Alice Walker's presence in "The Colour Purple"
Alice Walker’s story 'The Colour Purple" strolls through paths of love, violence, and struggle of her personal life as her central character Celie walks down a similar road. This essay is structured to look at the striking resemblance of Alice's experiences to that of Celie’s.
The book is set in rural Georgia in the early twentieth century, and Walker allows us to experience through Celie all that she observed and experienced as a black woman in those times. Born into a poor family, farming was the main activity in Walker’s town and slavery and oppression made their presence well felt. All around her, she heard the black vernacular, which later became Celie’s language of communication with the readers. Celie’s story is also set in a very similar setting, where the lives of her people are plagued by slavery and oppression.
A spirited kid in her childhood, Alice lost much of her enthusiasm after the fateful incident where her brother accidentally shot her in the eye. Deprived of immediate medical care, the eye developed a disfiguring white scar. Considered an outcast by other children of her age, this incident resulted in Alice isolating and withdrawing herself from others and becoming a recluse, which was in stark contrast to how she was in her childhood years. She was pressurized by her brothers into accepting the blame for the incident, which led to her feeling misunderstood by her own family. In her own words, “An accident became, ‘my accident’—thereby absolving my brothers of any blame.” The scar remained a handicap to Alice until it was finally removed six years later. By this time, her isolation had aided in developing her passion towards the written word. Isolation and alienation can be traced as major themes in Celie’s life as well. Being the oldest and the darkest child, Celie was ignored by her mother and used as an object of pleasure by her father. The traumatizing incidents of her teenage years, including her rape by her father, left Celie in a position more or less like that of Alice – lonely, disturbed and distraught with feelings of hopelessness. Completely defeated after being abused by Albert as well, she does little to fight back and endures passively. Although, through their ordeals, both the women ended up becoming more observant and more equipped to deal with their relationships, as is evident in Celie’s case when she manages to improve upon her conflicted relationship with Albert as the story ends.
Various sources have stated that the attack on Alice by her brother was not accidental, but deliberate, which gave rise to feelings of immense betrayal and sadness. Celie too did not anticipate the sexual advances Alphonso made towards her, completely taken aback by whatever was happening to her. Moreover, Alphonso even takes her out of school, ignoring her fervent desire to learn and educate herself. To add up to all of this, he wishes to give Albert Celie rather than Nettie as a wife and asserts that “but can let you have Celie. She the oldest anyway. She ought to marry first. She ain’t fresh tho, but I specs you know that. She spoiled. Twice”. He claims that “I [he] got to get rid of her.”, disreputing her in spite of being her father.
As a youth, Alice saw her brothers and sisters move away to improve their lives, a pattern observed in Celie’s life as well. She watched her mother die and was separated from her sister, Nettie, thereby completing the process of her detachment from her family.
Through the men in The Color Purple, Walker has attempted to highlight the fact that it is not only white men who are in the positions of abusers, but it is also men of colour who place themselves in these positions – a statement for which she faced extreme criticism. Much of the cruelty in the book is inspired by the stories of Walker’s own family. One of her grandfathers, Henry Clay Walker, chased her grandmother across the fields when he was drunk, shooting at her and missing only because he was intoxicated. She describes many of her grandfathers as “batterers, womanisers, alcoholics, all of that.” One of her grandmothers was murdered by a man who claimed to have loved her. In Celie’s case, Alphonso, in spite of being family, sexually abuses Celie repeatedly, getting her pregnant and then proceeding to separate her from her children. Her anguish can be felt deeply by the reader when she claims that “He took it while I was sleeping. Kilt it out there in the woods.” The incident of Celie’s rape is taken from the life of Walker’s great-great-grandmother, who was raped by her great-great-grandfather at the young age of 11. Further, Celie is subjected to extreme neglect and ignorance in the hands of Albert, whose affections towards women are quick to wander.
Walker has aimed to demonstrate how abuse is more or less like a gene, carried down generations. In her own life, she observed how the men in her family turned out to be so abusive because that’s what they’d been seeing the generation before them engage in. In Celie’s case, the first question Albert asks Harpo when he confides to them about how he is bothered by the fact that Sophia does not pay any heed to his words is “You ever hit her?” Harpo’s reaction to this question is of embarrassment. Since he had seen his father and other men around him attempt to control their wives, he decreed that this was the ideal behaviour. Celie writes, “Harpo want to know what to do to make Sofia mind”, even though there was nothing wrong in their marriage.
With black women, oppression was a layered phenomenon. While they bore the prejudice that came with being coloured, they also faced oppression from the society merely because they were women. This history of oppression gains one more dimension when we consider the fact that they were also oppressed by the men of color, the black men, within their own societies – “As black men are on the margins of white society, black women are in the margins of the margins, among black men and whites.” ^ Thus, women like Celie were triply marginalized, and their worth reduced to that of commodities and mere objects to be traded. When Walker was shot and her family asked an employer for a loan, he outright refused, counter-questioning them, “"Why you wanna waste $250 getting your sister's eye fixed? She's just gonna end up marrying a no-good nigger like you ." The mindset of the black society, in this case, becomes very evident through this statement, where the worth of the woman was defined solely by her association with a man. Celie was at one point Alphonso’s daughter, and then went on to become Albert’s wife. At no point in the story up to the resolution does Celie have much control over her life. She is simply traded from the hands of one abuser to another. Albert uses Celie to fulfil his carnal desires, even when it becomes clear that the experience is not the same for Celie. He is completely oblivious to Celie’s needs, using her at will. When Celie tries to stand up for herself, he tries to crush her spirit by telling her “You black, you pore, you ugly, you a woman…you nothing at all.” We can clearly see how the men were aware of the different layers of oppression the women were subjected to, and how they used them as convenient tools to tyrannize them.
Like many coloured people of her time, Walker had experienced segregation firsthand when she was asked to vacate a seat on a bus under the claim that it was only meant for white people. While she could have rebelled against this injustice and fought back immediately, she decided to wait to get back to college and get involved in the Civil Rights Movement. She understood the consequences of both these actions, weighed them, and acted accordingly. Throughout her life, Celie refrains from making any hasty decisions, which leads up to her finally making the one decision that truly matters. She too is completely aware of the consequences of any rough decisions and is careful not to make matters worse by acting on impulse. She patiently waits for years, and her labour finally culminates in her gathering the courage to snap at Albert, calling him a “lowdown dog”, leaving him speechless. Both the women face extremities in life, but both maintain integrity and courage throughout their sufferings, gradually increasing their own self worth. We see a drastic change in Celie from a woman with no self-confidence to a woman who begins her life afresh at an age where change is usually not well-received. She finally puts a foot down and declares that though ““I’m poor, I’m black, I may be ugly and can’t cook (...). But I’m here”. Alice too kept the flame within her alive by telling herself to “Just be, Alice. Being is sufficient. Being is All. The cheerful, sunny self you are missing will return.”
To a reader "The Colour Purple" is not just Celie's letter to an unknown God but an amalgamation of Alice's journey and her previous works. Alice's growth becomes more evident through the tone of Celie’s letters which changes as the novel proceeds. By doing a close reading of the character of Celie, one can see Alice Walker being the central character of her novel.
The book is set in rural Georgia in the early twentieth century, and Walker allows us to experience through Celie all that she observed and experienced as a black woman in those times. Born into a poor family, farming was the main activity in Walker’s town and slavery and oppression made their presence well felt. All around her, she heard the black vernacular, which later became Celie’s language of communication with the readers. Celie’s story is also set in a very similar setting, where the lives of her people are plagued by slavery and oppression.
A spirited kid in her childhood, Alice lost much of her enthusiasm after the fateful incident where her brother accidentally shot her in the eye. Deprived of immediate medical care, the eye developed a disfiguring white scar. Considered an outcast by other children of her age, this incident resulted in Alice isolating and withdrawing herself from others and becoming a recluse, which was in stark contrast to how she was in her childhood years. She was pressurized by her brothers into accepting the blame for the incident, which led to her feeling misunderstood by her own family. In her own words, “An accident became, ‘my accident’—thereby absolving my brothers of any blame.” The scar remained a handicap to Alice until it was finally removed six years later. By this time, her isolation had aided in developing her passion towards the written word. Isolation and alienation can be traced as major themes in Celie’s life as well. Being the oldest and the darkest child, Celie was ignored by her mother and used as an object of pleasure by her father. The traumatizing incidents of her teenage years, including her rape by her father, left Celie in a position more or less like that of Alice – lonely, disturbed and distraught with feelings of hopelessness. Completely defeated after being abused by Albert as well, she does little to fight back and endures passively. Although, through their ordeals, both the women ended up becoming more observant and more equipped to deal with their relationships, as is evident in Celie’s case when she manages to improve upon her conflicted relationship with Albert as the story ends.
Various sources have stated that the attack on Alice by her brother was not accidental, but deliberate, which gave rise to feelings of immense betrayal and sadness. Celie too did not anticipate the sexual advances Alphonso made towards her, completely taken aback by whatever was happening to her. Moreover, Alphonso even takes her out of school, ignoring her fervent desire to learn and educate herself. To add up to all of this, he wishes to give Albert Celie rather than Nettie as a wife and asserts that “but can let you have Celie. She the oldest anyway. She ought to marry first. She ain’t fresh tho, but I specs you know that. She spoiled. Twice”. He claims that “I [he] got to get rid of her.”, disreputing her in spite of being her father.
As a youth, Alice saw her brothers and sisters move away to improve their lives, a pattern observed in Celie’s life as well. She watched her mother die and was separated from her sister, Nettie, thereby completing the process of her detachment from her family.
Through the men in The Color Purple, Walker has attempted to highlight the fact that it is not only white men who are in the positions of abusers, but it is also men of colour who place themselves in these positions – a statement for which she faced extreme criticism. Much of the cruelty in the book is inspired by the stories of Walker’s own family. One of her grandfathers, Henry Clay Walker, chased her grandmother across the fields when he was drunk, shooting at her and missing only because he was intoxicated. She describes many of her grandfathers as “batterers, womanisers, alcoholics, all of that.” One of her grandmothers was murdered by a man who claimed to have loved her. In Celie’s case, Alphonso, in spite of being family, sexually abuses Celie repeatedly, getting her pregnant and then proceeding to separate her from her children. Her anguish can be felt deeply by the reader when she claims that “He took it while I was sleeping. Kilt it out there in the woods.” The incident of Celie’s rape is taken from the life of Walker’s great-great-grandmother, who was raped by her great-great-grandfather at the young age of 11. Further, Celie is subjected to extreme neglect and ignorance in the hands of Albert, whose affections towards women are quick to wander.
Walker has aimed to demonstrate how abuse is more or less like a gene, carried down generations. In her own life, she observed how the men in her family turned out to be so abusive because that’s what they’d been seeing the generation before them engage in. In Celie’s case, the first question Albert asks Harpo when he confides to them about how he is bothered by the fact that Sophia does not pay any heed to his words is “You ever hit her?” Harpo’s reaction to this question is of embarrassment. Since he had seen his father and other men around him attempt to control their wives, he decreed that this was the ideal behaviour. Celie writes, “Harpo want to know what to do to make Sofia mind”, even though there was nothing wrong in their marriage.
With black women, oppression was a layered phenomenon. While they bore the prejudice that came with being coloured, they also faced oppression from the society merely because they were women. This history of oppression gains one more dimension when we consider the fact that they were also oppressed by the men of color, the black men, within their own societies – “As black men are on the margins of white society, black women are in the margins of the margins, among black men and whites.” ^ Thus, women like Celie were triply marginalized, and their worth reduced to that of commodities and mere objects to be traded. When Walker was shot and her family asked an employer for a loan, he outright refused, counter-questioning them, “"Why you wanna waste $250 getting your sister's eye fixed? She's just gonna end up marrying a no-good nigger like you ." The mindset of the black society, in this case, becomes very evident through this statement, where the worth of the woman was defined solely by her association with a man. Celie was at one point Alphonso’s daughter, and then went on to become Albert’s wife. At no point in the story up to the resolution does Celie have much control over her life. She is simply traded from the hands of one abuser to another. Albert uses Celie to fulfil his carnal desires, even when it becomes clear that the experience is not the same for Celie. He is completely oblivious to Celie’s needs, using her at will. When Celie tries to stand up for herself, he tries to crush her spirit by telling her “You black, you pore, you ugly, you a woman…you nothing at all.” We can clearly see how the men were aware of the different layers of oppression the women were subjected to, and how they used them as convenient tools to tyrannize them.
Like many coloured people of her time, Walker had experienced segregation firsthand when she was asked to vacate a seat on a bus under the claim that it was only meant for white people. While she could have rebelled against this injustice and fought back immediately, she decided to wait to get back to college and get involved in the Civil Rights Movement. She understood the consequences of both these actions, weighed them, and acted accordingly. Throughout her life, Celie refrains from making any hasty decisions, which leads up to her finally making the one decision that truly matters. She too is completely aware of the consequences of any rough decisions and is careful not to make matters worse by acting on impulse. She patiently waits for years, and her labour finally culminates in her gathering the courage to snap at Albert, calling him a “lowdown dog”, leaving him speechless. Both the women face extremities in life, but both maintain integrity and courage throughout their sufferings, gradually increasing their own self worth. We see a drastic change in Celie from a woman with no self-confidence to a woman who begins her life afresh at an age where change is usually not well-received. She finally puts a foot down and declares that though ““I’m poor, I’m black, I may be ugly and can’t cook (...). But I’m here”. Alice too kept the flame within her alive by telling herself to “Just be, Alice. Being is sufficient. Being is All. The cheerful, sunny self you are missing will return.”
To a reader "The Colour Purple" is not just Celie's letter to an unknown God but an amalgamation of Alice's journey and her previous works. Alice's growth becomes more evident through the tone of Celie’s letters which changes as the novel proceeds. By doing a close reading of the character of Celie, one can see Alice Walker being the central character of her novel.
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