the color purple 1

8/18/2019 The Color Purple 1

1/8

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

International Multidisciplinary Research Journal

Research

Direction

Editor-in-Chief S.P. Rajguru

Vol 1 Issue X April 2014 ISSN No: 2321-5488


2/8

S. N. Gosavi Shrikant Yelegaonkar Punjabrao Ronge D. R. More

T. N. Kolekar Seema Naik M. L. Jadhav Annie John

Suhas Nimbalkar Adusumalli Venkateswara Raw Deepa P. Patil R.D.Bawdhankar

Ajit Mondal

Advisory Board

Welcome to Research DirectionISSN No.2321-5488

Research DirectionJournal is a multidisciplinary research journal, published monthly in English, Hindi &Marathi Language. All research papers submitted to the journal will be double - blind peer reviewed referred bymembers of the editorial board readers will include investigator in universities, research institutes governmentand industry with research interest in the general subjects.

Address:-Ashok Yakkaldevi 258/34, Raviwar Peth, Solapur - 413 005 Maharashtra, IndiaCell : 9595 359 435, Ph No: 02172372010 Email: [email protected] Website: www.ror.isrj.net

Maryam Ebadi Asayesh Henry HartonoIslamic Azad University, Iran Soegijapranata Catholic University, Indonesia

Judith F. Balares Salamat Mukesh WilliamsDepartment of Humanities, IASPI, Philippines University of Tokyo, Japan

Guest Referee

Nikhilkumar D. Joshi Dr.kiranjeet kaur Nikhil joshi Gujrat Dept.of English G.H.patel college of

Engineering and Technology,Gujrat.

Sub Editors (Dept. Of Humanities & Social Science)

CHIEF PATRON PATRON Mr. Sanjeev Patil Suhasini Shan

Chairman : Chairman -Central Div. Rayat Shikshan Sanstha, Satara. LMC & Director - Precision Industries, Solapur.

EDITOR IN CHIEF

S.P. RajguruAsst. Prof. (Dept. of English) Rayat Shikshan Sanstha's,

L. B. P. Mahila Mahavidyalaya, Solapur. (M.S.)

Dr.Prakash M. Badiger Guest Faculty,Dept. of History,Gulbarga University,Gulbarga.


3/8

KEY WORDS:

Color Purple' , Analysis , characterization , literature .

INTRODUCTION

Elaine Showalter in A Literature of Their Own (1978) speaks about the contributions of femalewriters in literary history. As pointed out in A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature, Showalteridentifies four models of difference which are as follows:

The biological model is the most extreme; if the text somehow mirrors the body, this can reducewomen merely to bodies. . . . Showalter's linguistic model of difference posits women speaking men'slanguage as a foreign tongue; purging language of “sexism” is not going far enough. . . . Showalter's psychological model identifies gender difference as the basis of the psyche, focusing on the relation ofgender to the artistic process. It stresses feminine difference as the free play of meaning outside the need forclosure. Showalter's most important contribution has been to describe the cultural model that placesfeminist concerns in social contexts, acknowledging class, racial, national, and historical differences anddeterminants among women, but offering a collective experience that unites women over time and space__a “binding force”. (199-200)

Showalter uses the term gynocritics for feminist criticism which studies women as writers. Theother feminist works which represent gynocriticism are Patricia Spack's The Female Imagination (1975),Ellen Moers's Literary Women (1976), Nina Baym's Woman's Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and aboutWomen in America, 1820-1870 (1978), and Barbara Christian's Black Women Novelists (1980).

Ellen Moers analyzes the 'feminine' metaphors in the nineteenth century fiction in her works. Shefinds women writers quite interesting as she reads them as a woman. Patricia Meyer Specks concentrates onsexuality in personal life. She addresses issues like adolescent development, self-perception, passivity andindependence in her discussions. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Guar in The Madwoman in the Attic: TheWomen Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Imagination (1979) focuses on the existence of a femaleaesthetics. 'However, they also draw on the Beauvoir–Millett vein of feminist criticism in stressing theevidence in Austen, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Emily Dickinson, and others of the pain and effort produced by the struggle against traditions that regarded women as inferior and passive and at the same

Abstract:

American women began their study of the stereotyped characterization ofwomen in men's writing in 1960s. Mary Elman, in Thinking about Women (1968)discusses stereotypes of women in literature written by men and alternative and subversive points of view in some writings by women. But the more fierce attack on themale literary tradition was made by Kate Millett in Sexual Politics (1970). She exploreshow women are dehumanized in the novels of male writers like Henry Miller, Norman Mailer, Jean Genet and D. H. Lawrence. According to her, patriarchy is the sole cause ofwomen's oppression where women are subordinated by the male, and they are assignedan inferior position. She argues that 'sex' is biologically determined but 'gender' is a psychological concept which is cultural identity.

CONCEPT OF FEMINISM IN ALICE WALKER'S 'THECOLOR PURPLE ': AN ANALYSIS

Rajendra Thorat

Head, Dept. Of English, Venutai Chavan College, Karad, Satara.

Research Article

Research Directions

Volume 1 | Issue 10 | April 2014

1

ISSN:-2321-5488


4/8

time as angels, monsters, or both (Harris 92).Another notable contributions to the American feminist criticism are Anis Pratt's Archetypal

Patterns in Women's Fiction (1981), Elizabeth Meese's Crossing the Double-Cross: The Practice of Feminist Criticism (1986) and (Ex)Tensions: Re-figuring Feminist (1990). Pratt discusses archetypes andsimilarities of novels including political ideologies and lesbian experience. She is sensitive to issues ofclass and race. Meese opposes and warns against the dangers of factions within feminist criticism. Therevolutionary writing about feminism and theology was done by Mary Daly in her Gyn/Ecology: the Metaetics of Radical Feminism (1979), Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy (1984), and Beyond Godthe Father (1986). Daly vigorously exposes what she sees as 'the misogyny that lies at the core of Judaea-Christian tradition, and in her later work concludes that it is not possible to reform patriarchal society, andargues instead for a separate women's culture'(Qtd. Alexander 3). Thus American feminists are mainlyconcerned about images of women. They see reading of a feminist as a communication between the life ofthe writer and the life of the reader.

BLACK FEMINIST CONSCIOUSNESS:

It is essential to understand what is meant by the term 'black feminist consciousness' very clearly before analyzing Walker's idea of womanism. The word 'black' denotes the race and feminist means a person who knows that the exploitation is caused by patriarchal hegemony and that one is ready to end thathegemony to reconstruct the lives of women and to build a society based on nondiscrimination. Hence, oneis also prepared to struggle to redress the situation so as to bring racial, social, sexual and economic equalityfor the black women. Since most of the black male writers have failed in depicting black women's genuineand authentic life, many black women writers come to the forefront to depict their own, real, genuine andauthentic selves. Their writing is an outburst of the voices long suppressed and suspended by thevictimizers. The consciousness of victimization is immediate and revelatory, “it allows women to discoverwhat social reality really is” (Bartky 254).

A feminist is one who is awakened and conscious about woman's life and problems and feministconsciousness is the experience in a certain way of certain specific contradictions in the social order.Feminists believe in transformation of the society for better future and dislike intolerable things. “It is onthe day that we can conceive of a different state of affairs that a new light falls on our troubles and we decidethat these are unbearable” (Sartre 531). To transform this, power should play its role.

Feminists, who value women's experience and potential, have re-read 'women's novels' with new perspectives and have found a wealth of psychological, social and political insight. Feminist consciousness

is the experience in a certain way of certain specific contradictions in the social order. Feministconsciousness turns a “fact” into a “contradiction”, and often, features social reality. Thus, womenunderstand what they are and where they are in the light of what they are not yet. Thus, they comprehendtheir world and also what it is not and the world that could be if changed. Feminist consciousness is a joyousconsciousness of one's own power, weakness and strength.

In this connection Simon de Beauvoir rightly says, 'the humanity is male' but for the black womenthe 'humanity is white and male.' As they suffer from racial and gender oppression, they differ from both thewhite women and the black men. The black woman has to struggle for equality both as a woman and as anAfrican American. Thus their experiences gained from the living as African American women stipulatetheir sensibility called black feminist sensibility.

The overall social status of the black is lower than any other social group; hence they are supposedto bear the attacks of sexist, racist and classist oppression. As a group they have not been socialized toassume the role of oppressor. White women and black men can act as oppressor or be oppressed. Black menmay be victimized by racism, but sexism allows them to act as oppressor or exploiter of women. Blackwomen without institutionalized 'other' that they may discriminate against, exploit or oppress often havelived different experience directly challenging the prevailing classist, sexist, racist social structure and itsconcomitant ideology. This lived experience shaped their consciousness and changed their attitudedifferent from their oppressors. Bell Hooks has rightly pointed out it is essential for continued feministstruggle that black women recognize the vantage point of their marginality that gives them and “make useof this perspective to criticize the dominant racist, classist, sexist hegemony as well as to envision andcreate a counter hegemony”(58).

According to Sandra Bartky, feminist consciousness is a consciousness of victimization. Toapprehend oneself as a victim is to be aware of an alien and hostile force which is responsible for the blatantly unjust treatment of women and for a stifling and oppressive treatment of sex-roles; it is to be awaretoo, that this victimization in no way earned or deserved, is an offense (254).

Feminist consciousness is an understanding that one is victimized as a women as one among

CONCEPT OF FEMINISM IN ALICE WALKER'S 'THE COLOR PURPLE ': AN ANALYSIS

2Research Directions | Volume 1 | Issue 10 | April 2014


5/8

many, and in the realization that others are made to suffer in the same way that one is made to suffer lies the beginning or a sense of solidarity with other victims. It is a joyous consciousness of one's own power of the possibility of unprecedented personal growth and of the release of energy long suppressed. In this manner,it is a consciousness both of one's weakness and strength.

All African American women share common experience of being black women in a society thatdenigrates women of African descent. They had to fight on many fronts—against white patriarchy, againstwhite women's racism and against sexism of black men. This commonality of experience suggests thatcertain characteristics and themes will be prominent in black women's stand point. The interrelationship ofwhite supremacy and male superiority has thus characterized the black women's reality as a situation ofstruggle- a struggle to survive in two contradictory worlds simultaneously, one white, privileged, andoppressive and the other black, exploited, and oppressed (Canon 30).

Black feminist criticism is establishing norms to examine the distinct cultural values of blackwomen writers to prevent their being subsumed into 'universal' literary studies dominated by male or whitewriters. Black women writers such as Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Buchi Emecheta, Gloria Naylor and

many more write to shape their experiences and to reclaim both their history and self-image battered bytheir three enemies: racism, classism, and sexism. Black women writers usually offer a wider critique of patriarchy in their struggle to find themselves and validate their language.

The black women's ability to forge the individual unarticulated, yet potentially powerfulexpressions of everyday consciousness into an articulated, self-defined, collective stand point, is a key to black women's survival. It is an attempt towards self-definition to indicate who one is, what one is and whatone would like to be? The black feminist consciousness indicates the black woman's self definition. Thus,for the black woman, struggle involves in embracing a consciousness that is simultaneously Afro-centricthat reveals the black perspective and at the same time feminist.

By being accountable to others, African American women develop more fully human, lessobjectified selves. Sonia Sanchez points this version of self by stating “we must move past always focusingon the “personal self” because there is a large self. There is a “self” of black people” (Qtd. Tate 134). Ratherthan defining self in opposition to others, the connectedness among individuals provides black women adeeper, more meaningful self-definition. Black feminist consciousness is awareness on the part of the blackwomen about their oppression, plights, position and positive and negative aspects of life to change the patriarchal, racist and sexist social order to restore the equality of human beings irrespective of sex, race orclass.

Thus the two terms, black feminism and womanist consciousness are concerned with the struggleof the black women against racism and sexism who are themselves part of the black community's efforts to

achieve equality and liberty. She is, Walker says, purple -purple with rage, purple as restored royalty, purple blossoming wild in an open field. Therefore, according to Walker, womanism is an empowered form offeminism just as purple is a bold and empowered version of lavender. Purple as a color is regarded as asymbol of the indomitable female spirit and an encoding of the joyous vitality of the female spirit. In short,Walker is one who is committed to the survival whole of the black women in the highly charged, sexist,classist and racist society of America.

The Color Purple:

Like Mem and Meridian, Celie in The Color Purple (1982), Alice Walker's most celebrated novelwhich won both the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for Fiction, struggles in life for survival.The novel depicts the life of a black girl, Celie who despite poverty, illiteracy, physical and mentalexploitation transcends her plight through self awareness to gain respectable place in the American society.Celie first writes letters to God to help her to survive the spiritual, emotional and physical abuse she suffersat the hands of her step father, Alphonso and later on her husband, Mr.____. The Color Purple depicts in an epistolary manner thirty years of a struggle in the life of Celie, a poorSouthern black woman who is victimized physically and emotionally both by her stepfather and herhusband, Albert. While in her teens, Celie is repeatedly raped by her stepfather, who sells her two childrenshe bore of him. Celie is eventually placed into a loveless marriage with Albert, a widower who for the nextthree decades subjects her to beatings and psychological torment. Celie writes letters describing her ordealto God and to her sister, Nettie, who escapes a similar fate by serving as a missionary in Africa. However, inthe company of Albert's mistress Shug Avery, a charismatic singer, she gains self-esteem and the courage toleave her marriage. Shug is even responsible for Celie's reunion with her children sold by her stepfather,Alphonso and with Nettie at the end of the novel. She begins her journey from powerlessness to the state offull empowerment and from self-abnegation to self-recognition.

Walker also chronicles the oppressed and miserable lives of the black women Shug and Sofia who




6/8

are the victims of highly charged rapist, sexist and male-dominated society of America. They foughtvaliantly to gain respectable position and place in society. All the women folk in the novel have to suffer atthe hands of their men folk. It describes the ill treatment given to the black women by their men. At thesame time the novel highlights the awareness among the black women about their self status and rights.

The Color Purple tells us a story of two women in love with one man. The character of Shug Avery,a dynamic singer whose real name is Lillie but is called Shug, is a transforming force in Celie's life. Walkerknows very well that she was writing a story of two women who marry to the same man. What completesthe love triangle in all its symmetry is Celie and Shug's love for each other. Womanist consciousness isclearly seen in the relationship between the Celie and Shug.

Walker's idea of womanism is ingrained in the novels under discussion. For her the term involves,“in bonding of women as a continuation of the struggle for self-definition and affirmation that is the essenceof African American means.” She portrays a galaxy of black women who love other women as being“whole” or “round women” and have concern in a culture that oppresses entire black community. Women inthese novels--Margaret, Mem, Josie, Meridian, Celie, Nettie-stress the sense of solidarity and sharing, the

sense of community, that brings about blossoming in self and society. They demonstrate consciousness oftheir continuous exploitation and slavery due to color and gender. Like Sula who quests for creating herown self and coming to terms with her identity as a black and female in Toni Morrison's Sula, they fightvaliantly against their oppressors to quest their identity in sexist and classist society of America. Ruth,Meridian and Nettie believe in change which is essential for the survival and harmony in society. Theyshow indomitable female spirit and vitality that help for their empowerment. As a result they become self-reliant and challenged their men that they can survive without them.

3. IV. Comparative perspective:

The study of the first phase novels in the light of the thematic statement reveals Walker's womanistideology that is committed to the survival of the black women everywhere in the world. Women charactersin these novels struggle hard to quest their identity and ask for freedom and self-respect. Womanistconsciousness is reflected in the man-woman relationship where man always tries to marginalize theircounterparts. In the portrayal of husband-wife relationship, husbands are shown as atrocious human beings.Walker depicts black men who are poor, illiterate, oppressive and doing traditional work of sharecroppingor working on the fields of white men. Grange in The Third Life of Grange Copeland victimizes his wifeMargaret by beating and abusing her for no reason. He even wants to sell her in order to free himself fromthe debt of a white man named Shipley. His son, Brownfield also follows the footsteps of his father and

beats his educated wife Mem as and when he likes without having knowledge of what she does for him andtheir family. Albert, Celie's husband in The Color Purple, beats her like he beats his children and doesn'ttreat her as a human being. He even doesn't look her in the face: “He looks at me. It like he looking at theearth”(TCP21). Men depicted by Walker are drunkard and immoral having extramarital relationship and nosympathy to their suffering wives.

CONCLUSION -

However, reversal of gender roles is seen in the couple Sofia and Harpo, a son of Albert whose facelooks like a woman's face. He truly enjoys woman's works like cooking and washing dishes, while Sofiadoes a field work and traditional man's work. They fight constantly “like two men” getting Harpo the worstof beating. Perhaps Walker shows this kind of irony in order to predict the reversal of roles that is likely totake place in the near future.

Some of these oppressive black men undergo a metamorphosis when they realized their follies inthe course of time. Grange Copeland repents for what he has done to Margaret and determines to provideutmost facilities and security to his granddaughter Ruth, the child of the future. He even kills his sonBrownfield and prefers to go in jail hoping that she will be free and happy in his absence. Brownfieldcompounds one of the greatest sins in Walker's fiction that is the refusal or inability to change. Ironically, hisdeath makes possible the completion of change in the life of Ruth, his daughter. Albert too changes in theend and gives utmost love to all. Albert discovers reflection which makes him a defined person who canaccept the responsibility for his mistakes and the suffering he has caused to his wife. His apparent psychological return to roots, though inadequately motivated, is primarily a portent of a healing process.Truman, Meridian's husband in the novel Meridian, changes when he realizes his mistake of marrying awhite marcher woman Robinowitz looking at her color. Being womanist Meridian wholeheartedly forgiveshim and allows him to stay with her.

As a part of womanist strategy, Walker shows sexual and emotional bonding between black




7/8

women against patriarchal tyrannies. It can be seen in the intense emotional longing and readiness tosacrifice for each other between two sisters, Celie and Nettie. Celie's offering herself sexually to herstepfather to save her sister from being raped by him is one of the touching examples of womanism.Women show a persistent tendency of falling into a bond of mutual sympathy and admiration. They are portrayed as women helping oppressed black women to come out of their depression. Shug provideseconomic cooperation by teaching Celie the art of sewing. Thus she helps her to be independent and self-reliant. Josie assures Grange to provide utmost security and love to Ruth after his imprisonment for killinghis son, Brownfield. Josie is generous enough to sell her Dew Drop Inn in order to save Grange from hisdebt. Despite the shabbiness, brutality and humiliation, the women refuse to be meek and submissive andquestion for their rights.

Women characters depicted in these novels are highly influenced by the myths in the past.Meridian is highly inspired by the story of the Sojourner Truth that commemorates the atrocities inflictedon the black women during the time of slavery. Her story encourages her to throw herself actively in theCivil Rights Movement that aimed to bring equal rights and opportunities to the black women in all walks of

life during her college days. Meridian divests herself of immediate blood relations- her child and parents- inorder to align herself completely with the larger racial and social generations of blacks. She has createdfusion with her generation of activist and older generation of oppressed black. Her personal identity has become a collective identity. Nettie's commentary through her letters from Africa on the Olinka people'sdiscrimination against their men suggest the fact that gender oppression pervades the entire world of blackmen and women. Afro-Americans as well as Africans confine women to the care of children, and among theOlinka, the husband has death power over the wife. If he accuses his wife of witchcraft or infidelity, she can be killed” (TCP172).

The epistolary form used in The Color Purple is suggestive of lesbian sexuality within theframework of lesbian feminism where the letter means the female body, and correspondence between twowomen is suggestive of lesbianism. With reference to Nettie's letters, Wendy Wall observes that Albertintercepts them because he fails to seduce her, and that he rapes her language because he fails to rape her body (264). According to Terry Eagleton “the letters come to signify female sexuality that folded secret place which is always open to violent intrusion”(54). Linda Abbandonato describes the novel as a womanisttext and states: “By adopting the crazy quilt, the craft of her forefathers, as the structuring principle of herfiction, Alice Walker places herself within a tradition of a black creativity” (300). Thus these novels areexquisite examples of her womanist consciousness that enabled her to chronicle black women's journey toself-recognition.

REFERENCES-

1. Abbandonato, Linda. “'A View from “Elsewhere”: Subversive Sexuality and the Rewriting of theHeroine's Story in The Color Purple,” PMLA, Vol.106 (1991), pp.1106-15.2. Digby, Joan. “From Walker to Spielberg: Transformations of The Color Purple,” Novel Images:Literature in Performance, Ed. Peter Reynolds, London: Routledge, 1993, pp.157-74.3. Mainino, Wirba Ibrahim. “The Problem of Language in Modern Feminist Fiction by Black Women:Alice Walker and Calixthe Beyala,” New Literature Review, Vol. 37 (2000), pp.59-74.4. Feminist Readings / Feminists Reading, 2nd ed., London: Prentice Hall, 1996. Mills, Sara. “AuthenticRealism,” Mills and Pearce, pp.56-90.5. Showalter, Elaine. Sister's Choice: Tradition and Change in American Women's Writing, Oxford:Clarendon, 1991.6. Warhol, Robyn R. “How Narration Produces Gender: Femininity as Affect and Effect in Alice Walker'sThe Color Purple,” Narrative, Vol.9, No.2 (2001), pp.182-87.7. Waugh, Patricia, Practising Postmodernism Reading Modernism, London: Edward Arnold, 1992.8. Winchell, Donna Haisty, Alice Walker , New York: Twayne, 1992.




8/8

Publish Research ArticleInternational Level Multidisciplinary Research Journal

For All Subjects

Dear Sir/Mam, We invite unpublished Research Paper,Summary of Research Project,Theses,Booksand Books Review for publication,you will be pleased to know that our journals are

Associated and Indexed

Directory of Research Journals ResearchbibSocioSiteTjdb

PDOAJ

Research Direction Journal

Editor-in-Chief:Prof. Santosh P. RajguruAddress for Correspondence56,'PARASHURAM' Ayodhya Nagari,Near Reliance Office,Hydrabad Road,Dahitane,Solapur-413006.(Maharashtra)Email: [email protected]: 9822870742

Frequency: Monthly

International Research Directions JournalReview & Advisory Board :Research Directions Journal is seeking scholars.Those who are interested in our serving as our volunteer Editorial Review Board, Editorial Board and Advisory Board.Call for editorial board:All of faculties, experts and researchers are invited to join us as member of editorial board.For applying, send your CV at [email protected] / [email protected] welcome you in research documentation.Email: [email protected] / [email protected]

the color purple 1

Documents