The Color Purple By Alice Walker

Feminist Analysis of The Color Purple by Alice Walker In Alice Walkers The Color Purple, we have the narrator, Celie, writing letters to God talking to Him about what is going on in her life. The setting of the story takes place in the state of Georgia where Celie, the main character, plays the role of a typical feminine stereotype throughout the novel. Celie is dominated by the male role and does everything they tell her to do. The bullying starts right inside her home so she feels like it is normal for a man to treat a woman the way she was treated. Celie’s father, Alphonso, took advantage of her more than once in the beginning of the story. He raped her and impregnated her with two kids which he “killed or gave away”. Throughout the book, we see the way Celie and others around her are treated based on this stereotype and how change is developed towards the end of the book.
Looking at the beginning of this novel, we see how Alphonso treats Celie.
He rapes her twice and she gets pregnant those two times. We read that it seems that Alphonso killed the first baby and sold the second one. Alphonso sees Celie as ugly, that when Nettie, Celie’s sister, comes home with Mr. ____ to ask for her hand in marriage, Alphonso tells him no and offers Celie instead. Saying that she will do everything you tell her too and is very good with kids. When Celie marries Mr. ___, she gets abused by him both sexually and physically. When Harpo, Mr. ____ sees him doing this he believes it is normal for a man too hit a woman and treat her wrongly. We see that Celie lets this go on for a long time because she believes it will keep her alive. Until she meets other women that help her change her perspective and do something about
it. We see these strong roles of women when we meet Shug and Sofia, who are very independent women. Sofia, Harpo’s wife, wouldn’t allow him to mistreat her or lay a hand on her when he wanted too. She would him back since she was the bigger person between both of them. We also see how she stands up for the mayor’s wife when she returns back the slap when the mayor hits her. Even though Shug doesn’t follow the stereotypical feminine role she is still a very respective character. She is Mr. ___ other woman and she comes and goes as she pleases. Mr. ___ doesn’t tell her what to do, she also owned her sexuality. These women show a lot of independency and do not let themselves be dominated by other men. They are a very big example for Celie, showing her that it doesn’t have to be the way it is for her all the time. That she can change the outcome of her life. Towards the end of the novel, Celie finally breaks out and moves away with Shug, owning her sexuality at the same time. She ends up sewing pants for a living, and making a company out of it. She becomes independent and shows that she finally stood up for herself. This part of the novel slowly moves away from the stereotypical feminine role women played during those times, and focuses more on the way they are able to achieve independency and not defend themselves against men. Not letting them control and decide for them whenever they want to. It is hard to believe that those times are over, safe to say that we are not dealing with these horrors anymore, but it is not true. There is still female abuse in this world and people that think that women should be nothing more than staying at home at following the husband’s orders. Yes, we have grown into becoming independent and standing up for ourselves, but that doesn’t do it justice if there are people out there who don’t respect us women and believe that we can do the same thing a man can do. People put stereotypes on women, gender, and race, hurting everyone around us. We need to care about everyone surrounding us and not just ourselves, we need to learn about the mistakes that have happened in the past and learn from them, not repeat them.