The Color Purple: Consolation in Female Bonding

Copyright Martina Diehl June 2012 The Color empurpled Consolation in charrly Bonding Celies road to go steadying and loving herself Abstract This es assign is about the cope topic in The Color Purple, a novel by Alice baby carriage in which, thoughts on racial discrimination, incest, rape, love and family personal business argon provoked. The reader learns about these subjects by the earn that Celie, an uneducated black woman, writes to God and through and through the letters that her sister Nettie and Celie write to each some other.I would ilk to discuss how Walker raises the issue of love surrounded by females, which involves trust and understanding, two aspects that the men in the novel dont possess. The reader witnesses how the women be being oppress and screamd in this mens world, Celie and Shug recuperate comfort and security in each other and then become less afraid to stand up for themselves. I will touch on the comparisons of the awareness hierarchy in Son g of Solomon by Toni Morrison and The Color Purple.Furtherto a greater extent, Walker guides us through the climb of this sisterhood and female love involvement, which helps them get under ones skin the otherness in God, the colour purple. This novel regularises us of cozy racism, incest, oppressiveness and abuse which leads to what walker refers to as womanist, which is to feminism what the colour purple is to lavender (Abbandato 1113). The text implies that Celie and Shug realise their love for each other through traumatic even sots where Afri arse-American females are get-goest in rank, create sexual racism, rape and abuse by the dominating male. The Beginning of Celie and Shug Nature said, you two folks, hook up, ready you a good example of how it sposed to go. (105) Celie has been abused by men in every last(predicate) her life and still she does what they tell her to out of fear until she meets Shug, who stands up for Celie and essays her many beautiful things li fe carries with her. Pa has abused Celie and she has become pregnant, twice. Incest and abuse get outms to be the life she knows and therefrom she is afraid of all men including God because she fears getting beaten and doing something wrong. She is non afraid to write to God because she thinks that He, as a ashen male istener, is ill-equipped to hear what she has to say (Tucker 82), and because her stepfather has made her afraid to tell anybody else, as is suggestn in the first line of the novel You better non tell nobody but God. Itd kill your mammy. (3) She has always feared men, and when she hangs Shug Avery for the first time she is amazed to see that a female has provide every moorage Mr. ____. At first Shug treats Celie as a servant because Shug is divinatory to be with Mr. ____ and not Celie. She finally accepts this is reality and finds out that the man she used to know as Albert is not the homogeneous anymore.Celies traumatic sexual events and incest may have ca used Celie to dive into this female love affair with Shug. Shug hears Celies stories about the raping, and how Celie lets Albert take advantage of her because abuse is the life she has always lead, the life she is used to. Shug helps Celie see the beautiful things that God has given them. Walker uses the letters Celie writes as a political statement, reminding the reader that Celie can only write her feelings about herself and objective information in writing. She continues to do this in the novel even though she can tell her feelings to Shug.She still feels the need to write to God or Nettie (Christian 424). When talking to Shug, Celie finds homosexual continuum (Abbandato 1108) the concept of love, friendship and sisterly solidarity, in a world where heterosexuality is compulsory and women are conjectural to be no more than objects to men, they are the arcsecond sex (Chaber 213), women with no rights or power. A bid against society Walker shows the reader how black woman are t rying to rise above the conditions of their society. Sofia and Shug are the two characters that fight against masculine domination.In Song of Solomon, Morrison focuses on the oppression of women and ridicules the men, showing the reader what men consider to be right while emphasizing the abuse of women. These two novels are set in the same time period and both take place in the South of the United States, both novels show the sexual and racial abuse of women as a second sex between 1910 and 1963. Women in white society were gaining power while black women still had none. During the twentieth century black women began to travel more and saw more of the world and therefore this change in dominance in society.They would no all-night tolerate the power that men had over them. The oppression that Celie was part of. Celie does not write of her husband by name, he is part of the system joining God and her father in an unholy trinity of power than displaces her identity. (Abbandato 1111) Fear of standing up to the dominant sex Celie is afraid to stand up to her husband. She does not fate to get a beating and is traumatised by the events she went through before she left home to be with Mr. ____. Her have passed away and she is left with a stepfather who raped her and whom she thought dumped her babies in the woods.Celie is continually silenced by her stepfather and Mr. ____ and has no choice in the marriage. She is only an object to the men and is required work around the house and handle for them. She does not like to write down or talk about the names of the men who she knows, she prefers to chit-chat them Mr. ___ or Pa and refers to them as Him, like God, these men have more power over her than she has over herself. (Tucker 84) She does not know the man who she calls Pa is not her real father until much later when she hears the allegory from Nettie.Her children whom she thought were gone are with Nettie and Celie learns that white people hanged her father. Co mparing Walker to Morrison Walker ad prinkes the intersectionality of black women in a white society. As she guides the reader through the novel, the reader discovers the class differences in South America. non only are white women less powerful than white men, beneath that are the African Americans, in which the African American female seems to be the lowest class. Toni Morrison presents the reader with a similar view where the black people are in search of the self, trying to fight for a better future.Both novels show the oppression within society that bellows for the African Americans. Walker seems to concentrate on showing the reader all aspects of oppression by highlighting Celies sexual preference, and the sexism and racism which is present not only between a white and black society but also within the African American society. Walker lets the reader find the different levels of discrimination within classes of society. In The Color Purple as good as in Song of Solomon, the se different levels of discrimination arise. Macon Dead and the arrator in Song of Solomon show the reader these different levels of discrimination in the following excerpt Why cant you dress like a woman? He was standing by the stove. Whats that sailors jacket doing on your head? Dont you have stockings? What are you trying to make me look like in this town? He trembled with the thought of the white men in the bank the men who helped him barter for mortgage houses discovering that this raggedy bootlegger was his sister. (20) Macon Dead dreads what the white men energy think of his family, as they are impressed with this Negro who handles business so well.Besides that, Ruth dresses in a masculine manner, which could be argued is a way of proving that she is not lower in class than the men around her. Here in this excerpt, she might be compared to Shug Avery in some respect she provokes the men around her to show her meaning in society. passim both texts a lot of similaritie s can be found in regard to womanism. The women in the texts go to be either dependent on their husbands on independent women with principles and an ideal to grow, and be accepted as equals in society.Walker critiques the black community here by insinuating that women have the right to take responsibility for themselves (Christian 424). Celies trust and distrust Celie, as apposed to Shug, begins hardly any particular views of her own, and only does what she thinks is right caring for her husband. She holds onto the moral philosophy she has learnt from her stepfather, although she realises that her life could be less abusive, she does not seem to feel that she has the power to change that. She thinks that her stepfather, who raped her, has killed her children and therefore she does not trust him.The incest that happens allows distrust towards her family, and so she turns to God is not allowed to tell anybody about the rape and abuse. Celie struggles through life as an uneducated yo ung woman who seems to have a great responsibility of look after an entire household, she is at the bottom of the chain in her family. When Celie meets Shug Avery she seems fascinated by this black woman who is able to stand up to Mr. ____, she even calls him by his first name. Shug is surprised with the way in which Celie lets herself be treated, and the way Albert has changed.Shug finds herself interested in Celies life, and Celie finally finds somebody whom she will trust to tell her stories to. By putting her trust in Shug, does not Celie again depend on somebody, as she has done all along? She depends on her sister to write about what life is like, she depends on the ways she is treated and the quilt she finds in writing to God. She does not seem to be able to survive without a husband for who would do for her? Now Shug is willing to care for her, by letting Celie becoming dependent yet again.Nevertheless, due to the twist of Shug, Celie is able to trust herself again (Chri stian 424). A love affair Celie and Shug The love between Celie and Shug is found through the traumatic events that especially Celie suffers from, and her previous inability to stand up for herself and to emit, as she would only write to God. black females in The Color Purple suffer from their dependence on a husband and being low in the hierarchical setting of the southern states. Celie finds trust and consolation in being able to speak to Shug, who does not abuse her, but merely touches her.This trust turns into a love affair, a lesbian continuum. They find a connection in being on this low hierarchical scale and both find love, which they had been missing. Celie learns to love herself, to trust her own thoughts gains trust in herself and in Shug, she learns to love herself because Shug loves her. Arguably, because she trusts herself she is able to speak up for herself and know when she does not want something Albert no longer abuses her because of Shugs resentment towards Alber ts change.Celie earns a place in society by leaving her place as the uneducated woman who is part of the second sex and becoming less dependent on the dominant male force within the Afro-American society. Walker shows that through trusting and loving the self, barriers can be broken and any type of love is possible. Primary Literature Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. Great Britain The Womens Press, 1983. Print. Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon. USA Plume Fiction. 1987. reprint. On racism in the African-American society.Secondary Literature Abbandonato, Linda. A view from Elsewhere Subversive Sexuality and the rewriting of the heroines story in The Color Purple. PMLA vol. 106. (1991) P. 1106-1115 Christian, Barbara T. We are the ones that we have been waiting for Political content in Alices Walkers novels. Womens studies International Forum vol. 9. (1986) P. 421-426 Idem Tucker, Lindsey. Alice Walkers The Color Purple Emergent Woman, Emergent Text. Black American literature forum. (1 988) Vol. 22. P. 81-95