What is more, with such characters as the scandalous singer Shug Avery and the sturdy village girl Sofia, the author introduces an optimistic image of the new age modern woman. This new woman is not only independent, strong and able to stand up for herself, but is in many ways also extremely masculine: she looks butch, participates in fights, wears trousers, talks, thinks and makes love like a man. Finally, in The Color Purple these masculine women have a huge impact on the psychological metamorphosis of the main female character Celie, who from a former passive victim turns into a new age woman; tough, liberated from the bonds of male power and surprisingly masculine. The present paper will focus on the ways through which, by portraying
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This term is usually used as a complement to “femininity”. Common masculine features are considered to be strength, boldness, courage, crudity, rational thinking and determination in decision-making, whereas traditional feminine features are politeness, gentleness, modesty, delicacy, submissiveness to God and husband. Interestingly, in the traditional perception, masculinity is related only to male bodies, male activities and is appropriate only to men. A famous scholar and queer theorist, Judith Halberstam, questions this traditional approach and in her book Female Masculinity explains that masculinity cannot and should not be confused with maleness; she defines female masculinity as one of the possible forms of alternative masculinity, which has been neglected in patriarchal society for an excruciatingly long time and provides examples of women who, just like Shug Avery and Sofia from The Color Purple, possess the above mentioned traditional manly/masculine physical and mental features.
As briefly mentioned above, the main aim of this paper is to show that in her novel The Color Purple, Alice Walker breaks the traditional boundaries of masculinity as a signifier of male power. To achieve the aim, the novel was thematically divided into three main parts (referred to herein as The Past, The Breakthrough and The Future), each of which …show more content…
Gynocriticism involves three major aspects. The first is the examination of female writers and their place in literary history. The second is the consideration of the treatment of female characters in books by both male and female writers. The third and most important aspect of gynocriticism is the discovery and exploration of a canon of literature written by women; gynocriticism seeks to appropriate a female literary tradition. In Showalter's A Literature of Their Own, she proposes the following three phases of women's
This term is usually used as a complement to “femininity”. Common masculine features are considered to be strength, boldness, courage, crudity, rational thinking and determination in decision-making, whereas traditional feminine features are politeness, gentleness, modesty, delicacy, submissiveness to God and husband. Interestingly, in the traditional perception, masculinity is related only to male bodies, male activities and is appropriate only to men. A famous scholar and queer theorist, Judith Halberstam, questions this traditional approach and in her book Female Masculinity explains that masculinity cannot and should not be confused with maleness; she defines female masculinity as one of the possible forms of alternative masculinity, which has been neglected in patriarchal society for an excruciatingly long time and provides examples of women who, just like Shug Avery and Sofia from The Color Purple, possess the above mentioned traditional manly/masculine physical and mental features.
As briefly mentioned above, the main aim of this paper is to show that in her novel The Color Purple, Alice Walker breaks the traditional boundaries of masculinity as a signifier of male power. To achieve the aim, the novel was thematically divided into three main parts (referred to herein as The Past, The Breakthrough and The Future), each of which …show more content…
Gynocriticism involves three major aspects. The first is the examination of female writers and their place in literary history. The second is the consideration of the treatment of female characters in books by both male and female writers. The third and most important aspect of gynocriticism is the discovery and exploration of a canon of literature written by women; gynocriticism seeks to appropriate a female literary tradition. In Showalter's A Literature of Their Own, she proposes the following three phases of women's