Week 17 Gender, Race, Class and Fiction
I. Reading and Writing The Color Purple
1.
Epistolary novel, composed of letters or epistles exchanged between characters (p.
156)
2.
The use of this form allows the text’s style to be interrupted by another rhythm, another voice, introducing African culture and all the facts necessary for the piecing together of the mystery of the disappearance of Celie’s sister Nettie.
3.
The exchange of letters between the sisters emphasizes the importance of communication between them
4.
Emphasizes the importance of words, of written and spoken language as the medium for empowerment
5.
The theme is relevant to the female characters denied access to education and other forms of learning and communication.
6.
Susan Willis in “Alice Walker’s Women” argues that it is through education and the process of acquiring written language that Celie begins to raise herself from the position of the “underclass” to a more powerful position. (See p.156)
7.
Literacy (the ability to read and write) offers a means of “escape” from the multiple oppressions; writing is a means of finding freedom for Celie. (p.157)
8.
For Walker, the telling of stories is a way of presenting self in opposition to a language which is not your own, not part of your people’s tradition.
9.
Celie and Nettie write their own stories. They insist on using language, learning about language… The use of language is to do with a breaking out from the underclass imposed by racism, the imperial imposition of the English language, as well as an expression of self in opposition to gender oppression.
10.
Writing for Celie is a way of thinking out loud, quietly and safely, a means of exploring her thoughts by expressing them on paper and of reaching beyond her domestic life towards other lives or connections.
11.
The ability to master language is a symbolic of Celie’s understanding of herself, who she is, what she can do and what she wants to be. (p.158)
12.
Nettie’s gift to Celie is power over language as well as the power to maintain communication.
13.
Shug Avery teaches Celie to enjoy sex.
14.
Celie learns to enjoy words and sex: to earn what she needs, to see the best side of herself, overturning her previous image of herself as unworthy.
15.
Male characters also undergo a process of development and transformation.
16.
Alice Walker: How I Wrote The Color Purple (from In Search of Our Mother’s
Gardens )

17.
Prose essays In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens is “Womanist Prose” (See p.162)
18.
Definition of Womanist
19.
The Color Purple is a womanist novel: a serious investigation into the representation and oppression and possibilities for liberation of black women and men, in and through the medium of fiction.
20.
“Spiritual survival” is set right by the love between women (sisterly and sexual) and by the religious framework of the novel (p.163). The novel is dedicated “To the Spirit.”
21.
The links between writing and quilting as creative arts are drawn by Walker (see p.165)
22.
Conclusion: The Color Purple is a novel about (1) communication, (2) education,
(3) the process of becoming one’s self, (4) learning to look at one’s self without apology, and (5) making connections with other women, through language and other forms of creativity, including sexual expression.
II. Transformation of The Color Purple
1. Plot summary (167-169)
2. Women form a triangle of support for each other – Celie, Shug, Sophia / Squeak; women complement rather than compete with each other. (p.169)
3. The quilt, with its repeat-pattern symmetries and patchwork of old fabric, is something made for the future out of scraps of the past.
4. The quilt is a pattern which relies on piecing together shapes and the stories of different women’s lives.
5. The quilt offers a range of possibilities for women’s support networks but it is a form of art or creativity that is on the margins of material worth.
6. Quilting is women’s work; men don’t make quilts, nor have much use for them except as blankets.
7. The color purple is a shorthand for a range of spiritual associations with God and ties to the country of Africa portrayed in Nettie’s letter. (see p.170)
8. The color purple also symbolizes lesbianism, the intimate love between Celie and
Shut Avery, which is underplayed in the film (p.170).
9. Representation of African experience, simplified and encapsulated in a color and a set of costumes and described in letters, creates a foreign sense of Africa. It runs the risk of positioning African women as other to African-American women. (p.171)
10. Mailbox as a potent symbol: Celie’s desperation for a letter is a sign of her need for affirmation of her very existence, her worth as a human being (p.172)
11. Discovery of Nettie’s letters is a major step for Celie to self-discovery.
12. Process of learning to read suggest a strong bond formed between Celie and Netie.

13. Music and Song are made integral to the film – from the church song to the songs sung Shug and little Squeak who expresses themselves in music.
14. Autobiographical Elements: In Walker’s description of herself as deformed, ugly and unlovable, we may find the beginnings of the character Celie. And in the descriptions of the female characters’ struggle to find means of support for themselves and ways of expressing themselves (often in song and sewing and other creative acts), we may detect the outlines of Shug, Sophia and Squeak (see p.174-175)
15. Literary Influence: the poem about the legacy of other women writers, mostly white, all more burdened than Walker; some black, Phyllis Wheatley and Zora
Neale Hurston. (p.176, 173-74)
16. Walker’s idea that work is just love made visible: The gift of the quilt from Celie to Sophia as a gift of love; the letters which Celie writes to Nettie are also gifts of love; Shug’s gift of sexual pleasure to Celie may be seen as a true sign of love and respect. (p.176)
17. Some of this work is also practical; it is intended to earn money and freedom, to free the women and Walker herself from the calamities (poverty and abuse) which oppressed the black women.