The Color Purple Research Paper

The Color Purple by Alice Walker is a very controversial novel, which many people found to be very offensive. It is basically the struggle for one woman’s independence. The main character in The Color Purple is Celie a coloured woman with little or no education at all. She is one who has been used and abused by all the men in her life, and because of these men, she has very little courage or ambition in her life. She has so little courage, that all she wants to do is just survive. Through the various women she meets throughout here life like: Shug, her sister, and Harpo’s wife, she learns how to enjoy herself, gain courage and happiness. She finally learns enough and with the final straw she could no longer bare, she leaves her husband

Events in history have influenced writers’ style, and the importance in their stories. Alice Walker wrote a novel which was very much subjective by the time period of the 1940’s. There was a great deal of bigotry and tyranny during that time, particularly for Women of color. Women were mentally and physically abused and belittled by man purely because of their race and femininity. Women were considered as ignorant individuals that simply knew how to handle housework and care for the children.

Gender was shown and expressed throughout the whole book; it was to show who had more power over who. Walker demonstrates it through the journey of an African American young teenager to a strong women and how she developed to get through her life with all the challenges she had on the way. She used a lot of imagery, allegory, and symbolism in the story of The Color Purple. An example of imagery that she used was when she said, “He took my other little baby, a boy this time… I think he sold it to a man an his wife over Monticello. I got breast full of milk running down myself’ (Walker 3): meaning that she had a strong connect with her son, and then they just took him away for no reason which brings pain to her. An allegory is when celie talks about how the color purple was created from God to show different actions a person would do, “ Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it. People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back” (Walker 196). A symbolism in the story is the “pants” because in the story it symbolize the pants showed who had the power over who and well usually during this time men had almost all the power so they were the ones who wore the pants, “Well, She say, looking

In Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Celie leads a life filled with abuse at the hands of the most important men in her life. As result of the women who surround and help her, Celie becomes stronger and overcomes the abuse she experienced. The three most influential women in Celie’s life are her sister Nettie, her daughter-in-law Sofia, and the singer Shug Avery. These are the women who lead Celie out of her shell and help her turn from a shy, withdrawn woman to someone who was free to speak her mind and lead her own independent life.

Though many gender role advancements were achieved in past and future decades, gender roles were more segregated in the 1950’s than they were in even colonial times. In the 1950s, there were rigid gender roles represented in popular culture. To start off, women were expected to be as similar as they can to this propaganda.

In American literature, women have been portrayed differently depending on the sex and race of the author. Henry James who wrote “Daisy Miller: A Study” (1878) characterized Daisy as a tramp who breaks expatriate social customs. When a male writes about a woman, she is sometimes portrayed as a troublemaker and often up to no good. On the other hand, in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892), the narrator is trapped by domestic life. When a woman writes about women, they are usually victims of their society. James and Gilman each seem to display women differently because of their own sex, personal preferences, and experiences.

Both novels, Winter’s Bone, by Daniel Woodrell, and The Color Purple, by Alice Walker, do a great job of depicting strong female characters. Ree Dolly, from Winter’s Bone, and Celie, from The Color Purple, although characters from totally different novels, have many similarities. Both were raised in very patriarchal societies. This means the males were highly dominant over the females. Women are supposed to be completely subservient to their male counterparts.

Different genders have different rights on what to do in the real world. Women are given orders on to feed the male and the family. In this case, Celie is forced to cook in the family “I am the one to cook” (1 Walker). Males are the ones who rule the house and the family while females do what they are told to do. White people disrespect colored people just because the different skin tone, rarely anybody is nice to them.

In the novels The Color Purple and Fried Green Tomatoes, authors Alice Walker and Fannie Flagg utilize archetypal characters to exhibit how an empowered female mentor assists in the development

This play was written in the 1940’s way before the women’s rights movement which happened in the 1960’s. Hence the reason why the characters and the relationships between them were overlooked due to it being within the norm. Now by analyzing Tennessee's work, what can now be seen is how sexist this play actually is. Looking through the eyes of Stella you can see how she played into the female

However, many women did not have the courage to stand up for themselves, and kept living miserable, and boring lives. They were not allowed to voice their opinions, or have any rights. The main character, Edna, portrays the motherly woman, who does not like the tasks society has deemed acceptable for women. Moreover, as Edna begins to become free she is more rebellious and begins to question everything. According to “Women of Color in The Awakening” by Elizabeth Ammons, “ It is the story of a woman of one race and class who is able to dream of total personal freedom because an important piece of that highly individualistic ideal… has been brought to her.” This means that this novel follows the theme of many other works of literature, in that a heroine is trying to seek free control because she knows she can obtain freedom. Women’s roles play a key factor to the feminism shown throughout the novel.

Arguably, all three texts explore gender inequality including the theme of women being dependent on men. Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello displays the love in an interracial marriage; early audiences may have been shocked to see a black man marrying a white woman as it was deemed as unnatural in the 17th century. Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire explores the consequences of a married woman in a patriarchal society; Alice Walkers’ The Color Purple is an epistolary feminist novel that shows the tragic life of a young girl and the oppression she suffers at the hands of black men. However, it can also be seen that the authors break away from the stereotypical ideas of women and include a truly independent character. All three texts

Gender roles are roles,dependant on gender, made over time by society. Society has somehow formed the bias that one gender has to act the way that they believe is civil,according to history. The picture shown on page 75 in the eBook shows a women working,in what seems, a metal shop. The women seems focused in her job at task. Stereotypically,a man would work this position. Yet, this picture broke societies rules of what a women should be doing in life. According to the article, “Why Is Pink for Girls and Blue for Boys?” by Natalie Wolchover (on www.Livescience,com) “Decades of research by University of Maryland historian Jo Paoletti suggests that up until the 1950s, chaos reigned when it came to the colors of baby paraphernalia. "There was

The ancient story of Philomela has resonated in the imaginations of women writers for several thousand years. One particular writer, Alice Walker, revises the myth of Philomela in her novel, The Color Purple, through the protagonist Celie. Similar to the mythic narrative of Philomela, The Color Purple intertwines rape, silencing, and the destruction of feminine subjectivity. Walker alludes and revises the myth of Philomela by allowing Celie to express herself through letters and including the imagery of the bird and blood.

In the text, the author differentiates the roles between females and males in society in both settings. Throughout the text there are many examples of women having the duty of being a caregiver and the men are the ones who do the hard physical work or even stand back and let the women do all the work and vice versa between settings. For example, in Celie's setting, there is a change between the roles of men and women. At first, Celie is the one who is doing all the work around the house. Celie is referred to as the one who holds the house down and do the things the men would not do.