‘The Color Purple’, written by Alice
Walker, is a powerful novel that deals with courage in the face of oppression.
The protagonist, Celie, has lived her entire life in rural Georgia, suffering
through a childhood of ceaseless abuse that doesn’t ease up even after she gets
married. She is poor and despised not only by the society around her but also
treated badly by her family. She starts writing letters directly to God in
order to rise above the life that was, more often than not, too hard to bear.
Her letters span over a period of twenty years and enclose in them a journey of
self discovery and empowerment brought about by the presence of a few strong
women in her life along with her own unshakeable will to find peace with
herself and her home. Therefore it seemed right, to me, to pick a theme that
runs so strongly in the novel: Love.
When one speaks of love, one usually
associates it with romantic or sexual love and it seems very difficult to
separate the two. The novel, however, brings to the forefront the love that
exists not only between a man and a woman but also between sisters, between
friends, between women, between parents and their children and most
importantly, the love that one has for one’s self. Furthermore, there is a very
clear distinction between sexual love and romantic love, very clearly showing
that the two are not mutually exclusive. Almost all of the relationships
portrayed in the novel are not monogamous save for the marriage between the
Reverend Samuel and his wife Corinne and later his marriage with Celie’s sister
Nettie. All the characters in the novel have different definitions of love and
the love that exists in the novel is both constant and fickle.
Celie’s life was characterised by two
very important relationships: the one that exists between her and Nettie and
the relationship between her and Shug Avery, the latter being the one that
taught her to stand up for herself. The relationship between the sisters is
very close and unwavering. This is exemplified by the way in which Nettie
continues to write to Celie knowing that Celie’s husband never showed Celie any
of the letters due to which Celie never replied to them. Even earlier on in the
novel, when the two were teenagers, Nettie always stood up for Celie and tried
to educate her when their step-father stops sending her to school. When Celie
is forced to marry a man that Nettie was in love with, Nettie never resented
her for it and when that man made advances to her after marrying Celie she
refused him which resulted in him hiding her letters to Celie out of spite.
Later when Celie finds out about the letters, she corresponds with Nettie
instead of God, their relationship only growing stronger with the distance
(Nettie was in Africa at the time).
Celie’s relationship with Shug is
very complicated because Shug is not at all discriminating about how many
people she loves. In fact Celie says, “Hard not to love Shug. She know how to
love somebody back”. This encapsulates Shug’s character. What starts out as
admiration on Celie’s end- Shug was everything she wasn’t, beautiful, smart and
able to fight for herself-blossomed into a love that changes Celie’s life. All
of her beliefs about God, love and sex changed when Shug entered her life. Shug
stood up for her against Mr.___, her husband, and also found out about the
letters that he hid from her. She takes Celie with her to Memphis and
encourages her to start her own business of selling pants. Their love
transcends the physical, because all though sex was a factor in their
relationship, it wasn’t in Shug’s nature to be monogamous and Celie loved her
anyway. Shug opened Celie’s eyes and taught Celie to love herself. This is an
example of love that is all encompassing and accepting. It transcends the
restrictions placed by gender and sex and even religion.
Sometimes, however, love isn’t
enough. This is exemplified by the relationship between Mr.___ and Shug and the
relationship between Sofia and Mr.___’s son Harpo. Both of these relationships
are characterised by the presence of strong women, who don’t take anything
lying down, and weak men who are too afraid of society’s opinion to hold on to
the women that they love. Harpo and Mr.___ love Sofia and Shug, respectively,
but they both settle for second best-Harpo gets together with Mary Agnes and
Mr.___ marries Annie Julia and later Celie, both of whom he treats really badly
simply because they are not Shug. This can be cited as an example of unhealthy
love.
Love, also exists between parents and
their children, which is brought by the way in which Celie never forgets her
two children, whom she sired when her step- father raped her. Love even reveals
itself amongst the relationship between the women in novel, especially Celie,
Nettie, Shug and Sofia along with Mary Agnes, popularly called ‘Squeak’. They
share a sense of solidarity and are always there for each other. This is seen
when Sofia is sent to prison and later, when Squeak moves to Memphis. Despite
the fact that these two women love the same man (Harpo)-a cause for rivalry in
another scenario- these two women look after each other’s children in the each
other’s absence. Thus there exists a familial love amongst people who aren’t
even related by blood which is even stronger than blood ties.
Towards the end of the novel, even
Mr.___ has an epiphany of sorts. He says, “I think us here to wonder, myself.
To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering bout the big things and asking about
the big things, you learn bout the little ones, almost by accident. But you
never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more
I wonder, the more I love.” He loves and is forgiven by those that he loves,
including Celie, to whom he was the cruelest. He learns the error of his ways
and after explaining this to Celie she finally learns to accept him and his
flaws. Thus a lot of the love talked about in the novel deals with acceptance-
of others as well as one’s self.
To conclude, I would like to point
out that despite all the troubles that the characters in the novel are put
through, they rise above it purely due to the power of love, whatever their
version of it maybe. Celie learns to love herself and becomes independent as a
result. She is helped on this journey of self-discovery by her sister and Shug.
Her relationship with Nettie prepared her to accept love again when it came
into her life (in the guise of Shug), despite the trauma she underwent in her
childhood. I’ll end with a quote from the novel: “I have love and I have been
love. And I thank God he let me gain understanding enough to know love can’t be
halted just cause some peoples moan and groan”
References:
The Color Purple, Alice Walker
Love extract
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