Summary of Journal Literature 3

  Journal Literature 3

Reference: Thorat, Rajendra. 2014. Alice Walker’s The Concept of feminism in Color Purple: An Analysis. International Multidisciplinary Research Journal. Vol 1/10 (2014)

This article was talking about Alice Walker’s The Concept of feminism in Color Purple: Alice Walker’s The Concept of feminism in Color Purple. However, reversal of gender roles is seen in the couple Sofia and Harpo, a son of Albert whose face looks like a woman's face. He truly enjoys woman's works like cooking and washing dishes, while Sofia does a field work and traditional man's work. They fight constantly “like two men” getting Harpo the worst beating. Perhaps Walker shows this kind of irony in order to predict the reversal of roles that is likely to take place in the near future. Her story encourages her to throw herself actively in the Civil Rights Movement that aimed to bring equal rights and opportunities to the black women in all walks of life during her college days. Meridian divests herself of immediate blood relations- her child and parents- in order to align herself completely with the larger racial and social generations of blacks. She has created fusion with her generation of activist and older generation of oppressed black. Her personal identity has become a collective identity. Nettie's commentary through her letters from Africa on the Olinka people's discrimination against their men suggest the fact that gender oppression pervades the entire world of black men and women. Afro-Americans as well as Africans confine women to the care of children, and among the Olinka, the husband has death power over the wife. If he accuses his wife of witchcraft or infidelity, she can be killed” (TCP172). The epistolary form used in The Color Purple is suggestive of lesbian sexuality within the framework of lesbian feminism where the letter means the female body, and correspondence between two women is suggestive of lesbianism. With reference to Nettie's letters, Wendy Wall observes that Albert intercepts them because he fails to seduce her, and that he rapes her language because he fails to rape her body (264). According to Terry Eagleton “the letters come to signify female sexuality that folded secret place which is always open to violent intrusion”(54). Linda Abbandonato describes the novel as a womanist text and states: “By adopting the crazy quilt, the craft of her forefathers, as the structuring principle of her fiction, Alice Walker places herself within a tradition of a black creativity” (300). Thus these novels are exquisite examples of her womanist consciousness that enabled her to chronicle black women's journey to self-recognition.