Femal Relationships In The Color Purple

Decent Essays
In the Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Color Purple, there is one constant occurrence throughout this fictional masterpiece: abuse. The protagonist, Celie, endures chronic physical, emotional, mental, verbal, and sexual abuse almost her entire life. Celie's constant endurance of multiple types of abuse display the damaging affects of the average African-American woman in the early 1900s. Alice Walker tells the miraculous story of a young African-American woman's survival and journey to discover her individualality through different types of femal relationships during a time of racial segregation and female oppression.

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Entry 1: How White Men Affected Her In the beginning of the book, Mary Crow Dog immediately tells the audience about how hard being an Indian woman is in the face of white men, through repetition and examples like: “I am a woman of the Red Nation, a Sioux woman. That is not easy. ”(Crow Dog, pg. 3) and “It is hard being an Indian woman. ”(Crow Dog, pg. 4) She says that she is a victim of sexual violence because she is not respected due to her race and gender, “At age 15 I was raped.”…

    • 2130 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    The color purple isn’t a life that I have personally lived or seen others around me live but it is a life that can be experienced by others around the globe. The connection doesn’t need to start from one being sexually abused by the father but it can be a woman finding out who she really is after the worst has happened to her. A connection to the color purple can be one that comes from the movies. In Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Family reunion Lisa Breaux, one of Madea's nieces, is engaged to an abusive and controlling investment banker by the name of Carlos Armstrong.…

    • 378 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a dystopian novel that takes the reader on a journey through a future world where books are illegal. The novel outlines the fact that books are important to civilization in many ways, whether it be content, characters, themes, or any important historical foundation that books contain. At the end of the book, the main character, Guy Montag, grabs a few books to save from the firemen, and finds himself amongst a group of homeless book lovers who each have books, or portions of books, memorized where they are safe from the hands of firemen and the government. With the idea of being in Montag’s place and having a choice of which books I would save, I would have chosen The Color Purple, The Wind in the Willows, and The Life of Pi, each for their own unique qualities that would be valuable for future civilizations for historical reference. Rich with gender and racial history, The Color Purple by Alice Walker exemplifies what life was like in the early 1900s for southern African American women.…

    • 776 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    All the major themes in the story addiction, family, and suffering are tied to race and racism. Sonny’s Blue gave a glimpse of an African-American living in Harlem during the Civil Rights.…

    • 457 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Color Purple Analysis

    • 1131 Words
    • 5 Pages

    “We are products of our past, but we don't have to be prisoners of it,” states Rick Warren. Rick Warren is a pastor for Saddleback church, who is also the author of many books such as The Purpose of Driven life. Being prisoner to the past means being stuck on a terrifying or life changing experience that one is unable to let go of. Not letting that memory go traps one in an endless loop where everything is guided in their life to misery. Characters such as Cholly and Pauline are stuck in this loop.…

    • 1131 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    This course explored four novels, which examined the connections between race, gender, age, and class. The women characters from each novel dealt with their own victimizations. The two women that will be discussed within this essay are Janie Crawford from Their Eyes Were Watching God and Etta Mae Johnson from The Women of Brewster Place. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie Crawford is the main character, and the novel explores her story which consist of confusion, love, and hate. Janie experiences many obstacles and hardships; she strives to find her voice and eventually succeeds in doing so over many years.…

    • 2175 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Evelyn Cunningham stated, “Women are the only oppressed group in our society that lives in intimate association with their oppressors.” Character, setting, and conflict reveal oppression of…

    • 1068 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    In the early-to-mid 1900s, blacks not only had to endure the physical tension of discrimination and segregation, but also the emotional pain of being unable to achieve their dreams due to social barriers. “Sonny’s Blues” focuses primarily on the effects mental strain it had on people during that time and the different ways in which they handled it. Every individual in this work is suffering in some way, be it through poverty, lack of opportunity, or loss. The way in which characters undertake these stressors, however, differ greatly. While Sonny initially manages his burdens in a negative manner, he changes for the better by finding positive outlets for his…

    • 1338 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Many historical themes can be seen in the book, holding relevance to the time period. The Color Purple exposes just how life really was back then, especially as a black female in the South (Walker). The text tells and shows the themes from the time period, such as racial tensions and segregation, male-female and husband-wife relationships, and lastly the remnants of slavery. During the course of the…

    • 1512 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In this profound work of fiction, Walker described the conditions in which Black women lived under in Jim Crow Georgia in the early twentieth century. The novel is filled with scenes of abuse, rape, and violence against women, but ends with the women of the novel stronger and bolder characters. Sofia represented this characterization…

    • 1137 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The White Savior Using a white and black paradigm, the black maids are the narrative subjects of The Help, yet many black readers such as myself, viewed Skeeter as the centralized protagonist and voice. The harshest yet powerful woman in the novel was white socialite Hilly Holbrook, the evil antagonist, was portrayed in a negative light in order for readers to identify Skeeter as the “white saviour”. She terrorizes, isolates, and dehumanizes her domestic workers, specifically Minnie, throughout the novel. The catalyst that drove the domestic workers to rebel was when Hilly organized a campaign for white families to build separate toilets for domestic workers to avoid “black diseases” (Stockett, 2009, p. 8). This campaign is the catalyst for…

    • 1338 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the book The Color Purple, Alice Walker explores Celies’ quest for identity. Walker uses strong female relationships, the disruption of gender roles and Celies’ letters to Nettie and God to show the evolution that Celie undergoes throughout the novel. Strong Female relationships play a huge part in Celies’ growth throughout the book. Walker uses these relationships to show how they give Celie courage to stand up for herself against the men in her life and the people who mistreat her.…

    • 643 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Alice Walker’s novel, The Color Purple, is a story about a woman who, through companionship and support from a loved one, is able to turn her life around for the better. For much of Celie’s adulthood, she is unable to stand up for herself or express her own opinions to the men that intimidated her. However, over the course of her life, she begins to discover who she is sexually and gain confidence to be who she wants to be. Celie’s evolution of her self confidence, self worth and sexuality is catalyzed and enhanced by Shug Avery’s presence and support in Celie’s life.…

    • 1487 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    It seems to be Walkers belief that Africans all over the world, from many backgrounds, do not need an image to follow or praise, but rather a loving and powerful force to guide and protect them. By detailing the personal experiences and religious growth of her characters in The Color Purple, Alice Walker reveals a new way of approaching Catholicism based upon the struggles of African-Americans, while Countee Cullen approaches this same topic with traditional beliefs in God’s great and indeterminable will. These varying points of…

    • 860 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, strong female characters often challenge the idea of traditional gender roles. The presence of strong women, such as, Shug Avery and Sofia, inspire Celie to redefine her role as a woman. Shug Avery introduces a new type of female strength in the text. Shug’s attitude and ideas challenge traditional gender roles and ideas of sexuality. Shug controls all of the men in her life.…

    • 1768 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays