The Color Purple

RHET 102

Context Papers:

The Color Purple

Alice Malsenior Walker, is a writer and an American feminist activist. Walker has African American, Cherokee, Scottish and Irish backgrounds. Born in 1944, the eighth and last child of poor parents, Alice Malsenior Walker loses her right eye when her brother accidentally wounds her with a weapon. Ashamed of her scar, she isolates herself, taking refuge in reading and writing. With a scholarship, she enrolled at Spelman College and Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Graduated in 1965, she returned to the South and joined the Civil Rights Movement, where she met Mel Leventhal, the movement's advocate. They will be the first officially married mixed couple in Mississippi. She writes novels, short stories, essays and poems. These writings highlight the struggle of women of color against the racism, sexism and violence prevalent in American society. Alice Walker published her first poem collection, Once, in 1965, followed by Revolutionary Petunias & Other Poems in 1973. Her work focuses on the struggle of black women against the racism of the white society, against the sexism and patriarchy of the black community and against the violence of American society in general. Her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, was released in 1970, followed by 'Meridian' in 1976. Alice Walker was the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize (1983) for her novel The Color Purple (1982). For her most famous novel, she also awarded by the American Book Award (1983). It will be adapted to cinema in 1985 by Steven Spielberg which won eleven Oscar nominations and in musical in 2005 to Broadway. The famous novel forms a kind of trilogy with The Temple of My Familiar (1989) and Possessing The Secret of Joy (1992).

In her book, The Color Purple, Alice Walker denounces the racial and sexual oppression of black women in the southern United States. The book tells the story of Celie. Abused, twice pregnant by her father-in-law, Celie's nightmare, fourteen years old, is just beginning. She is soon married to Albert, who is looking for a servant more than a wife. In this unlikely household, the contempt of the husband goes hand in hand with the beatings. Nettie, her young sister who settled with them, is chased by Albert for refusing his advances and managed to leave for Africa. Not knowing where to join her sister, Celie begins a correspondence with this one, and addresses her letters to this "dear good God". Even without return mail, this is the only solution that finds Celie not to sink into madness. She tells herself, without misery, describing the nightmare of violence and isolation but also the hope that will come from her meeting with the sensual Shug Avery, with whom Celie will tame her body, learn self-esteem and will know love.

The epistolary novel was born in the 17th century. This writing technique has the double advantage of quickly giving the reader the feeling of being very close to the characters, reading their mail, writing their letters, discovering at the same time as him the thread of events; but also to be prodigiously fashionable, so much it leaves room for testimony, voyeurism. Alice Walker, to talk about the racial and sexual oppression of black women in the southern United States, chose this technique. Celie, her main character, loses her mother very early, gets her children stolen, is married very early to a man who will beat her. Her sister, Nettie, defends the cause of Africans and leaves for the black continent to make humanitarian aid her daily life. They will spend all their life away from each other.

Alice Walker is very much inspired by past generations of her family. Several situations of the book thus have hints of lived. By her own admission, the writer first made this book as a tribute to her ancestors, and even if she presents them with absolute hardness, they are none the less human. It is above all this notion of humanity which seeks to put forward, while addressing many related themes.

In her fight for women, Alice Walker spares nothing, not even women between them. In search of freedom, hers are not always skilled and sometimes make mistakes that cost them the only thing they had. The author shows racism, discrimination, but not only whites against blacks: this is how it tells us, not without humor, that blacks look at each other and evaluate the color of their skin, judging themselves sometimes "coffee with milk, but with more coffee", sometimes "jet black".

...