Celie In The Color Purple

The Development of Celie`s personality due to the Impact of other Women in the Novel The Color Purple

“I`m pore, I`m black, I may be ugly and I can`t cook, a voice say to everything listening.
But I`m here.” (p. 210)

In the beginning of the book “The Color Purple”, the protagonist, Celie, is a ruined desperate woman. Her sole has been injured by her father`s violence, endless rules and orders, which she is forced to follow and ignorant indifferent people, who never show any concern for her. The main feeling inside her is shame, endless shame for how she acts, how she lives and how she looks. “I think, I might as well be under the table for all they care. I hate the way I look, I hate the way I’m dress,”- she thinks to herself while
sitting at Harpo`s (p. 74). This endless feeling of shame made her voiceless, dumb. “Somebody got to stand up for Shug, I think. But I don’t say nothing.”(p.44) She doesn`t have enough courage to stand up for anyone. Even if this “anyone” is her passion, her idol. “Your life made you feel so shamed you couldn’t even talk about it to God”. (p. 130) No matter how strongly she believes in what she wants to say, she does not dare to say it out loud. But by the end of the book we see an absolutely different personality– strong, self-confident, independent, brave enough to argue back to a man, to stand for her right not just to survive and to leave a full and happy life.
Her path to this change in personality was not easy, and it would have been impossible without other women`s influences. Sofia, the woman “looking like the last person you`d ever expect to see waiting on anybody” (p. 131), was the strongest proof of how wrong Celie’s relationships with Mr.___ were. Celie should not be blamed for the advice she gave once to Harpo, telling him to beat Sofia. She knew no other way to build a relationship between a man and a woman. But Sofia`s bewilderment, anger and her fight against these conventional but outrageous norms of behavior showed Celie that she had a right to be treated in another way, though at that time she still did not dare to demand it.
Little Squeak seemed to be her reflection; a quiet wife, who is ready to accept everything, ready to have an alias instead of a name. But this time Celie`s advice was wiser. “Make Harpo call you by your real name,” – she said (p. 86). Though it took time for Squeak to become Mary Agnes, this advice finally worked, and was important not only for Squeak but also for Ms. Celie. It showed her rethought of the word, her rethought of herself. At that moment she was on her way to self-awareness as a person, who has right to be respected and does not silently agree with the unfair treatment of anyone, including herself.
Shug, a beautiful strong woman, covered in fur and fabulous dresses, acts as she wants, without caring for society’s opinion and fake morality.
She is in a separate reality for Celie. A reality so different from what it means to be “normal” that it is difficult to believe it exists. The clearest example of Shug’s influence on Celie`s personality occurred well before they fell in love with each other - when she sang the song “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” at Harpo`s, the first time “somebody made something and name it after me”.(p 74) Shug forced Mr.___ to stop beating Celie. She showed her love, care, showed her that she really deserves it all in life and helped her to believe in it. It is hard to overvalue the influence of this woman, how she helped the protagonist to finally get the life she did not even dare to dream about in the beginning. The inspiring image of this women, whose photo used to be in Celie`s pocket for so many years, showed her, how the life of a woman could possibly be. Her help getting Celie’s sister`s letters after so many years, her confidence in Celie, her help getting Celie to believe in herself, to manage her life, to earn a living, to get her own house (without Shug`s advices, she would have probably refused from it) changed Celie. But the main thing Shug gave Calie was not her help in improving her material surroundings and becoming independent, but the feeling, that she actually deserves it
all.
In the end of the book we see an absolutely different woman, who is self-confident, dares to show her opinions, listens to her heart and follows its voice, feels in union with the nature the surrounds her and the whole world. Finally this woman gets the last thing she needed to be happy, her sister, who she has not seen in so many years. After a long and complicated path through all possible boundaries, she became an absolutely different person, the complete opposite of her former self. Alice Walker manages to provide completely happy ending to her book, but made it absolutely reasonably.
“Amen”.

Number of Words: 847 (including quotations), 741 (excluding quotations)

Works cited:
Alice Walker: The Color Purple. Hartcourt, Orlando, first Harvest edition 2003.