Toward the Survival and Wholeness of the African American Community: A Womanist Reading of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (1982)

Introduction

This article attempts a womanist reading of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. Walker (1982) provides a gendered perspective of what it means to be “black,” “ugly,” “poor,” and a “woman” in America. This perspective is largely ignored in seminal and classical texts on African American literature mainly authored by male writers such as Richard Wright (1940), James Baldwin (1953), and Ralph Ellison (1952). For Wright (1940), Baldwin (1953), and Ellison (1952), race and class are the overriding themes in African American literature. This perspective, although important, ignores or at best marginalizes gender. However, female African American writers such as Alice Walker (1982), Toni Morrison (1970, 1987), and Zora Nearle Hurston (1937) foreground gender in their works as they give meaning to what it means to be “black,” “poor,” “ugly,” and a “woman” in America. We consider the intersectionality of the condition of being “black,” “poor,” “ugly,” and a “woman” as leading African American women into invisibility. However, Walker’s characters like Celie, Sofia, Shug, Mary Agnes and Nettie contest this invisibility on multiple fronts. This article therefore maps out Celie’s evolution from being a submissive and uneducated “nobody” (invisible) to a mature and independent “someone” (visibility). Two concepts namely “family” and “sisterhood,” derived from Walker’s (1982) conceptualization of womanism, inform this metamorphosis as Walker underscores her commitment to the survival and wholeness of African American people. This survival is anchored on the elimination of gender and patriarchal oppression within the African American community. Thus, Jenkins (2002) notes that patriarchy’s dissolution in The Color Purple creates an opportunity for men and women to begin to meet as equals without the pretenses involved in gender roles, and to get together against racism. Celie’s therapeutic recovery and radical transformation into an assertive, mature, and independent woman is also predicated on Walker’s (1982) concept of sisterhood. Celie finds comfort and solace from her fellow African American sisters like Nettie, Shug, and Sofia who assist her in her journey of self-discovery.

Womanism is a social and political theory/philosophy promulgated by Alice Walker (1983). Walker (1983, p. xi) defines womanism as the following:

A woman who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually. Appreciates and prefers women’s culture, women’s emotional flexibility (values tears as natural counter-balance of laughter), and women’s strength. Sometimes loves individual men, sexually and/or nonsexually. Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female. Not a separatist, except periodically, for health. Traditionally universalist, as in “Mama, why are we brown, pink, and yellow, and our cousins are white, beige, and black?” Ans: “Well, you know the colored race is just like a flower garden, with every color flower represented.” Traditionally capable, as in: “Mama, I’m taking you and a bunch of other slaves with me.” Reply: “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

Two key concepts emerge from the above definition, which we intend to employ in our analysis of The Color Purple. The first one is the idea of sisterhood, which finds expression in the phrase “A woman who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually. Appreciates and prefers women’s culture, women’s emotional flexibility (values tears as natural counter-balance of laughter), and women’s strength.” This concept of sisterhood is central in Celie’s transformation from being a “nobody” to a “somebody” as it marks her independence from oppression. The sisterly relations between Celie and Nettie, Celie and Sofia, and Celie and Shug clearly underline this sisterhood motif. The letter writing between Celie and Nettie and in the quilt making between Celie and Sofia further reinforces the motif. Walker (1982) uses quilt making as a metaphor of bridging and mending differences and reconciling characters to each other. Furthermore, quilt making also acts as a metaphor of subversion to conventional and parochial gender roles and stereotypes.

The second concept, notable from the above-cited definition by Walker (1983), which we employ in our analysis of The Color Purple is that of the family. The concept is encapsulated in Walker’s words “Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female.” Initially, most families in the text are depicted as dysfunctional with family members portrayed as preying on each other. The rupture between Celie and Nettie is caused by Mr ________ who happens to be married to Celie. Harpo and Sofia’s marriage is poisoned by Harpo’s insistence on “taming” and “domesticating” Sofia. However, as the text progresses and Celie’s transformation materializes, the family unit is restored.

Walker’s Commitment to the Survival and Wholeness of the African American Family

The Color Purple centers on the experiences of Celie and traces her existential, transformative, and redemptive journey from, someone who is traumatized by rape, impregnated twice by her stepfather Alphonso, forced to marry Mr ______, into a full grown independent, assertive, and confident woman. Alphonso’s rape of Celie invokes the history of African American enslavement where African American women were inherently vulnerable to all forms of sexual coercion. Critics such as Davis (1981) and Hudson-Weems (1989) argue that while the most violent punishments for enslaved men consisted of floggings and mutilations, the enslaved women were flogged, mutilated and raped given that their womanhood placed them in an even more vulnerable position. Walker indeed depicts that not only is Celie raped and impregnated twice by Alphonso, but her children are also forcibly taken away from her. Again, this echoes the history of enslavement where African American women were projected as “breeders” and not “mothers.” Davis (1981 observes that enslaved African American women in the eyes of the slaveholders were not mothers at all as they were simply instruments guaranteeing the growth of the slave labor force. Davis (1981) further argues that, as “breeders” and not “mothers,” enslaved African American women had their infant children sold away. Thus, Walker presents Celie as denied the right to motherhood since Alphonso takes her two children away from her:

He act like he can’t stand me no more. Say I’m evil an always up to no good. He took my other little baby, a boy this time. But I don’t think he kilt it. I think he sold it to a man an his wife over Monticello. I got breasts full of milk running down myself. (p. 5)

Walker (1982) in conflating the history of slavery with the oppression of African American women by African American men underscores the similarities and continuities of these two forms of oppression on the African American woman. However, it is important to note that family vitality proves stronger than Alphonso’s attempts at dehumanizing Celie as she finally reunites with her children and family. Thus, the reunion highlights Walker’s desire to heal the ruptured African American family and community.

The reunion of Celie with her children and Nettie challenges Patterson’s (1982) conceptualization of slavery as having created genealogical isolates and natally alienated persons. Patterson (1982) argues that enslaved Africans were genealogical isolates and natally alienated as they had been torn away from their previous universe. However, Celie’s reunion with her children and Nettie underlines the vitality of the African American family and demonstrates that African Americans cannot be considered as genealogical isolates nor were they permanently natally alienated. Irrespective of their physical separation, Celie and Nettie choose to remember each other through the letters they write to each other.

Walker (1982) ends her text with a family reunion on the fourth of July. The fourth of July is a significant date in American history as it commemorates American independence from England. However, Walker (1982) challenges this narrative of America as a family celebrating its independence from England on the fourth of July. She depicts America as a racially polarized country where American independence celebration on the fourth of July only resonates with European Americans and not African Americans. This underlines the problematic relationship between nation and race in African American history. The African American community in The Color Purple sees no reason in celebrating independence from England as they are still victims of racism. However, it is significant to note that African Americans use the day to celebrate “each other” (p. 261). The idea of celebrating “each other” not only stresses unity and oneness but also testifies to the elimination of all forces that might conspire against such unity and oneness. Thus, when Henrietta asks why African Americans always have family reunion on the fourth of July, Harpo tells her that

White people busy celebrating they independence from England July 4^th, say Harpo, so most black folks don’t have to work. Us can spend the day celebrating each other. (pp. 260-261)

Consequently, instead of celebrating American independence from England, African Americans use the day to celebrate the “survival and wholeness” (Walker, 1983, p. xi) of the African American family and community. Thus, Hite (1989, p. 110) notes that the fourth of July celebrations in The Color Purple are “part family reunion, part assertion of a new social order” supplanting the old. A politics of gender oppression governed the old order unlike the new which is premised on gender equality where the characters in the text to achieve wholeness have freed themselves “of the inflexibilities of traditional roles” (Hudson-Weems, 1989, p. 201). In this new social order, the characters have the responsibility of defining their own roles in society, unshackled by those of the past. Equally important is Jenkins’ (2002) view that family serves as a central metaphor for community and nation in African American political discourse. Thus, Walker (1982) by challenging conventional definitions of the black family, indeed, by challenging the very figure of the black patriarch “challenges the very structure of the black community, inasmuch as that community is considered a kind of black patriarchal family-writ-large” (Jenkins, 2002, p. 995).

Initially, gender oppression was pivotal in keeping the African American community divided in the text as most of the conflict and tension was gender related. Harpo and Sofia’s family life was poisoned by Harpo’s attempts to dominate Sofia. Harpo loves Sofia but panics as he cannot reconcile himself to the fact that Sofia happens to be an indomitable spirit. Thus, Harpo gives credence to Zizek’s (2018) view that male violence against women is largely a panicky reaction to the fact that traditional male authority has become enfeebled. Harpo’s insistence on “taming” and “domesticating” Sofia only ends with Harpo’s transformation as he begins to appreciate and consider Sofia as his equal and partner. Mr _____ and Celie’s marriage and family life was also harmed by Mr _______ ill-treatment of Celie. African American men like Mr ____ and Harpo initially have a toxic and rigid understanding of gender. However, as the text progresses such men metamorphose into loving and caring men who are sensitive to the needs and desires of women. The transformation corroborates Zizek (2018) who notes that part of the struggle for emancipation should be to demonstrate to men how the acceptance of emancipated women will release men from their anxieties and enable them to lead more satisfied lives. Thus, Celie no longer refers to Mr ________ as Mr _____ but calls him by his name Albert, which indicates a significant transition in the relationship. However, the family reunion celebration by African Americans is also an act of subversion and resistance. The celebration poses a threat to white America as African Americans are now united and therefore better positioned to confront the racism that governs America as a united front.

Sisterhood as a Tactic of Survival and the Springboard to Freedom

The concept of sisterhood is very pronounced in The Color Purple. Lewis (2012) argues that sisterhood is a result of an awareness of being similar to other black women in terms of feelings, ideas, interests, ideology, and politics. However, this sisterhood is not some mysterious or innate characteristic of black women as it is a product of lived experiences. The text’s epistolary form exemplifies this element of sisterhood as the letters are written between Nettie and Celie. Nonetheless, we focus on three female relationships that epitomize sisterhood. The first relationship is that of Celie and Nettie. Second, we focus on the relationship of Celie and Sofia. Finally, we examine the relationship between Celie and Shug. All three relationships, however, have one common denominator, which is Celie. Thus, we argue that the relationships in one way or another seek to help Celie discover herself. Heglar (2000) argues that Sofia and Shug are models for Celie’s evolution as they provide alternatives to male domination in the ability to break through imposed stereotypes and boundaries to provide models for others, both male and female, to follow. Similarly, Hudson-Weems (1989, p. 204) notes that Sofia and Shug “serve as positive, assertive female models” for Celie. Central to Celie’s self-discovery is self-knowledge. The relationships also address multiple issues such as gender oppression, domestic violence, marital rape and physical abuse bedeviling the African American community. The letters addressed to “God” are Celie’s cry for connection, understanding and love. Celie’s desire for connection, understanding and love is triggered by Alphonso’s sexual abuse and psycho-emotional blackmail of Celie. Alphonso threatens Celie not to verbalize the abuse, “You better not never tell nobody but God. It’d kill your mummy” (p. 3). Resultantly, Alphonso renders Celie voiceless by raping and impregnating her twice as she cannot verbalize nor comprehend what is happening to her.

Celie’s forced marriage to Mr _____ further complicates her situation. The marriage mimics the sexploitation of the African American woman typical of the forced display of enslaved African women at the auction block:

Mr _________ come finally one day looking all drug out. The woman he had helping him done quit. His mammy done said No more. He say, Let me see her again. Pa call me. Celie, he say. Like it wasn’t nothing. Mr—want another look at you. I go stand in the door. The sun shine in my eyes. He’s still up on his horse. He look me up and down. Pa rattle his newspaper. Move up, he won’t bite, he say. I go closer to the steps, but not too close cause I’m a little scared of his horse. Turn round, Pa say. I turn round. (p. 12)

Celie only feels connected to and is very protective of Nettie, her younger sister. However, their stay together is disrupted after Nettie, with the encouragement of Celie, escapes Mr ______ predatory sexual advances. It is important to note that Celie and Nettie remained connected, despite the forced separation and Mr ______ attempts to keep them separated. Nettie gets employed as a maid by Samuel and Corrine and her primary task is to look after the couple’s two adopted children, a girl and boy named Olivia and Adam, respectively. What is interesting, however, is the fact that Olivia and Adam are Celie’s children. Thus, it can be argued that Celie and Nettie remain connected through Nettie’s taking care of Olivia and Adam.

The two sisters, with Nettie’s volition, write letters to each other, which connects and sustains them especially when Nettie temporarily migrates to Africa as a missionary. The letter writing is both an act of maintaining ties and a subversive act of resistance and remembrance, especially on the part of Nettie who initiates and sustains it. This echoes Kundera’s (1979) observation that the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. By physically separating Celie and Nettie, Mr ______ intends to keep the rupture between the sisters permanent. However, Nettie’s letter writing seeks to keep alive the memories of Celie. Furthermore, the idea that Nettie temporarily migrates to Africa yet still feels connected to Celie and vice versa underscores the fact that Patterson’s (1982) concepts of genealogical isolate and natal alienation are not largely true of all human relationships that have been tainted by enslavement and oppression. Celie and Nettie, separated from each other for the greater part of the story, invoke the history of African American enslavement where countless African American families were forcibly disrupted. Davis (1981) notes that the separation, through indiscriminate sales of husbands, wives, and children, was a terrifying hallmark of enslavement. However, as Davis (1981) argues further, the bonds of love and affection, the cultural norms governing family relations, and the overpowering desire to remain together, survived the devastating onslaught of slavery as the enslaved Africans tried desperately and daily to maintain their family lives, enjoying as much autonomy as they could seize. Celie and Nettie epitomize this spirit of resilience and resistance as they fight to remain connected and united, and in a way concretise Walker’s (1982) vision of the African American family as a unitary organic system.

The second female relationship, crucial to Celie’s evolution is the relationship she enjoys with Shug Avery. Walker (1982) depicts Shug as a free spirit operating above and beyond the confines of convention, power, and authority. It is to Shug that Celie opens up about her traumatic past and present experiences involving rape, physical, and psychological abuse at the hands of Alphonso and Mr _______. Dialogue is presented as an important step in Celie’s therapeutic healing and self-discovery as the bond of love and affection is established in the way Shug guides and supports Celie toward self-discovery. Thus, it is Shug who helps Celie to discover her own sexuality, spirituality, and ultimately her very identity. However, this knowledge of the self is premised on a re-evaluation of one’s body given that the body is a terrain for investing and contesting cultural symbols, values and power (Foucault, 1995).

Shilling (2003) also argues that there is a tendency in conditions of high modernity, for the body to become increasingly central to the modern person’s sense of self-identity. Shug symbolizes the energizing vitalizing power of strong female relationships in the text as she assists Celie to appreciate her body and the power of her sexuality. This discovery is premised on a re-evaluation of her body after years of physical, emotional, psychological, and sexual abuse. Thus, Ross (1988) argues that one of the primary projects of modern feminism has been to restore women’s bodies, appropriated long ago by a patriarchal culture to women given that the body is the most exploited target of male aggression and that some women have even learned to fear or even hate their bodies. To men like Alphonso and Mr ______, Celie’s body is just there for their sexual gratification and exploitation. However, under Shug’s tutelage, Celie begins to love and appreciate her body.

Walker represents black women’s sexual relationships with and tutelage of one another as an alternative to being subjected to masculinist and dominative ideas of sex. Lewis (2012) argues that Walker positions Celie’s woman directed masturbation and vulnerability as the means through which her burgeoning self-awareness and self-love are experienced. It is also important to note that Celie has never associated sex with pleasure in her life. She projects sex as synonymous with violation, pain, and abuse:

She [Celie’s mother] went to visit her sister doctor over Macon. Left me to see after the others. He [Alphonso] never had a kine word to say to me. Just say You gonna do what your mammy wouldn’t. First he put his thing up gainst my hip and sort of wriggle it around. The he grab hold my titties. Then he push his thing inside my pussy. When that hurt, I cry. He start to choke me, saying You better shut up and git used to it. (p. 3)

This rape and the subsequent disdain Celie has for sex also characterizes her forced marriage to Mr _____. Celie confesses to Shug that sex with Albert is not pleasurable, “I don’t know nothing bout it. Mr _____ clam on top of me, do his business, in 10 minutes us both sleep” (p. 63) and proceeds to call all men “frogs.” The word “frogs” underscores Celie’s disdain for men and sex. However, Shug teaches Celie an alternative version of sexuality, premised on lesbianism and a re-evaluation of her body. Abbandonato (1991) comments that Celie’s lesbianism is politically significant as it subverts masculine cultural narratives of femininity and desire and rewrites them from a feminist point of view. Similarly, Proehl (2018) notes that the lesbian affair between Shug and Celie serves as a vehicle to combat patriarchal violence and oppression. Celie’s re-evaluation of her body privileges the clitoris over the vagina as the most important site of female sexual pleasure:

It mine, I say. Where the button? Right up near the top, she say. The part that stick out a little. I look at her and touch it with my finger. A little shiver go through me. Nothing much. But just enough to tell me this the right button to mash. (p. 75)

Initially, Celie is subjected to what Abbandonato (1991) terms as “psychological clitoridectomy.” However, Celie’s re-evaluation of her body and the discovery of the clitoris becomes “accompanied by a whole range of other discoveries that relegate man to margins of a world he has always dominated” (Abbandonato 1991, p. 1112). The relationship also provides the platform for Celie to be an economically independent person. It is Shug who first suggests to Celie to start her own sewing business. The business later catapults Celie into being an economically independent woman, just as the teaching on sex and the body made her to love her body and transformed her into a happy character.

Finally, we consider Celie and Sofia’s relationship. Walker (1982) depicts Sofia as a confident and assertive woman. Hudson-Weems (1989) considers Sofia as a character who helps Celie to redefine her personhood. Similarly, Fiske (2008) also argues that Sophia’s story and experience gives new shape to Celie’s own by allowing her to reimagine herself in the active role of survivor and fighter. When Celie advises Harpo, Sofia’s husband to beat her as a way of making her submissive, Sofia confronts Celie. The confrontation however is pivotal in shaping their relationship as they realize that they are both victims of patriarch and therefore should be uniting in their fight against patriarch. Fiske (2008, p. 152) also notes that the narrative exchange between Celie and Sofia “validates the poignancy of each woman’s private experience and, through that validation, binds them in a healing bond of friendship as Celie tentatively emerges from her habitual numbness.” The reconciliation between Celie and Sofia is facilitated by quilting making. Sofia suggests that they make quilt pieces, “Let’s make quilt pieces out of these messed up curtains, she say. And I run git my pattern book. I sleeps like a baby now” (p. 41). Fiske (2008) thus notes that as the two women begin to make quilt pieces, Celie begins to mend her emotional wounds and piece together the first fragments of a more stable subjectivity. The quilt therefore both legitimates the suffering that characters have experienced and symbolizes the integration of broken lives with the thread of stories the women share about their “messed up” pasts.

Quilt making is a metaphor of bridging differences, fostering friendship and sowing a sense of sisterhood. Fiske (2008) argues that Celie’s struggles and her strengthening sense of self are contingent on her integration into a supportive network of friends constructed on the sharing of stories that testify to the individuality of personal suffering and from the threads binding broken lives into a stronger whole. It is critical to note that as Celie becomes more and more independent and assertive, Mr ______ is also transformed into a better person. The sewing between Celie and Mr ______ becomes metaphoric of this attempt to re-humanize him. Thus, a transformed Mr _______ confesses to Celie that

When I was growing up, he said, I use to try to sew along with mama cause that’s what she was always doing. But everybody laughed at me. But you know, I liked it. Well, nobody gon laugh at you now, I said. Here, help me stitch in these pockets. But I don’t know how, he say. I’ll show you, I said. And I did. Now us sit sewing and talking and smoking our pipes. (p. 247)

What is significant about the above conversation between Celie and Mr _______ is that previously their communication had been in the form of commands. However, through the very act of sewing Mr _______ is re-humanized into seeing Celie as human and therefore his equal. Jenkins (2002) sees Mr ______ sewing with Celie as metaphoric of his character having divested from patriarchal behaviors which marked him as a tyrant in the earlier potions of the novel. Thus, Mr _______ confesses that Celie is in fact “good company” (p. 250) and Celie also realizes that Mr ______ is “somebody” she “can talk to” (p. 250). Lewis (2012, p. 167) therefore notes that Mr _______ and Celie have become friends rather than volatile husband and abused wife:

The failed patriarch becomes a symbol of successful, feminist heterosexual masculinity and the shameless black same-sex desiring woman becomes emblematic of successful black female sexual articulation.

Similarly, Heglar (2000) notes that Mr _________ transformation is signaled by a renaming as Albert. Heglar (2000) further argues that the renaming at once diminishes and humanizes as Walker skillfully erases, withholds, or supplies surnames for her characters to develop an alternative perspective that challenges, overturns, and regenerates the patriarchal society of the novel. The change in Albert, as Jenkins (2002) argues, also comes along with a shift in actual family dynamics as he becomes more feminized as he is displaced from the role of father and husband, as his family is “queered” by Celie and Shug’s romantic involvement.

Conclusion

This article attempted a womanist reading of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. It focused on Walker’s (1983) two concepts of family and sisterhood. The concept of family is central in the text and emphasizes Walker’s (1982) commitment to the survival and wholeness of the African American people. It is therefore not surprising that the text ends with Celie celebrating the unity and oneness of the African American family. Walker (1982) celebrates this unity and oneness through the reunion of Celie and Nettie. This reunion is metaphoric of the healing of the African American community of all the evils bedeviling it. The concept of sisterhood largely manifests itself in three key relationships in the text. We analyzed the significance of these relationships to Celie’s evolution and development into an assertive, confident, and independent mature woman. Celie and Nettie’s relationship is predicated on the two sister’s desire to remain connected and united. This is central in their fight against oppression as the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. Thus, the reunion of the two sisters is a victory of memory and remembrance over the forces of oppression that sought to keep them divided. The second relationship, we focused on, was that of Celie and Shug. This relationship is significant as it teaches Celie to re-evaluate her body. This re-evaluation is central to the project of self-knowledge and self-identification. The third relationship we also analyzed was that of Celie and Sofia, which is critical in the sense that it demonstrates the power of dialogue in resolving differences and building bridges.