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The Color Purple

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The Color Purple , novel by Alice Walker , published in 1982. It won a Pulitzer Prize in 1983, making Walker the first African American woman to win a Pulitzer for fiction . A feminist work about an abused and uneducated African American woman’s struggle for empowerment, The Color Purple was praised for the depth of its female characters and for its eloquent use of Black English Vernacular .

An epistolary novel composed of letters written by two sisters, The Color Purple took form as Walker was living in a small town in northern California , trying to find the right voice for the novel’s story. In 1983 she told The New York Times that the letter form worked best because “It was…a way of solving a technical problem of having characters in Georgia and Africa . They never actually get the letters, but that’s beside the point. By writing, they drew closer.”

In writing the book, Walker was inspired by the experience of her grandparents, with whom she had lived for a year in rural Georgia when she was a child. In a 2015 TimesTalk interview , she said of her grandparents, “They were so kind, so giving. In the early days, they were terrible, terrible people. So I began to wonder, how could people who were so wonderful, when I knew them, be terrible when I didn’t know them? That made me realize there was some reclamation to be done.”

Spanning from 1909 to 1947, The Color Purple documents the traumas and gradual triumph of Celie, introduced at the novel’s start as an African American teenager raised in rural isolation in Georgia , as she comes to resist the paralyzing self-concept forced on her by others. Celie narrates her life through painfully honest letters to God. These are prompted when her abusive father, Alphonso, warns her, “You better not never tell nobody but God” after he rapes her and she becomes pregnant for a second time at the age of 14. After she gives birth, Alphonso takes the child away, as he had done with her first baby, which Celie believes he killed in the woods while Celie was sleeping. Then Celie’s mother dies. In her letter to God after her second baby’s birth, Celie writes of the worsening situation this creates for her and her younger sister, Nettie: “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 keep hoping he fine somebody to marry. I see him looking at my little sister. She scared. But I say I’ll take care of you.”

When the widowed Mr.__ (also called Albert) proposes marriage to Nettie, Alphonso pushes him to take Celie instead, forcing her into an abusive marriage. Soon thereafter, Nettie flees Alphonso—who has married a girl Celie’s age—and briefly lives with Celie. However, Albert’s continued interest in Nettie results in her leaving.

Celie subsequently begins to build relationships with other Black women, especially those engaging forcefully with oppression. Of note is the defiant Sofia, who marries Albert’s son Harpo after becoming pregnant. Unable to control her, Harpo seeks advice, and Celie suggests that he beat Sofia. However, when Harpo strikes her, Sofia fights back. Upon learning that Celie encouraged Harpo’s abuse, she confronts a guilty Celie, who admits to being jealous of Sofia’s refusal to back down, and the two women become friends.More significant, however, is Celie’s relationship with Shug Avery, a glamorous and independent singer who is also Albert’s sometime mistress. When Celie sees a picture of Shug for the first time, she is struck by Shug’s captivating style and beauty. Celie writes in a letter: “I see her there in furs. Her face rouge. Her hair like somethin tail. She grinning with her foot up on somebody motocar. Her eyes serious tho. Sad some.”

Celie tends to an ailing Shug, and the two women grow close, eventually becoming lovers.

During this time Celie discovers that Albert has been hiding letters that Nettie has been sending her. Celie begins reading them and learns that Nettie has befriended a minister, Samuel, and his wife, Corrine, and that the couple’s adopted children, Adam and Olivia, are actually Celie’s. Nettie joins the family on a mission in Liberia , where Corrine later dies. The letters also reveal that Alphonso is actually Celie’s stepfather and that her biological father was lynched . Questioning her faith, Celie begins addressing her letters to Nettie. In her first letter to her sister, Celie recounts a conversation she had with Shug, who encourages Celie to change her beliefs about God: “Here’s the thing, say Shug. The thing I believe. God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don’t know what you looking for.”

An emboldened Celie then decides to leave Albert and go to Memphis with Shug. Once there, Celie comes into her own and creates a successful business selling tailored pants. Her happiness, however, is tempered by Shug’s affairs, though Celie continues to love her. Following Alphonso’s death, Celie inherits his house, where she eventually settles. During this time she develops a friendship with Albert, who is apologetic about his earlier treatment of her. After some 30 years apart, Celie is then reunited with Nettie, who has married Samuel. In the novel’s powerful ending Celie also meets her long-lost children.

In terms of the quality of its storytelling, The Color Purple movingly depicts the growing up and self-realization of Celie, who overcomes oppression and abuse to find fulfillment and independence. The novel also had an impact because of its feminist themes and the frank way it addresses gender equality and sexuality . Walker’s best-known work, The Color Purple received widespread critical acclaim, though it was not without critics, many of whom objected to its explicit language and sexual content. The novel was also criticized for its portrayals of Black men, with some reviewers complaining that her male characters—particularly Albert—were highly negative. Walker’s response to these critics was to say that they clearly did not read the book.

In 1985 Steven Spielberg directed an acclaimed film adaptation of the book, featuring Whoopi Goldberg (Celie), Danny Glover (Albert), Oprah Winfrey (Sofia), and Margaret Avery (Shug). The Color Purple was also adapted as a musical for the theater , and the first Broadway production premiered in 2005. In 2023 a film version of the musical was released, directed by Blitz Bazawule and starring Fantasia Barrino (Celie), Colman Domingo (Mister), Danielle Brooks (Sofia), and Taraji P. Henson (Shug). Whereas previous stage and film versions received criticism for downplaying the lesbian relationship between Celie and Shug, Bazawule’s was praised, including by Walker, for including a more-honest portrayal of the two characters’ romance.

The Color Purple

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The Color Purple: an Analysis of Alice Walker's Novel

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Published: Jan 30, 2024

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Background and context, literary analysis of characters, themes and motifs, symbolism and imagery, writing style and techniques, critical reception and impact.

• Association, A. N. (n.d.). Choosing a Title - Organizing Academic Research Papers - Research Guides at Sacred Heart University. Retrieved August 23, 2021, from https://library.sacredheart.edu/c.php?g=29803&p=185701
• Walker, A. (n.d.). The Color Purple.
• Representation of the Southerner in Southern Literature - Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature. (n.d.). Oxford Handbooks Online. https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199732334.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199732334-e-51
• The boundary between dialect and language - Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. (2017). Oxford Research Encyclopedia Linguistics. https://oxfordre.com/linguistics/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.001.0001/acrefore-9780199384655-e-478
• The Color Purple Study Guide. (n.d.). SparkNotes. Retrieved August 23, 2021, from https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/purple/

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The Color Purple

53 pages • 1 hour read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Pages 57-112

Pages 113-161

Pages 162-206

Pages 207-286

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discuss the title of the novel. How does this title evoke important themes in the novel? Be sure to trace out as well how Walker uses the literal color purple to reinforce these themes.

Walker coined the term womanism to describe Black female identity that centers Black women’s experiences. What makes The Color Purple a womanist novel?

Discuss the significance of letter writing and writing in the novel. What impact does the epistolary form have on how you experience the plot and character development? What role do letters and writing play in the lives of the characters?

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The Color Purple Alice Walker

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The Color Purple Essays

The color purple: literary techniques employed by alice walker to develop celie's character hialy gutierrez, the color purple.

"It all I can do not to cry. I make myself wood. I say to myself, Celie, you a tree. That's how I know trees fear man," (23) uttered the protagonist of Alice Walker's The Color Purple. Such words of meekness were characteristic of Celie's speech ...

Female Marginalisation Embodied in The Color Purple and The Yellow Wallpaper Patrick J P Harris

Female marginalisation is a major theme in The Color Purple, with Celie’s emancipation from repressive male patriarchy being the culmination of the plot. When discussing the way narrative method and perspective are used within the novel to address...

Edith Wharton, Alice Walker, and Female Culture Rochelle Ann Maloney College

Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence [1] and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple [2] both paint a portrait American culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This culture appears to be male, with no room for the female as any...

Internalization and Externalization of Color in The Bluest Eye and The Color Purple Anna Erickson College

Internalization and Externalization of Color

In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye , Pauline experiences the beauty of life through her childhood ‘down South;’ extracting colors in which translate into her most fond memories. This internalization of...

Reconciliation Between Public and Private Spheres: Mrs. Dalloway and The Color Purple Hannah Jackson 12th Grade

The ‘public’ and ‘private’ spheres are often held as two separate entities, both representing opposing positions of social freedom or restraint. Whereas the public realm is the more conformed-to and socially hegemonic of the two, the private is...

Performing Despite Prejudice: Female Musicians in the Early 1900s and in The Color Purple Anonymous 10th Grade

During the early 1900s, an emergence of new forms of music such as blues and jazz brought a host of new musicians, many of them female. These female performers, even when wildly successful, were constantly subjected to unfair scrutiny and...

The Definition of a Woman Paul Mburu 12th Grade

If asked, most people would say women are strong, passionate, loving, but not all of these positive traits truly define who they are. Their nature is deemed the most difficult to define because they have negative aspects that contribute to their...

“God Love All Them Feelings”: Sex and Spiritual Embodiment in The Color Purple Ryan Brady College

In Alice Walker’s The Color Purple , Shug Avery introduces the novel’s protagonist, Celie, to the concept of religious embodiment. Critic Anne-Janine Morey, in her book Religion and Sexuality in American Literature, defines embodiment as “the...

Rebirth and Self Discovery in The Color Purple, The Sound and the Fury, Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow Sophie Edwards 12th Grade

Alice Walker’s The Colour Purple, written in 1982, emerged from the appearance of Feminist writers in the 1970s, when specific gender issues were no longer being suppressed by a patriarchal society. This allowed for the growth of personal freedom...

Historical Relevance of The Color Purple Anonymous 11th Grade

Alice Walker’s The Color Purple holds immense historical and societal relevance among a thirty year spectrum of time periods and movements, including the Harlem Renaissance, the gradual development of both civil and women’s rights, the destruction...

The Shades of Slavery Still Stand: An Examination of Convict Leasing in The Color Purple Garrett O'Brien 10th Grade

Contrary to common belief, slavery as broadly defined was not abolished after the Civil War and is still around to this day. White lawmakers in the postbellum South strived to create a system in which prisons could lease out inmates, especially...

Gender Roles and Sexism Dao Vu College

Sexism is, at its core, a product of gender roles. In the early twentieth century, discrimination against women through the overt use of gender roles was highly prevalent amongst men and women. In a patriarchal society, women are expected to...

Influences of Society on Gender in The Color Purple and To Kill a Mockingbird Zaneb Mansha 11th Grade

Gender roles are learned mainly through social interaction rather than biologically. When people are born, they are supplied with very little knowledge of gender. Certain behavior is taught by means of social interactions and through relationships...

Sewing for Freedom Stephanie Perez 12th Grade

Sewing is often viewed as a proper pastime for married women to engage in, even if it can often be laborious to do for hours on end. Yet, the women in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple managed to turn this monotonous activity into something...

Celie, Shug, and an Empowering Sexual Relationship Cerys Myfanwy Evans 12th Grade

Celie has been a victim of female oppression throughout her life, never believing in herself, and living in fear of men. However, when Shug Avery enters her life, Celie’s quality of life starts to improve on the whole, and her newfound self-belief...

Color Itself: Race, Selfhood, and Symbolism in Walker's 'The Color Purple'. Cerys Myfanwy Evans 12th Grade

The theme of color is very broad, and reaches strands out to many different emotions and feeling of Alice Walker's The Color Purple such as sadness, desire and hope. Color also is central to the society that the novel is set in – the color of your...

Individualism Anonymous 11th Grade

The main characters of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Color Purple begin their stories as lonely and confined individuals battling between their own thought versus the pressures and expectations of society. They strive to be...

Cyclical Curses: The Victimization of Black Masculinity and A Historical Look at the Legacy of Intraracism in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple Anonymous College

The Color Purple is arguably the most influential and well-known book of Alice Walker’s literary opus. It won the Pulitzer Prize; it was adapted into a successful film; and it has continued to spark controversy and debate since its publication....

Evolving Relationship Dynamics Emily Draeger 12th Grade

As one grows and matures throughout their lifetime, countless relationships are created and changed. These shifting relationships help define who a person will ultimately be. Many of the reasons for relationship changes come from social situations...

Sofia "the Amazon" and her Role as a Symbol of Resistance Anonymous 12th Grade

A novel of a heroic quest for selfhood against an imposed silence, The Color Purple revolves around the American cultural understanding of feminine and racial mythologies: preconceived notions that Walker goes on to subvert and reconstruct. It is...

“The Color Purple” by Steven Spielberg: Movie Analysis Essay

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The film Color Purple has been adapted from the book of the same title written by Alice Walker. The film is plotted in a rural background and focuses mostly on the life of black females in the southern states of the US during the 1930s. The film Color Purple has frequently been subjected to censorship issues because of its explicit violent depictions. Celie is a young black girl and the main character in the film. She is not well educated which is evident from her letters to God, that are not well drafted, as also from her dialect that is rather raw and strong. Her letters reveal her struggles to resist the horrors in her life in clear indication of her immense strength as a young woman.

While Celie is about to cross over into adolescence she is repeatedly raped by her step father and has two children from him that are snatched away from her. She is eventually married off to a man named Albert and is soon made to cohabit with her husband’s mistress Shug. A sexual relationship develops between the two and Shug is instrumental in making Celie realize the hard facts of life and how to confront them with strength and courage. A sexual relationship develops between them and Celie discovers many exciting things about her body and about herself. She is much impressed with Shug and starts modelling her in becoming more and more independent as she adopts the views and opinions of Shug in viewing the world from different perspectives. She learns from Shug how to handle Albert and is much influenced by her in terms of her religious views.

In broadening her view on religion, Celie realizes that even if a person commits sins it is possible to remain in touch with God. Her strength and will power is evident from the fact that she is able to overcome and free herself from Albert’s bondage and to find loving relationship with Shug. Her sister Nettie also loves her although she is very young in understanding the horrible things that have been faced by Celie. She is seen on several occasions to be honest and open about her sufferings, only with God. The viewer can infer the strong instinct for survival that Celie has. In being born within a poor family, her mother being constantly ill and being victimized by the person whom she believes to be her father, Celie feels used and abused. Instead of complaining, she only wonders why all this happened to her and eventually develops a sense of worthlessness and low self esteem. Her reduced self worth is evident when she does not sign her letters written to God.

Celie eventually matures into a woman of powerful confidence but only after she has been misused to the core; her sister Nettie is separated from her and she is married to a cruel person who actually desired to marry Nettie. She is more of a slave to her husband until the time that Shug enters her life in being the mistress of her husband. With Shug’s support and guidance she becomes psychologically stronger. She also receives moral support from Sofia, her daughter-in-law, who encourages and teaches her how to face men and how to challenge and fight against injustice and prejudice. The film is interesting in watching how Celie learns how to communicate her independence. It is difficult for her to take action on the new concepts she learnt but she eventually gets fed up of the intense cruelty inflicted by her husband and is able to get away from her role as his slave. Celie is also able to gather immense strength and benefits from the enduring love she has for her sister. She loves her sister very much because she helped raising her two children. Celie is seen as a strong woman that learns to face challenges and to stand up for herself. She does not lose faith in God and is ultimately rewarded by being united with Nettie as also by surviving spiritually as well as physically in order to develop into a modern twentieth century woman.

The central focus of the film is seen as the mental and emotional rebirth of Celie. Although she is faced with extreme difficulties and violence in her early years as also after her marriage, she is able to create and stimulate feelings of sexual love and self love after she meets Shug. She develops friendship with Sofia who sets before her real examples of how to be courageous. The film depicts the power of these three women which is derived from the sense of caring they have for each other and the opportunities they get in continuing to develop, even in the face of the sexist and racist environment that prevails around them. It is a pleasure watching them crying, laughing and affirming with life together and sharing with each other’s happiness. They respect each other and live together in a manner that Celie could never have thought of until the time that her husband brought home Shug.

Celie is seen as the main character in conveying the dominating theme of the film which is of women coming together. She becomes the cause for the depicted unity in the film. It is an irony to see how the women view men as being careless and unimportant for their life. Women in the film are seen as being constantly suppressed and degraded by men in being used only for sexual pleasures.

List of References

Borysenko Joan, (1996). A Woman’s Book of Life: the Biology, Psychology and Spirituality of the Feminine Life Cycle, Riverhead Books.

Estees Pinkola Clarissa, (1997). Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype , Ballantine Books.

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IvyPanda. (2021, November 29). “The Color Purple” by Steven Spielberg: Movie Analysis. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-color-purple-by-steven-spielberg-movie-analysis/

"“The Color Purple” by Steven Spielberg: Movie Analysis." IvyPanda , 29 Nov. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/the-color-purple-by-steven-spielberg-movie-analysis/.

IvyPanda . (2021) '“The Color Purple” by Steven Spielberg: Movie Analysis'. 29 November.

IvyPanda . 2021. "“The Color Purple” by Steven Spielberg: Movie Analysis." November 29, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-color-purple-by-steven-spielberg-movie-analysis/.

1. IvyPanda . "“The Color Purple” by Steven Spielberg: Movie Analysis." November 29, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-color-purple-by-steven-spielberg-movie-analysis/.

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IvyPanda . "“The Color Purple” by Steven Spielberg: Movie Analysis." November 29, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-color-purple-by-steven-spielberg-movie-analysis/.

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The Color Purple

Alice walker.

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The novel takes place in two distinct settings—rural Georgia and a remote African village—both suffused with problems of race and racism. Celie believes herself to be ugly in part because of her very dark skin. Sofia , after fighting back against the genteel racism of the mayor and his wife , ends up serving as maid to that family, and as surrogate mother to Eleanor , who does not initially recognize the sacrifices Sofia has been forced to make. In general, very few career paths are open to the African Americans in the novel: for the men, farming is the main occupation, although Harpo manages to open a bar. For women, it seems only possible to serve as a mother, or to perform for a living, to sing as Squeak and Shug Avery do.

In Africa, the situation Nettie , Samuel , Corrine , Adam , Tashi , and Olivia experience is not that much different. Nettie recalls that the ancestors of the Olinka, with whom she lives, sold her ancestors into slavery in America. The Olinka view African Americans with indifference. Meanwhile the English rubber workers, who build roads through the village and displace the Olinka from their ancient land, have very little concern for that people's history in Africa. The British feel that, because they are developing the land, they "own" it, and the African people who have lived there for centuries are merely "backward" natives. It is only at the very end of the novel, after Samuel, Nettie, and their family have returned from Africa, to Celie's home in Georgia, that Celie and Nettie's entire family is able to come together and dine—a small gift, and something that would be considered completely normal for the white families of that time period, whose lives had not been ripped apart by the legacy of slavery and poverty.

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Race and Racism Quotes in The Color Purple

Sofia look half her size. But she still a big strong girl. Arms got muscle. Legs, too. . . . She got a little pot on her now and give you the feeling she all there. Solid. Like if she sit down on something, it be mash.

What that song? I ast. Sound low down dirty to me. Like what the preacher tell you its sin to hear. Not to mention sing. She hum a little more. Something come to me, she say. Something I made up. Something you help scratch out my head.

I don't know, say Sofia. Maybe I won't go. Deep down I still love Harpo, but—he just makes me real tired. She yawn. Laugh. I need a vacation, she say.

I don't know, say the prizefighter. This sound mighty much like some ole uncle Tomming to me. Shug snort, Well, she say, Uncle Tom wasn't call Uncle for nothing.

Sofia say to me today, I just can't understand it. What that? I ast. Why we ain't already kill them off. … Too many to kill off, I say. Us outnumbered from the start.

She singing all over the country these days. Everybody know her name. She know everybody, too. Know Sophie Tucker, know Duke Ellington, know folks I ain't never heard of. And money. She make so much money she don't know what to do with it.

But God, I miss you, Celie. I think about the time you laid yourself down for me. I love you with all my heart.

Did I mention my first sight of the African coast? Something struck in me, in my soul, Celie, like a large bell, and I just vibrated. Corrine and Samuel felt the same. And we kneeled down right on deck and gave thanks to God for letting us see the land for which our mothers and fathers cried—and lived and died—to see again.

Today one of the boys in my afternoon class burst out, as he entered, The road approaches! The road approaches! He had been hunting in the forest with his father and seen it. Every day now the villagers gather at the edge of the village near the cassava fields, and watch the building of the road.

Now the engineers have come to inspect the territory. Two white men came yesterday and spent a couple of hours strolling about the village, mainly looking at the wells. Such is the innate politeness of the Olinka that they rushed about preparing food for them . . . And the white men sat eating as if the food was beneath notice.

You may have guessed that I loved him all along; but I did not know it. oh, I loved him as a brother . . . but Celie, I love him bodily, as a man! I love his walk, his size, his shape, his smell, the kinkiness of his hair.

But guess what else . . . When the missionaries got to the part bout Adam and Eve being naked, the Olinka peoples nearly bust out laughing . . . They tried to explain . . . that it was they who put Adam and Eve out of the village because they was naked. Their word for naked is white. But since they are covered by color they are not naked.

And I see they [the children] think that me and Nettie and Shug and Albert and Samuel and Harpo and Sofia and Jack and Odessa real old . . . But I don't think us feel old at all. And us so happy. Matter of fact, I think this the youngest us ever felt.

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Re-reading The Color Purple: Alice Walker's Extended Critique of Racial Integration in the Novel

Term Paper (Advanced seminar) , 2003 , 24 Pages , Grade: 1,7

Autor:in: Franziska Böttcher (Author)

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The intention of this paper is to show and to analyze Walker’s often underestimated critique of racial relations in the novel The Color Purple. This analysis will be based primarily on a closer look at Nettie’s letters – the narrative’s embedded text that has been neglected by most of the early critical works on the novel. It will be shown that one of the novel’s central questions is: Is a progress in race relations possible? And furthermore, that Walker’s answer to that question is not at all as fairy-tale-like as many critics have claimed the ending of the novel to be. The main sources for my line of argumentation will be, of course, the novel The Color Purple 1 itself, Alice Walker’s essay collection In Search Of Our Mothers’ Gardens, and Linda Selzer’s essay Race and Domesticity in The Color Purple.

Table Of Contents

1. introduction, 2. alice walker’s concept of african american writing.

3. The Role of Nettie’s Letters for the Critique of Racial Integration 3.1. Nettie’s First African Experiences in Monrovia

4. The Domestic Ideal of Racial Integration – The Construction of Kinship 4.1. The Olinka Adam-Myth 4.2. The White Missionary Doris Baines 4.3. Sofia and Miss Eleanor Jane – The Black Mammy Plantation Stereotype 4.4. Squeak and the Problem of White Uncles

5. The Critique of Missionary Work

6. A Fairy-Tale Ending?

7. Conclusion

“ I am impressed by people who claim they can see every person and event in strict terms of black and white, but generally their work is not, in my long-contemplated and earnestly considered opinion, either black or white, but dull, uniform gray. It is boring because it is easy and requires only that the reader be a lazy reader and a prejudiced one. Each story or poem has a formula, usually two-thirds “hate whiteys guts” and one-third “I am black, beautiful, strong and almost always right.” Art is not flattery, necessarily, and the work of any artist must be more difficult than that. A man’s life can rarely be summed up in one word; even if that word is black or white. And it is the duty of the artist to present the man as he is.” [1]

In 1982, Alice Walker published her most famous novel, The Color Purple . For this epistolary tale of sexual oppression and strong female relationships, Walker won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award. The Color Purple is a feminist novel about an abused and uneducated black woman’s struggle for empowerment and has been praised for the depth of its female characters and for its eloquent use of black English vernacular. [2]

In 1985, a Steven Spielberg film based on the novel was released and reached an even wider audience all over the world.

However, the publication of the novel also unleashed a storm of controversy and criticism. It became a catalyst for heated debates about black cultural representation, as a number of male African-American critics and writers complained that the novel reaffirmed old racist stereotypes about pathology in black communities and of black men in particular. They charged Walker with focusing too heavily on sexism at the expense of addressing notions of racism in America and accused her of attacking black men in general.

One of the main problems was in all probability Walker’s portrayal of a different, not at all flattering side of the black community – first of all different from “I am black, beautiful, strong and almost always right.”. Another problem was detected in the novel’s restricted domestic perspective. One of the book’s critics, Elliot Butler-Evans [3] , according to Linda Selzer’s essay Race and Domesticity in The Color Purple [4] , criticized the novel’s epistolary form as “ a strategy by which the larger African-American history, focused on racial conflict and struggle, can be marginalized because of its absence from the narration”. [5] The restricted viewpoint of the novel’s main character, Celie, is seen as constricting the novel’s ability to analyze racial issues. “Celie’s private life pre-empts the exploration of the public lives of blacks.” [6] The critic bell hooks [7] even strongly rejected The Color Purple as “revolutionary literature” because for her the novel’s focus on the sexual oppression of women deemphasizes the “collective plight of black people” and “invali-dates…the racial agenda” of the slave narrative tradition that it draws upon. [8]

Academic discussions about the problems created by Celie’s very personal point of view were at the time paralleled by a controversy in the popular media in America, concerning the general representation of black men in novel and film. At the beginning of the 1980s there was an increasingly felt need for positive images of black people in the media that coincided with the growing recognition of the authenticity of black women writers.

The intention of this paper is to show and to analyze Walker’s often underestimated critique of racial relations in the novel The Color Purple . This analysis will be based primarily on a closer look at Nettie’s letters – the narrative’s embedded text that has been neglected by most of the early critical works on the novel .

It will be shown that one of the novel’s central questions is: Is a progress in race relations possible? And furthermore, that Walker’s answer to that question is not at all as fairy-tale-like as many critics have claimed the ending of the novel to be.

The main sources for my line of argumentation will be, of course, the novel The Color Purple [9] itself, Alice Walker’s essay collection In Search Of Our Mothers’ Gardens , and Linda Selzer’s essay Race and Domesticity in The Color Purple .

The quotation at the beginning of this text, taken from In Search Of Our Mothers’ Gardens , illustrates that already in 1971 Walker held a rather precise view concerning the qualities African American writing should have and which it should not have. She criticised especially the, in her opinion, superficial structures that close their eyes towards social realities other than racism. Walker has stressed this viewpoint in several essays and speeches before writing The Color Purple and proved her point with the novel.

Many of her critics’ arguments can be brought down to one main characteristic: Walker’s novel has no clear-cut white antagonists and instead concentrates on the manifold struggles of African American women in the American south - with black males playing a major role in their problems.

“It seems to me that black writing has suffered because even black critics have assumed that a book that deals with the relationships between members of a black family – or between a man and a woman – is less important than one that has white people as primary antagonists.” [10]

Walker has often criticised this simplifying concept of African American writing, as it seems to exist especially in the heads of black critics – as it once more became clear in the criticism unleashed on The Color Purple .

“ It is interesting to note, too, that black critics as well as white, considered Miss Hurston’s classic, Their Eyes Were Watching God , as second to Richard Wright’s Native Son , written during the same period. A love story about a black man and a black woman who spent only about one-eighteenth of their time worrying about whitefolks seemed to them far less important – probably because such a story should be so entirely normal – than a novel whose main character really had whitefolks on the brain.” [11]

Zora Neale Hurston in general and her great novel Their Eyes Were Watching God in particular were one of Alice Walker’s most important sources of inspiration for writing The Color Purple.

After the publication of the novel, when Walker found herself facing harsh criticism especially from the male part of the African American community, she published her collection of speeches and essays In Search Of Our Mothers’ Gardens - also to justify herself and the point she wanted to make.

“ It is possible the white male writers are more conscious of their own evil (which, after all, has been documented for several centuries – in words and in the ruin of the land, the earth) than black male writers, who, along with black and white women, have seen themselves as the recipients of that evil and therefore on the side of Christ, of the oppressed, of the innocent.” [12]

The Color Purple has been criticised exactly for lacking those obvious features Walker did not like to see African American writing being reduced to: blacks and whites as opponents. The criticism of her novel was even stronger because at the same time Walker showed a picture of black males that is far from “flattery”.

However, a closer and less prejudiced look at the novel reveals, that Walker, in contrast to the opinion of most of her critics, has proved that African American writing does not necessarily need this open opposition to be able to criticise race relations: even though the plot lacks the typical white antagonist, there is an extended critique of race relations, which has often been underestimated.

All the critics focusing mainly on the gender issues touched by the novel at the same time completely overlooked the extent and also the importance of the novel’s representation of race. The Color Purple is not “just” a feminist novel restricted to the analysis of sexual oppression. It is about being a woman and black, living in the frame of male civilization, racist and sexist by definition, being subject to all possible forms of oppression. Even though the critique of race relations in The Color Purple is not as obvious and fore grounded as that of gender relations and sexual oppression, it is still there.

In her essay collection Walker describes an experience at a women scholar’s symposium that has probably massively influenced her outlook on gender relations especially in the African American community:

“(…) we were treated to a lecture on the black woman’s responsibilities to the black man. I will never forget my sense of horror and betrayal when one of the panellists said to me (…): “The responsibility of the black woman is to support the black man; whatever he does.” [13]

This quotation describes the for Walker very shocking and disillusioning experience at the Radcliffe symposium, where she found herself confronted with the majority of the female participants stressing the black woman’ s duty to support her man, come what may. This experience surely contributed to the formation of Walker’s womanism and consequently also to the writing process of The Color Purple .

“It was at the Radcliffe symposium that I saw that black women are more loyal to black men than they are to themselves, a dangerous state of affairs that has its logical end in self-destructive behaviour.” [14]

Alice Walker has characterized herself and the novel The Color Purple as being “womanist” in contrast to feminist. One of the main differences between these two concepts is, that while feminism prioritizes gender above other marginalizing factors, womanism, as defined by Walker, seeks to balance racial, gender, and class / social difference while recognizing and respecting individual difference. Womanists therefore, like neo-slave narrative writers, emphasize wholeness. Since The Color Purple is, by this definition, a womanist and not a feminist novel, it also shows that it is possible to offer an extended critique of gender as well as race relations within the same novel.

“ Black women are called, in the folklore that so aptly identifies one’s status in society, “the mule of the world”, because we have been handed the burdens that everyone else – everyone else – refused to carry … To be an artist and a black woman, even today, lowers our status in many respects, rather than raises it: and yet, artists we will be.” [15]

The Color Purple clearly stresses Walker’s womanist standpoint without neglecting issues of race and class, as will be shown later in this text.

[1] Alice Walker,“The Unglamorous but Worthwhile Duties of the Black Revolutionary Artist, or of the Black Writer Who Simply Works and Writes,“ In Search Of Our Mothers‘ Gardens (New York: Harvest/HBJ, 1984) 137

[2] www. amazon.com

[3] PhD Elliot Butler-Evans, Professor of American Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz

[4] Linda Selzer,“Race and Domesticity in The Color Purple“ African American Review 29.1. (1995)

[5] Selzer 2

[6] Selzer 2

[7] aka Gloria Watkins, Professor of English at City College, City University of New York

[8] bell hooks, „Writing the Subject: Reading The Color Purple.“ Reading Black, Reading Feminist, Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York: Meridian, 1990) 465

[9] Alice Walker, The Color Purple , Tenth Anniversary Edition (London: The Women’s Press Limited, 1992)

[10] Alice Walker, „From an Interview“, In Search Of Our Mothers‘ Gardens , (New York: Harvest/ HBJ, 1984) 261

[11] Alice Walker, „A Talk: Convocation 1972“ In Search Of Our Mothers‘ Gardens , (New York: Harvest/HBJ, 1984) 35

[12] Walker, „Interview“ 251

[13] Alice Walker, „Looking to the Side, and Back“ In Search Of Our Mothers‘ Gardens , (New York: Harvest/HBJ, 1984) 317

[14] Walker, „Looking“ 318

[15] Alice Walker, „In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens“ In Search Of Our Mothers’ Gardens , (New York: Harvest/HBJ, 1984) 237

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