. She
stand up. My name Mary Agnes, she say.
Celie begins to take more obvious steps
in taking herself and the world around her in her own hands. When Celie tells
Shug that Mr. ______ beats her…she demonstrates that her self-analysis is
becoming increasingly developed and sophisticated.
One reason for Celie’s improved
self-awareness is the sexual awakening that she experiences through Shug’s
education. Shug declares Celie a virgin and renames her giving her the name
of Miss Celie, gave Celie a new identity
and personality in both a figurative and a literal sense. Shug’s announcement
of Celie as a virgin and the new name Celie are critical to Celie’s empowerment
to tell her own story and to her sense of self.
Shug giving Celie a new name makes her
come in face with the traditional
definitions of virginity. Shug gives a new meaning to virginity in her terms,
saying it is not lost when a man penetrates a woman but rather when a woman
chooses to have sex and finds it physically and emotionally pleasurable. By
giving a new meaning to virginity at her
own terms, Shug encourages Celie to take similar control over her own situation
by interpreting it in a new way. The fact that Shug can suddenly term a married
woman with two children a virgin introduces the possibility that there is an
untold story in Celie’s life. Shug helps Celie realize that there are
alternatives to the mainstream ways of thinking, perceiving, interpreting, and
behaving that the dominant members of
society impose upon her. Recognizing the existence of these alternatives
gives Celie a sense of control and is an important step for her to move towards
independence.
Yet Sofia’s punishment makes it clear that
challenging and reinterpreting mainstream perspectives often comes at a price.
Sofia, who is tough and healthy and has a loving family and a comfortable
material existence, is greatly different from the white society’s stereo-type
of the subservient black woman. Sofia bluntly asserts her unwillingness to
conform to this stereotype by answering Miss Millie’s employment offer with an
unquestionable “Hell no.” However, this resistance costs Sofia a cracked skull,
broken ribs, a body covered with bruises, and twelve years of her life.
Likewise, when Squeak resists by coming forth and submitting herself in an
attempt to free Sofia from prison, she is raped. It is clear that although
Walker views resistance as crucial, she does not want to romanticize it as an
act free of pain or consequences.
Ultimately, neither Sofia’s nor Squeak’s
misfortunes defeat them. For Walker, the most basic indication of victory is
the ability to tell one’s story, and neither Sofia nor Squeak loses her voice.
Sofia maintains her resistance even when pressed into service as Miss Millie’s
maid. Likewise, when Harpo tries to tell the others the story of Squeak’s rape,
Squeak interrupts him, telling him to be quiet because she wants to tell her
own story. Additionally, in the same way Shug renames Celie a virgin, Squeak
renames herself to Harpo, rejecting the little nickname he has given her in
favor of her real name, Mary Agnes. Just as Celie’s renaming is enabling her to
reinterpret the world, Squeak’s renaming opens up the gifts that have long been
hidden inside her, and she starts to sing.
In this
phrase and explanation we can see and learn that Celie despises sex and that during the act she
typically pretends she is not even there. Shug tells Celie that, in her mind,
Celie is still a virgin. To Shug, a woman’s real loss of virginity is not her
first sex act, but the first time she experiences the pleasure of an orgasm.
Celie finds this idea of pleasure sexy, otherworldly, and shocking knowing that
she is a mother of two. We see the male dominance, manipulation, what women
mean to them and what they think about a women’s identity.
References:
Spark notes:
the Quote
litlovers.com
shmoop
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/04/specials/walker-color.html
Sonakshi
Radhika
1313286
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