Locating Female Transgression against Heteronormative Society: A Comparative Study of Three African American Novels

Introduction

In 1983, Alice Walker (b. 1944) was the first African American novelist to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction with her novel The Color Purple. The work also won the National Book Award for fiction that year and has been translated into nearly 30 languages. It was made into an Academy Award-nominated film directed by Steven Spielberg in 1985. Apart from award-winning works for African American literature, Walker’s global recognition as a writer and political activist significantly contrasts with lesser-known novelists such as Ann Allen Shockley (b. 1927) and Gloria Naylor (1950‒2016). Shockley’s 1974 novel, Loving Her, a ground-breaking and pioneering text, was the first African American novel to explicitly address lesbian love and effectively challenge prevailing heterosexuality. Shockley (2000) has said that an independent woman who identifies as a black lesbian is a threat, not only to the projection of black machismo but sexually, dangerously, to the black male’s designated role as ‘king of lovers’. Naylor was influenced by Walker and other African American women writers, such as Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison. The Women of Brewster Place won the National Book Award in 1983 for the first novel and was adapted as a miniseries in 1989 as well as the television show Brewster Place, starring Oprah Winfrey, in 1990.

This study is significant as it conducts research on women novelists such as Shockley and Naylor and compares them to Walker to locate female transgressions against heteronormativity. All three novels have been explored from several perspectives, including feminism, socialist feminism and the politics of same-gender-loving. The novelists, who struggled to write within a masculine-centred literary tradition, decons-tructed ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ (Rich, 1980) while boldly and purposefully addressing the intersectional experiences of their women characters. This comparative study offers an overview of lesbian feminist theory and the theory of intersectionality, as well as the use of these theories in analysing the novels with regard to female transgression against heteronormative society.

Lesbian Feminist Theory and Intersectionality: An Overview

Selden et al. (2007) claim that lesbian feminist theory emerged as a response to both the heterosexism of mainstream culture and radical subcultures and the sexism of the male-dominated Gay Liberation Movement. It focuses on the interlocking structure of gender and sexual oppression. Lesbian feminist theory, like lesbian feminism, emerged as part of a broader challenge against heterosexism and sexism. The interrelation of heterosexism and sexism gives rise to the oppression of lesbians. Selden et al. contend that lesbian feminist theorists have consistently problematised heterosexuality, which is an institution central to the maintenance of patriarchy and women’s oppression. The lesbian feminist theory is a critique of ‘compulsory heterosexuality’, an emphasis on ‘women identification’ and creation of an alternative women’s community. It foregrounds a black, radical, feminist and psychoanalytic approach. Monique Wittig claims that in an important sense ‘lesbians are not women, for what makes a woman is a specific social relation to a man and so woman acquires meaning only in heterosexual systems of thought and heterosexual economic systems’ (in Selden et al., 2007). Wittig rejects the concept of women’s identification and argues that it remains tied to the dualistic concept of gender that is challenged by lesbians. Rejecting gendered categories, lesbians go across gender boundaries.

De Lauretis (1994) asserts that a ‘homosexual factor’ or the ‘homosexual maternal’ is latent in every woman and that lesbianism is not only sexual but also socio-symbolic. Whether lesbianism is symbolic or practical, it definitely questions male supremacy. Jeffreys (1994) posits that in choosing to love members of an ‘inferior’ sex, lesbians are disloyal to the idea of male supremacy. These lesbian feminists have transformed lesbianism from a stigmatised sexual practice to political practice and they pose a challenge to male supremacy and the basic institution of heterosexuality. The idea is that lesbianism is unquestionably a political choice as it goes against existing political dictates. When women refuse men and accept women in terms of non-sexual or sexual love, they lend a hand to the political struggle against the heterosexual system.

Clarke (2000) contends that black Americans in a sexually repressive culture, with sex valid only within the confines of a heterosexual marriage, make compromises regarding their sexuality. Actually, challenging heterosexuality has been difficult for black Americans, including men and women, with lesbian relations in particular regarded as taboo. Clarke believes in personal sexual freedom for women but finds it lacking in bell hooks, who raised her voice for giving black women all basic and equal rights, but hardly talked of black women’s sexual choices, irrespective of gender. Clarke criticises hooks’s Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (1981) for its ‘omission of any discussion of lesbian feminism, the radicalising impact of which distinguishes this era of feminism from the previous eras’, and argues, ‘Ain’t lesbians women, too?’ when referring to hooks’s dismissive attitude towards the existence of black lesbians and their contribution to the feminist movement.

This study also uses hooks’s theory of intersectionality, a term first introduced by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw in 1989. Lykke (2010) states that intersectionality is a theoretical and methodological tool to analyse how, historically, specific kinds of power differentials and/or constraining normativities―based on discursively, institutionally and/or structurally constructed sociocultural categorisations such as gender, ethnicity, race, class, sexuality, age/generation, dis/ability, nationality and mother tongue―have interacted, and so produced different kinds of societal inequalities and unjust social relations. It analyses how different categorisations are interwoven; for example, how gender is interwoven with race, ethnicity, class and sexuality. Sociopolitically imposed, these interwoven categorisations lead to discrimination and inequitable power relations in society. This is why hooks (1982) and Lorde (1984) vehemently denounce the categorisations and their interconnectedness.

Criticising feminists who assume that black women face only racism, hooks (1982) suggests that they simultaneously face sexism too, as racism and sexism have an interlocking relationship, and contends:

The assumption that we can divorce the issue of race from sex, or sex from race, has so clouded the vision of American thinkers and writers on the ‘woman’ question that most discussions of sexism, sexist oppression, or woman’s place in society are distorted, biased, and inaccurate…we cannot form an accurate picture of the status of black women by simply focusing on racial hierarchies.

Intersection of Race and Sex

Race and sex constantly mix in the selected novels. While a heterosexual system defines a woman’s identity/existence, unequal social and political power dynamics have made women subordinate/inferior to men. These novels reveal the harmful effects of racism, sexism and heterosexism, and critique discourses on heterosexuality, which has oppressed all those who ‘attempt to conceive of themselves otherwise, particularly lesbians’ (Selden et al., 2007). Both racism and sexism are discriminatory behaviours and mutually constitutive. hooks (1982) clarifies the way racism interlocks with sexism to become a two-headed monster that oppresses black women. Rape has an instrumental role in maintaining combined sexual and racial differentiation and in the exclusion of black women. Lorde (1984) argues that rape is sexualised aggression and not aggressive sexuality. In fact, ‘Rape challenges a woman’s ability to maintain her defenses and thus arouses feelings of guilt, anxiety, and inadequacy’ (Notman & Nadelson, 1976). The novels depict different kinds of rape, such as corrective rape, paedophilia, incest, gang rape and marital rape.

Rape, as Sommerville (2004) asserts, is an important historical marker of race and gender relations in the American South. In Loving Her, Shockley introduces a working-class black pianist, Renay, who was raped and impregnated by Jerome Lee. Compelled to marry her rapist, she remains unhappy. Van Ausdall (2010) asserts that Shockley shows ‘the intersectionality of gender and class at work in her marriage’ to the alcoholic Lee, undergoing repeated marital rape and all kinds of oppression in his household, and reduced to a mere sex object. Renay somehow survives till she encounters Terry, a racist white writer, at a bar. She abandons her marriage and leaves with her daughter, Denise, to lead a life of her choosing with Terry. Renay ‘crossed sexual and color barriers to come to terms with her new self in a search for love and happiness’ (Loving Her, p. 83). However, Renay and Terry’s relationship is not one of equal reciprocity as the latter believes she belongs to a superior race while Renay has an inferior sense of self. Subserviently, Renay takes on the role of a woman of the house, a house that is run by Terry. hooks (1982) claims that all black women, irrespective of their circumstances, are lumped into the category of available sex objects.

Renay’s painful story of rape and pregnancy resembles Celie’s in The Color Purple. Celie is often sexually abused as a child by Alphonso―who is later revealed to be not her real father but a stepfather―and is twice impregnated by him. In a June 1982 Newsweek interview, Walker acknowledged that the model for Celie’s character was her own grandmother, the 12-year-old rape victim of a slave owner (Bates, 2005). The unfortunate Celie cannot even breastfeed her babies (later revealed as Adam and Olivia) or stop Alphonso from illegally and inhumanly selling them. Bates (2005) maintains that though Walker knew that her own father, Willie Lee, was indoctrinated into the patriarchal culture of sexism, she condemned the sexism, which appears thematically in her art. Renay and Celie, both targets of sexualised aggression, undergo several psychological challenges before, during and in the aftermath of their unwanted pregnancies.

Routinely enduring their rapists’ sexualised aggression, women lead unimaginably miserable lives. Lorraine, a lesbian character in Naylor’s novel, is gang-raped by young men as punishment for violating gender roles and to restore male social control over women. She is perceived as a pervert and a threat to heterosexuality, ‘a prime tool of black women’s oppression in America’ (Clarke, 2000). Her rape is conducted to uphold social norms of heterosexuality. The rapists leave her for dead, but their actions do not shock either the men or the women of the neighbourhood because, as Lorde (1984) says, black lesbians are under increasing attack from both black men and heterosexual black women. The fragile bond between women (both lesbian and heterosexual) militates against racial and sexual specificities and also perpetuates an interlocking system of oppression of women. Naylor is of the view that inequality based on race and sex cannot form or sustain women’s solidarity. As Nicosia (2007) says

Naylor denies the women the ultimate victory of the block party and the closure such a communal festivity would afford. [She] appears to punish the women and withholds the public ritual of unification for their lack of faithfulness to the cause of black feminism, or for their deeply ingrained homophobia. [Her] narrative choice seemingly illustrates that until racial and sexual equality are shared by all any attempt at unification and solidarity among black women is illusory.

Rape perpetrated to subdue women is the common paradigm of racism and sexism in the novels. The interconnectedness of racism and sexism denies black women a status. Though Shockley’s and Naylor’s novels reveal that women’s oppression derives from both men and women, Walker, in The Color Purple, warns of men’s sexist methods to subdue women, which are eventually rendered ineffective in her novel (Bates, 2005) as the women gain economic independence through hard work and sisterhood. Celie’s mother, on the other hand, like Cora Lee in Brewster Place, had one child after another against her will and was ill and completely helpless when Alphonso raped Celie, her condition worsening because of this. Shug, Albert’s sexual fantasy before Celie and Albert married, develops a truly loving lesbian relationship with Celie. In a reversal of roles, Shug also dominates Albert. As a blues singer, she is free to choose and assert her sexuality in society. The other budding singer, Mary Agnes, who undergoes an intersectional experience as a woman and a mulatto, refuses to recognise human differences based on race and sex. In an effort to free Harpo’s former wife, Sofia, from prison, she surrenders to the white. The cause of Mary Agnes’s oppression lies not in her sex alone but also in her mixed-race and efforts to undermine racial differences. Maintaining solidarity with Sofia and attempting to break the white standard of violence against a black woman made Mary Agnes both anti-racist and anti-sexist. The similarity of their experiences, although less marked in the case of Mary Agnes, brought the two women together.

Sofia’s intersectional experience of being black and a woman derives directly from her refusal to accept the superiority of either the male sex or the white race, as well as her response to white dominance with anger and protest. Lorde (1984) argues that racism and sexism are correctly perceived as hatred. Black women are born into a society with entrenched loathing and contempt for whatever is black and female. Before her imprisonment, Sofia powerfully reversed roles with her husband, and also vehemently refused to work as a maid to Miss Millie, the wife of the mayor. A fight ensued and Sofia was sentenced for seven years as punishment. Racial oppression is present in the murder of Celie’s father by white people and resonates in the imperialist white greed to take over the Olinka village in Africa. Racial tensions are also expressed in Naylor’s novel. Violence against blacks (particularly women) was common in the American South. It forced Etta to move north after she defied not only white authority in the 1930s but also patriarchal control over women. Mattie too had to leave the South for a rat-infested apartment in a northern city. Gum and Naylor (1991) state that the imaginary community created by Naylor in The Women of Brewster Place, its location in a northern city such as Chicago or New York, represents all black urban communities across America. The atrocities involve intersections of race and sex as black women are reduced to racialised subjects. Race cannot be dissociated from sex as the synchronisation of both determines as well as undermines the social status of black women.

Lesbian Relationships: Transgression, Resistance and Sexual Freedom

Lesbian practices between Celie and Shug in The Color Purple, Renay and Terry in Loving Her and Lorraine and Theresa in The Women of Brewster Place imply a conscious denial of prescribed heterosexuality and the assertion of personal sexual preference. The novelists compellingly portray their lesbian characters beyond the parameters of social acceptability and deliberately crush institutionalised gender roles. Myron and Bunch (1975) state that lesbian relationships constitute a basic threat to male supremacy and challenge gender performativity. Drawing on Barbara Smith, Shockley (2000) contends that ‘black women are still in the position of having to “imagine”, discover and verify black lesbian literature because so little has been written from an avowedly lesbian perspective’. It was long after Radcliffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness was published in 1928 that novels such as Shockley’s Loving Her (1974) and Rosa Guy’s Ruby (1976) were written, dealing explicitly with lesbian themes. Shockley as well as Walker and Naylor, boldly depict lesbian relations in their writing, laying emphasis on personal sexual preferences that mark transgression. Melancon (2008) says that Shockley inscribes, complicates and polemicises same-gender loving, the paradigm and affirmation of transgression in her novel. Same-gender loving and lovemaking is itself transgressive as it functions as a refusal to accept heterosexuality. In Shockley’s and Walker’s novels, lesbian couples are the principal characters, and with the exception of Terry, their oppression is rooted in their race and sex.

Walker skilfully portrays the powerful bond forged by Celie and Shug, the driving force in Celie’s life. Instead of the expected rivalry between them as Albert’s wife and beloved, respectively, they form a sisterly bond that gradually draws Celie from submissiveness to an awakening. A model of strong sexuality and as a sort of surrogate mother, Shug’s emotional support enables Celie to start a business in Memphis and gain economic independence. As Jesmin (2019) says, Celie internalises Shug’s spirit and follows her ways, thereby achieving social recognition. Walker’s positive portrayal of the Celie–Shug lesbian relationship appears to be influenced by Myron and Bunch’s theory (1975) that lesbianism indicates a threat to the ideological, political, personal and economic basis of male supremacy. The lesbian exposes the myth of female inferiority, weakness and passivity and denies women’s ‘innate’ need for men. When lesbians cease to uphold regulative sexual norms, they threaten the ideology of male supremacy. The lesbian relationship so sublimely portrayed in the novel also ensures mutual, dignified survival and the attainment of wholeness. According to Smith (2000), ‘Walker’s depiction of Celie and Shug cannot help but corroborate the rootedness of black Lesbianism in “core” black experience’. Their relationship is crucial to the themes developed in The Color Purple.

In support of Jeffreys (1994), the novels advocate the continued creation of a separate lesbian community based on friendship and an ethic of equality and resistance. However, Naylor and Shockley, unlike Walker, present an undercurrent of racial tension in lesbian relationships and an outright rejection of lesbians by a heterosexist society. When in The Women of Brewster Place, which depicts a microcosm of the black community, Lorraine and Theresa’s relationship is exposed to the community, women react bitterly and the two are socially boycotted―victims, as Nicosia (2007) says, of a homophobic society that denies them inclusion in the community because of their sexual orientation. The experience of this lesbian couple is very different from that of Celie and Shug in The Color Purple as their effort to build a relationship is hampered by the community’s obsession with maintaining traditional sexual norms of conduct. According to Clarke (2000), homophobia divides black people politically, stunts political growth, stifles revolution and perpetuates patriarchal domination. When these lesbians exclude the male from their lives, they trivialise the male ego and challenge homophobia.

The homophobic culture of Brewster Place is poignantly expressed in Loving Her. The black women around Renay believe that lesbianism is worse than adultery or incest. But the word ‘“lesbian” is only threatening to those Black women who are intimidated by their sexuality’ (Lorde, 1984). In Loving Her (p. 32), Shockley says that their fear is probably bred from a ‘deep inward potentiality for Lesbianism’, suggesting that these black women hide their true motivations, their latent lesbian potentiality, and act in a manner directly opposite to their unconscious wishes. With lesbianism socially unacceptable and morally objectionable, their reactions are antithetical to their possible urges, but they feel safer this way. Such strategy is known as Reaction Formation, ‘a defense mechanism in which people act in a manner directly opposite to their unconscious wishes’ (Baron, 1999).

Bates (2005) posits that the ‘goal of lesbian study is to change or end binary categories of normal and abnormal’―an argument by which Shockley’s novel could have been influenced. Terry says she has stopped wasting money on changing herself or conforming to society’s image of the female because she likes her own sex and accepts it with full liberty and enthusiasm. Myron and Bunch (1975) propound that the lesbian commits herself to women not only as an alternative to oppressive male–female relationships, but primarily because she loves women. As Shockley points out, ‘married people have frictions too’ (Loving Her, p. 39).

Renay supports herself and her daughter Denise by working at a club, keeping her music alive while becoming self-reliant. Myron and Bunch (1975) posit that society hates women who love women, and so, the lesbian who escapes male dominance in her home receives it doubly at the hands of male society. For frustrated, traumatised Renay, music is a gratifying channel to fulfilment. While fantasising about the music she can repress harsh reality. Music as well as sexual fantasies involving Terry help her to relegate painful memories to the unconscious. As Baron (1999) says, she uses repression, ‘forgetting or pushing painful thoughts or impulses from consciousness into the unconscious’, while leading her life with Terry.

Calhoun’s study (2003) locates a connection between homophobia and sexism and explains that securing same-sex love/marriage could reduce sexism. Lorraine and Theresa’s relationship is interrupted by the prohibitions of the Brewster Place community, and without Lorraine’s assistance, Theresa struggles against this community. Non-resistant Lorraine becomes an accessible scapegoat and is mercilessly attacked by some perverts: ‘She didn’t feel her split rectum or the patches in her skull where her hair had been torn off by grating against the bricks’ (The Women of Brewster Place, p. 171). Whitt (1999) says ‘When she dies, her name is not spoken, as if to deny that she had ever lived’. As Myron and Bunch (1975) argue, the lesbian may think that she is free since she escapes the personal oppression of the male–female relationship, but to society, she is still a woman, or worse, a visible lesbian. This idea finds expression in Naylor’s portrayal of the aggressive role of homophobic society through the subsequent gang rape and shame killing, which ended the standoff between the heterosexuals and the homosexuals. It contrasts significantly with the Renay–Terry relationship, in which Shockley suggests an undertone of racial anxiety at the psychological and societal/economic level. Though initially Terry appears as a racial liberal, she proves to be a sexist racist in her treatment of Renay.

There is gender blurring in Shockley’s characterisation of Terry. Like a dominating husband, she is domineering in household affairs. She believes she belongs to a superior race, and so maintains an unequal domestic power equation. Van Ausdall (2010) argues that there is also a ‘latent class-inflected tension’, with the Renay–Terry relationship ‘blemished by uneven power based on class’. Her findings reveal the ‘economic nature of the initial relationship’ as the couple’s first interaction involves Terry offering Renay $20 to play Debussy on the piano at the club where she worked. As Terry is seen as a profitable customer, Renay, urged by the club’s owner, agrees to entertain Terry. Such obligations are paralleled in the couple’s interactions even within Terry’s expensive apartment. In addition to economic obligations, Terry’s White privilege threatens Renay with racial otherness every day.

Race, as Van Ausdall (2010) avers, confronts Renay once she enters Terry’s white middle-class world. Terry’s ex-girlfriend neurotically refuses to sit with Renay at the same bar table and subjects Renay to racist comments over the course of the novel. Renay also suffers Terry’s landlord’s explicit disapproval as a black woman residing on the premises. Such intersectional experiences suggest racial barriers to a fully sustained lesbian life. With the aim of maintaining social control, the landlord wants to debar the black woman from equal participation in the white community, revealing how difficult it could be for black women to ‘assimilate and amalgamate into the mainstream of American culture’ (hooks, 1982). hooks further denounces the social hierarchy which, based on interconnectedness of race and sex, ranks white men first, white women second and black women last. Such an arbitrary hierarchy causes unjust social relations.

Denise dies in a car accident that occurs because of Lee driving in a drunken state, and so dejected does Renay become at the loss of her daughter that she leaves Terry. Their love has failed to bridge economic and class differences, but Renay’s intersectional experiences at the hands of both Lee and Terry make her feel helpless, and so, despite everything, she returns eventually to Terry. Van Ausdall (2010) maintains that Terry regains control of the relationship with Renay returning as her maid, and that Shockley’s language―‘bruising/bruised’, ‘tearing’, ‘crushed’―implies that Renay is attacked by Terry in a way that resembles rape. This is confirmed when Renay compares Terry’s behaviour to Lee’s sexual aggression. A life of dignity eludes Renay in a sexist and racist society. Celie, on the other hand, receives Shug’s unyielding support towards improving her career and living with dignity. Terry sexually exploits Renay’s racialised female body. Referring to Gerda Lerner, hooks (1982) argues that white women encourage the sexual exploitation of black women to ensure ‘no change would occur to their social status’. The racist myth that all black women are ‘sluts’ denies them respect and the space to develop their social standing.

Celie and Shug’s relationship is one of sexual freedom. Walker presents sexual relations between Celie and Albert and Celie and Shug as well as between Shug and Albert and Shug and Grady. Walker’s lesbian characters assert their sexual identity and commit to supporting each other. Shug’s initial help allows Celie to establish her career, and later they help each other when needed. Together they resist Albert and also help Sofia during her imprisonment. Their relationship is based entirely on mutual respect and reciprocal sisterly as well as maternal love. Walker refuses to accept ‘compulsory heterosexuality’, as is clear when she boldly depicts her lesbian characters as exercising their personal bisexual preferences. Shug makes Celie realise that the latter is ‘still a virgin’ as she could ‘never enjoy’ sex with Albert and Alphonso. The act had been unwanted and a ‘business’, as Celie says (The Color Purple, p. 74). Shug leads Celie to explore her sexual preferences. This is revealed in a letter that Celie wrote to God: ‘Nobody ever love me, I say. She [Shug] say, I love you, Miss Celie. And then she haul off and kiss me on the mouth’ (The Color Purple, p. 103). Opportunities are created for establishing relationships with sexual freedom and harmonious family life.

Women’s Solidarity

Lorde (1984) says that woman-bonding has a long and honourable history in the African and African American communities. Black lesbians no longer dependent on men for their self-definition may well reorder the entire concept of social relationships. Black women must recognise the differences that exist among women―who are all equal, neither inferior nor superior―and devise ways to use each other’s differences to enrich women’s vision and joint struggles. Lorde stresses uniting around differences to generate a vision of women’s space and possibilities. The study has found that woman bonding provides adequate psychological support to women, ensures their survival and develops same-sex love (sexual or non-sexual) based on mutual understanding and trust. It therefore throws out a challenge to heterosexist ideology and justifies the importance of establishing a black sisterhood for women’s survival and freedom. The characterisation of Renay, Celie and Mattie, central to the novels, is guided by both a conscious denial of heterosexist mainstream culture and a validation of the ethos of womanism―an establishment of a social network based upon extended communal ties and gender equality (Nicosia, 2007). These characters emerge as a stabilising force and an interlinking point for almost all the other women associated with them in the novels. Their sisterhood is crucial for the women’s solidarity, enabling them to heal each other’s wounds, fight each other’s battles and know the possibilities of support and connection. For instance, in a flashback, Renay recalls Miss Sims’s pivotal influence, her motherly attitude and her belief in a woman developing self-worth: ‘Nurture your talent, Renay. Don’t let a man turn your head and fill you full of babies and worry. Women can have lives and talents of their own. There’s a lot more to life than simply displaying that you have a man in life’ (Loving Her, p. 10).

Similarly, Brewster Place presents several sisterly relationships, such as Mattie’s with Miss Eva, Etta and Lucielia, and Kiswana’s with Cora Lee. Mattie says, ‘I’ve loved some women deeper than I ever loved any man…. And there been some women who loved me more and did more for me than any man ever did’ (The Women of Brewster Place, p. 141). Mattie’s relations with Miss Eva, a benefactor, constitute the most pivotal bond. Mattie offers support to others despite still nursing her own pain, and the way she saves Lucielia clearly shows the healing power of women’s solidarity. Kumar and Jha (2010) claim that the two women develop a mutual feeling of supportive attachment and loyalty―the only reason for their survival. This thought is echoed by Nicosia (2007):

Most women of Brewster Place form strong social attachments to each other despite repeated marital infidelities and friendship betrayals. This would account for the conservatism of most of the women and their lack of incentive to battle sexism and homophobia.

The Brewster Place sisterhood is left untroubled when one of their women (Lorraine) is gang-raped with the aim of rectifying her sexual orientation. No one laments her subsequent death as her existence is completely denied. The Color Purple, on the contrary, presents altogether different and exemplary sisterly relationships that go beyond cultural boundaries. In Georgia, Celie remains the centre around which revolves almost every woman character―Shug, Sofia, Mary Agnes, Nettie, Olivia, Tashi. Celie’s sisterly bonds with Shug and Sofia inspire her to break societal norms and establish her own identity. Despite Mary Agnes becoming the lover of Celie’s stepson Harpo after Sofia leaves him because of his sexist behaviour, there is no animosity between Mary Agnes and Sofia. Instead, they develop a strong sisterly bond.

Putting aside personal and racial differences, Mary Agnes redefines sisterhood through her concern for the defiant Sofia and takes inspiration for her singing career from Shug. Celie’s sister, Nettie, who connects with women’s lives in Georgia as well as in Africa, is on a mission to uplift the Olinka people. Celie and Nettie connect through letters. Walker’s epistolary narrative technique effectively provides readers with details of Celie’s relations with other women and Nettie’s sisterly relations with Corrine, Olivia, Tashi and Catherine at Olinka. Nettie and Tashi’s relationship suggests the crossing of cultural boundaries. Walker breaks the ‘woman is woman’s worst enemy’ myth and successfully connects women across geographical boundaries. In promoting universal sisterhood and women’s solidarity she is different from Shockley and Naylor.

Conclusion

Myron and Bunch (1975) argue that lesbianism refers to more than a sexual preference. It is a political choice because relationships between men and women are essentially political, involving power and domi-nance. In actively rejecting such relationships and choosing women instead, the lesbian defies an established political system. The novelists’ portrayal of black women’s suffering and struggle against the discrimi-nation meted out by a racist and heterosexist society was revolutionary as it critiqued heterosexism and racism and encouraged personal sexual preference. Sisterly relationships help women to resist oppressive forces in society, enabling them to rely on one another for psychological support. Unlike Walker, Shockley’s and Naylor’s portrayals of lesbian relationships against heteronormative society unmask the pervasive influence of racial anxiety that harms communal ties. Walker’s portrayals of lesbian as well as sisterly relations powerfully threaten the ideology of male supremacy and reveal an unavailing attempt by men to subdue women. Her women characters succeed in pushing aside personal differences, crossing sociocultural boundaries and promoting universal sisterhood. Further studies should investigate the novels from the viewpoint of modern transgender theories to achieve a better understanding and critical interpretation of gender identities/fluidities, intersectionality, intersecting identities, minor gender identities and gendered-based oppression.