Since the beginning of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, women have worked to communicate their experiences in dealing with a repressive patriarchal society and their efforts to destroy the degrading myths regarding women through writing. One of the most insistent and passionate voices of the emerging women authors has been that of the African-American woman. Intent upon survival as a result of being violently forced into slavery from their ancestors’ introduction to America to their existence, such women as Harriet A. Jacobs, Harriet E. Wilson, and Frances E. W. Harper birthed a new literary tradition by recording their stories for the world, especially women, to hear. Traditions known as the Slave Narrative, the Sensitive Novel, and the Cult of True Womanhood were reinforced by these women. As a result, their legacy continues to affect the women of the twentieth century.
Growing from such a rich heritage as the African-American woman built, Alice Walker is the newest heiress and contributor to the African-American Women’s tradition. The manifestation of the black woman’s history and a hope for the future can also be seen through the transformation of Alice Walker’s protagonist in her novel The Color Purple. Raped and beaten as a young child, Celie grows into a submissive, silent woman until she is liberated by the introduction of love and eroticism through a relationship with a fascinating blues singer Shug Avery. Celie’s journey parallels to that of the black woman in America and arrives at a promising conclusion.
What is now considered the Slave Narrative, developed as a result of a race unified by an institution founded upon the exploitation of human lives. The desire for survival created numerous untold stories of heroic and courageous individuals intent upon liberating those fettered beneath the demands of slaveholders(usually Caucasian, land owning males). The few who were able to tell their stories serve as a historical documentation of the horrors of slavery. Harriet A. Jacobs’ autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written By Herself(referred to as Incidents later on) and Harriet E. Wilson’s Our Nigserve as landmarks in African-American literature during the postbellum era. The stories of the women and the elements common to the Slave Narrative Convention in these books are comparable to the struggles of Celie in The Color Purple.
Published around 1860, Incidents and Our Nig serve as authentic support and can be considered as eyewitness accounts to the violent life Celie experiences. The initial shocking horror of the incestuous rape of Celie by the man whom she believes is her father, reflects the brutalities slave women experienced at the hand of white men. Winifred Morgan correctly asserts that Celie’s adolescent rape is a parody of the rape of slave women which the plantation myth considered “children of the patriarchal owner”(179). Comparatively, Jacobs tells of her initiation into the realities of master/slave relationships in “The Trials of Girlhood” as the moment she realized : “there is no shadow of law to protect her from insult, from violence, or even from death; these are inflicted by fiends who bear the shape of men”(27). The men Jacobs refers to are all male slave owners and any white man of class.
After the initial introduction of rape, Celie tells about the physical abuse she receives from her father. Using the excuse of Celie winking at a boy in church and later beating her for dressing “trampy” as a result to save her “new mammy,” Celie’s father exerts a dynamic of power which allowed men of all colors control over their women(6,8). The use of violence as control also runs rampant in Wilson’s Our Nig. The young protagonist Frado is beaten, punished, and dehumanized by the antagonist Mrs. Bellmont just as Celie is by her father and later her husband. By using such physical violence to control Celie and Frado, the dominant characters are exercising a sense of control over what they consider as their property. Even before and after slavery, women have been seen as pieces of “chattel” available in a market consisting solely for the purpose of degrading women. Therefore, as according to Trudier Harris, Celie has no value as a human being outside of domestic qualities and sexual services(7). Moreover, Celie is also introduced to a new line of slavery by being sold in marriage to Mr._____. When Mr.____ comes to ask for Celie’s sister Nettie in marriage, Celie’s father denies his request and then begins to bargain with Mr.____ for Celie instead: “She’d come with her own linen. She can take that cow she raise down there back of the crib”(9). Again Celie experiences what her ancestors experienced at the hands of slavery when being sold on the auction block.
In order to retell their stories and attempt to escape being treated as material wealth, women like Harriet E. Wilson and Harriet A. Jacobs worked to obtain the tools of education. As a common quest motif among Slave Narratives, the desire to gain knowledge of the world around them and the ability to read the Bible pushed many blacks toward the goal of literacy. By being able to read, African-Americans felt that the power imbalances would diminish and that the truth would not be so hard to hide from them by the majority’s desire for white supremacy. After Celie is “sold” to Mr.____, her sister Nettie runs from their rapist father to Celie’s new house. While Nettie is able to withstand the licentious intentions of Mr.____, she works to teach Celie “what go on in the world”(17). A past teacher even noticed that she “never knew nobody want to learn bad as Nettie and [Celie]”(11). Also, Nettie and Celie’s last words to each other are in reference to writing, showing the belief in how knowledge of reading and writing has benefits where illiteracy has disadvantages. In comparison, Jacobs recounts the “privilege” she was given when her mistress taught her to “read and spell” and even blesses her mistress’s memory(8). Therefore, as a quest motif, education is a theme common to Slave Narrative literature.
Another theme seen in The Color Purple is the concept of separation of families. Because of the limitless selling of people common to the Southern culture during the time of slavery, many families were inhumanly torn apart and heartlessly scattered far and wide across the South. Celie mirrors the same pain when Nettie is thrown out of Mr.____’s house for not giving into his sexual demands. The harsh reality of being stripped from the only person ever to have loved you, also resonates from Jacob’s chapter “The Slaves’ New Year’s Day” where she depicts the anxious scenes of families being ripped apart when “their doom [was] pronounced”(15).
One of the major differences seen in Celie as compared to the women who have experienced the same conditions in Incidents and Our Nig is survival. Harriet Jacobs fights back against the vile Dr. Flint and uses her intellect to terrorize him by leading Dr. Flint on random
goose-chases. In Our Nig, Frado also fights back against the cruelty she receives at the hands of Mrs. Bellmont by being witty and at times defensive. However, as Trudier Harris states it: “Celie survives by being a victim”(7). Rather than refusing to be pushed into the demeaning roles the men surrounding her create, Celie is only able to respond placidly. Celie also repeatedly refuses Nettie’s and Mr.____’s sister’s advice to fight back against Mr.____ and his children. Instead of defiance, Celie stays where she is told because all she knows how to do is “stay alive”(18). Celie has been beaten to believe that fighting back will only cause more problems for her. Unfortunately, her fear is reinforced by the events which cripple her daughter-in-law Sophia, who does attempt to fight back and is incarcerated for twelves years. Yet, it is Celie’s lack of ability to fight back which makes her eventual freedom more poignant and dependant upon the effects of relationships with other women.
With the introduction of Mr.____’s sisters Carrie and Kate and their beliefs that “when a woman marry she spose to keep a decent house and a clean family” (20) the influence of the Cult of True Womanhood is additionally apparent. The nineteenth century theory of the Cult of True Womanhood centered around the idea of separate spheres for men and women. As stated by Joanna Stephens Mink and Janet Doubler Ward, the men would dominate the “public world of business, politics, and the professions” and the women ruled the “private domestic sphere, becoming moral touchstone for hearth, husband, and children” (2). As a result of the standards against which women were judged(piety, submissiveness, domesticity, and purity), the African-American women in the nineteenth century attempted to encourage racial uplift and manifest their efforts through literature (McDowell 284).
One of the leaders of the revisionist movement was Frances E. W. Harper and her novel Iola Leroy. Iola Leroy is a tragic mulatto heroine who risks everything in an attempt to reunite her family after the Civil War. According to Deborah E. McDowell, the most striking thing about Iola Leroy is her glorification of domesticity and the virtues of motherhood (284). In New Literary History: A Journal of Theory and Interpretation, McDowell points out that as Iola fulfills her role as an “exemplary black woman” she begins to “resemble a saint more and more”(286). There is a loss of inner thoughts and individuality in Iola that serves as a reminder to the price of perfection.
As a contrast to Iola’s choice to become a wife and mother, Walker sets up Celie’s situation as a distortion of familiar Domestic and Sentimental novel traditions. Unlike the character Iola Leroy, Celie is beaten and defeated into her domestic maternal role. Just as Domestic novels depict the helpless plight of women, so does Walker show the hopelessness of Celie’s situation. However, the friendless victimized female figure of Celie is a result of the patriarchal brutality forcing her into a domestic sphere she did not choose. Whereas Iola revered the place of hearth and home.
As an alternative to the warnings of the Cult of True Womanhood about the consequences of sexuality, Walker introduces a lesbian relationship between Celie and Mr.____’s ex-lover Shug Avery in order to show how liberation and self-love results from accepting a person’s sexuality. At first Celie equates Shug’s actions to that of a man because they do not fit into the rules she has been taught regarding the roles of women (Walker 85). Angelene Jamison-Hall explains in “She’s Just Too Womanish For Them: Alice Walker and The Color Purple” that “like most people who have not freed themselves from convention, Celie assumes any woman who dares to wander and explore, to experience life and love sex is bound to be ‘acting like a man'”(195). Unlike the lack of passion in Harper’s Iola Leroy, Walker uses the union of Shug and Celie as a coming together of two women who share a common history and as a “symbol of their freedom from the restrictions society places on women”(Jamison-Hall 197).
The significance of the relationship between Celie and Shug is best defined within the limits of Alice Walker’s definition for womanism in George Stades’ essay Womanist Fiction and Male Characters: “A womanist who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually. Appreciates and prefers woman’s culture, woman’s emotional flexibility (and values tears as natural counterbalance of laughter), and woman’s strength….Loves the spirit…Loves herself. Regardless“(264). With the introduction of the sexual relationship between Celie and Shug, Walker begins to add her own stamp onto the tradition of African-American Women’s Literature. The idea of womanism is similar to the concept of feminism in that “Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender”(Stade 264). Rather than focusing on the equality of rights associated with the concept of feminism, Walker insists that womanism can be referred to as “female chauvinism”(Stade 264). Therefore, because she is a woman, only Shug is able to provide what the men in Celie’s life are unable to.
The positive effects of Shug are visible even before Shug and Celie become lovers. Celie begins to exert herself with more independence and shows a sense of self just after Shug introduces the clitoris to Celie. Following knowledge of her experimenting with masturbation and after Sofia has gone to jail, Celie gives advice to Mary Agnes(Squeak) telling her to “make
Harpo call [Mary Agnes] by [her] own name”(89). The advice Celia gives Mary Agnes is a direct contrast to the advice she gives Harpo about beating Sofia prior to Shug’s arrival. Appropriately, Linda Abbandonate believes that Celie’s ” growing sense of self and her capacity to see wonder in the world” is linked with her initiation to eroticism(1112).
“Nobody ever love me I say.
She say, I love you, Miss Celie. And then she haul off and kiss me on the mouth.
Um, she say, like she surprise. I kiss her back, say, um, too. Us kiss and kiss till us can’t hardly kiss no more. Then us touch each other.
Then I feels something real soft and wet on my breast, feel like one of my little lost babies mouth.
Way after while, I act like a little lost baby too”(118).
This scene is pivotal in the change that occurs in Celie. Just as a newborn babe must learn the ways of the world and feeling as if each day holds a new excitement, so does Celie consider herself undergoing a type of rebirth. Because of the love and passion that Shug awakens in Celie, Celie is able to step out of the defeated sexual role assigned to her as a rule of the patriarchal institution. The best example is after Shug has left Celie and Celie is talking with Mr.____ about Shug on the porch. Mr.____ says he loves most that “Shug act more manly than most men”(276). Just as this echoes Celie’s initial sentiments about Shug, Celie realizes that “what Shug got is womanly”(276). As compared to Mr.____ and Harpo, Shug is “upright, honest, speak her mind and the devil take the hindmost”(276). Therefore, Celie is able to see the strong qualities in Shug, not as stepping outside a role, but in defining and accepting those qualities in herself.
As another result to Celie’s enlightenment, not only does Celie stand up to Mr.____ and leave him, she also becomes a successful entrepreneur. By emerging as an independent, creative businesswoman, Celie’s pants making serves as a very “appropriate and effective symbol”(Harris 14) of shaking off the power the men in her life had over her. Pants have traditionally been considered as men’s apparel and as Celie takes control of a symbol of the patriarchal domain, she is turning the traditional roles men assigned women against men.
With its conclusion, Walker expresses the deepest feelings of women’s liberation. Celie and Shug establish a utopian community presided over by women, although “a couple of womanish men are allowed to hang around, so long as they behave themselves”(Stade 264). For example, Albert (he is no longer Mr.____) is hired as a sort of apprentice sewer and allowed to stay because to Celie he is just as other men are, “frogs”(290). Additionally, the hopeful ending created by Walker is also expressive of her desire for African-American women to carve out a new place for themselves and to be accepted as they are(Harris 7).
Overall, Walker’s novel is a complicated piece of work intent upon expressing her beliefs of women’s liberation rather than feminism. Although not each and every symbol, subject, or theme has been brought forth, the fact that Celie’s progression through the novel is allegorical to the various stages black women have recorded in literature is hopefully clear. The relationship between Celie and Shug is the catalyst for Celie to grow and learn self-love. “Hard not to love
Shug, I say. She know how to love somebody back”(289). It is through this love that Celie is able to defy her abusive husband, find love and sexual stimulation, gain confidence, build a business, and eventually make a place for herself in a patriarchal world intent upon make the black woman the “mule of the world.” Therefore, it is Walker’s cry for women’s liberation and her introduction of womanism to a story of abuse that has been so common in the past that allows her a place in the African-American Women’s Tradition.
Bibliography
Abbandonato, Linda. “A View from ‘Elsewhere”: Subversive Sexuality and the Rewriting of the Heroine’s Story in The Color Purple.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association ofAmerica. 106:5. 1991 October.
Harris, Trudier. From Victimization to Free Enterprise: Alice Walker’s The Color Purple.” Studies in American Fiction. 1986 Spring.
Jacobs, Harriet A. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written By Herself. Boston. 1861.
Jamison-Hall, Angelene. She’s Just Too Womanish For Them: Alice Walker and The Color Purple.” Censored Books :Critical Viewpoints. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow. 1993.
