Author Biography She stayed with the family that includes Celie's two babies, Olivia and Adam. The tone of her letters to Celie contrasts sharply with Celie's letters to God. Research colonial rule in Africa. Her African experience has made her see God spiritually rather than in the physical form that is represented in Western Christianity. Yet, Celie does not abandon the idea of God. The morality other critics find in The Color Purple, Harris feels "resurrect[s] old myths about black women." Celie's sexual passivity, even if it could be stretched into a form of defiance, may suggest some iota of resistance to her situation, but the fact remains that she shares with Mem the sexual violation of her body, which amounts to an obvious lack of control over the most personal, private parts of herself. But once Celie finds Nettie's letters, the two finally can correspond again. She convinces the warden that working for the mayor's wife would be a better punishment for Sofia. Trudier Harris, "On The Color Purple, Stereotypes, and Silence," in Black American Literature Forum, vol. Why does Nettie come to live with Celie? The Leventhals were the first legally married interracial couple to live in Jackson, Mississippi. "The Color Purple "If I was buried, I wouldn't have to work. The end of the book finds Celie and her erstwhile tormentor sitting companionably on the front porch smoking their pipes, "two old fools left over from love, keeping each other company under the stars.". Celie's daughter by her stepfather. In her, black women are visible at various stages in their history and in their representations in literature. April 30, 2014 By Anonymous "Dear God, I am fourteen years old. It has "become the classic novel by a black woman," because "the pendulum determining focus on black writers had swung in their favor and Alice Walker had been waiting in the wings of the feminist movement." This fear will be alleviated eventually, but because Celie can now hope to reclaim her babies someday, the . Style It is a novel about an oppressed woman, and the letters are important. Walker presents a clear picture in the book of the economic and social hardships that African Americans faced in the rural south during the early 1900s. Walker's didacticism is especially evident in Nettie's letters from Africa, which make up a large portion of the book. The interviews have a distinctively feminist focus, making them especially interesting to anyone studying The Color Purple. I got children, I say. When Celie's father-in-law, Old Mr.____, criticizes Shug, Celie, who has been sent to get the man a glass of water, overhears him: I drop little spit in Old Mr.____ water. I twirl the spit round with my finger. Next time he come I put a little Shug Avery pee in his glass. ." Hire yourself out to farm? "You" is a real person, who will answer her. Ridiculous in its conception, the situation becomes more so when Shug asks and is granted permission from Celie to continue sleeping with Albert. The warden has no qualms about raping his own niece, which reflects a southern, white, male disregard for the dignity of black women. I doubt it, but I was puzzled. After slavery, the social and economic relations for African Americans remained much the same. That is perhaps the only thing about Celie that seems to fit with Walker's blueprint. In the third period, she awakens to the possibility of self-realization through her relationship with Shug and her renewed contact with her sister Nettie. But I'm here." From this, she also becomes very independent without a man around. Celie's last letter in the book is to God, but this time it is Shug's God. After Nettie has been forced to leave and Celie thinks she is dead, one of Albert's sisters suggests A look at some of the women in Walker's earlier works, who, like Celie, are victims of sexual and communal abuse, and who are sometimes victims of their own minds, reveals that Celie is not substantially different from them and that the culmination may be the reaffirmation of many old stereotypes rather than the assertion of a new identity. I say to myself, Celie, you a tree. What would she love? Nettie is highly intellectual and from an early age recognizes the value of education. Insistence on Cultural Specificity Walker contends that black women suffer from discrimination by the white community, and from a second repression from black males, who impose the double standard of white society on women. I think about the time you laid yourself down for me. In my eyes, it shows their friendship and the look on Netties face is oneof love and care. The letters will not be read by anyone. She can stand up and be notice. Celie has also learned to speak up for herself, claiming her house when her stepfather dies. And the only way to bring about the change is to communicate. The plants, which provided the leaves for the roofs of the Olinkas' houses, were destroyed, and many people died. Such a progression, however, is at the expense of realistic portrayal of black female character, a change that culminates in the character of Celie in The Color Purple.. In her letters to Celie, Nettie tells her a great deal about Africa, which comes to represent the larger world as well as African-American ethnic identity in the novel. While they work together, she tells him the Olinkas' version of Adam and Eve's story: Adam and Eve were the first white babies in a black world, rejected because they were different. And the chief agency of redemption, Walker is saying, is the strength of the relationships between women: their friendships, their love, their shared oppression. The two become lovers again under Celie's own roof. After twenty years of enduring abuse after marriage, Celie finds the strength to engage in a lesbian relationship with her husband's former lover, to leave the church and her home, and to start a pant-making business. A distinction in terminology is made for black women because their struggle for expression has been different from white women. A reverend, married to Corrine. Olivia returns to America with the Reverend, Nettie, Adam, and his wife, Tashi, and is reunited with Celie, her birth mother. To her, God was just another man, up in the sky, a white man who was patiently listening to her. Shug does not help her, as Sofia did. There were few opportunities for blacks to establish themselves outside of sharecropping. She does not dwell on Albert's misuse of her because "he my husband. When she is insulted by the mayor's wife, she talks back and causes a scene, for which she is arrested and thrown in jail. It is through the letters that the reader develops a sense of Celie's being, which at first is selfeffacing, but eventually becomes strong and independent. Walker can certainly be developing the case that the usual does not apply to Celie and the environment in which she lives, but there must be some kind of logic at work in the novel, no matter how vehemently the reader may disapprove of it. For instance, she embroiders the name of her There she met Melvyn Leventhal, a white civil rights attorney, whom she married in 1967. Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. When Corrine got ill shortly afterwards, she told Nettie she thought Adam and Olivia were Nettie's and Samuel's kids. Gordon W. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice, Cambridge, 1954. A road was now near the village, and suddenly the Olinkas realized it was going to destroy their sacred place. It says that the ship Nettie and her "family" were traveling in was sunk by German mines. 35, 37, 89-94. doesn't tell Celie what has happened to the children, and initially Celie thinks he killed them. When Mr.'s father comes to the house and attacks Shug, Mr. and Celie feel united for the first time, and that scene will be developed at the end of the novel when they start talking to each other. Celie Character Analysis Celie When the novel opens, Celie is a young black girl living in Georgia in the early years of the twentieth century. Letters 59-61 She discovers she is jealous of Sofia's capacity to fight. As a character in evolution, some of the things that happen to her tax credibility; to go from being object to being self-determined is certainly not impossible, but Celie's case raises questions about that process as well as about the evolved state of black womanhood she is portrayed as representing. Celie's mother has died and Pa is looking too much at her little sister, Nettie. After the wonderful times with Shug, after she sees that things can be different for a woman like herself, she is still overly critical of herself when Shug is unfaithful to her: Sometimes I think Shug never love me. Characters The primary symbol of The Color Purple is found in the title, The Color Purple. Albert treats Celie with cruelty, using her to satisfy his sexual needs and to take care of his children. Celie's catalog reads as if she had adopted all the stereotyped notions of looks that black women have been unwarranted heir to for centuries in America. Surprisingly, Celie's home-bound sojourn in Memphis as companion and lover to Shug seems unliberating, but, taken in its context, it gives Celie a new lease on life. The Color Purple: Nettie Quotes Samuel Character Analysis in The Color Purple Barbara Christian, editor, Black Feminist Criticism, Pergamon Texto, University of California Press, 1985. The reader has a chance to read over the character's shoulder and look inside her. Tashi, her mother, and Adam all disappeared from the village. How long can it last? The pithy, direct black folk idiom of The Color Purple is in the end its greatest strength, reminding us that if Walker is sometimes an ideologue, she is also a poet. She got spunk, he say, She can talk to anybody. In the following excerpt, Harris denies that the passive Celie is a progressive character and contends that The Color Purple contains faults in logic which strain credibility. This conversation is a new beginning for Celie. Black women throughout their history in the United States have been victimized by a standard of beauty alien and inapplicable to them. Her mean and condescending Shug helps Celie gain self-esteem and teaches her to speak up for herself. The Color Purple Diaries - Celie's Letters Mr. ____ reach over to slap me. It'd kill your mammy." Nettie Character Analysis in The Color Purple She moves from the back room of the house in which her stepfather has violated her to sharing a huge house in Memphis with her lover to returning to a house, property, and a store she has inherited. Dear the sky, dear the moon, dear the stars, dear friends and family. Nettie relates the story of the Olinka tribe, particularly of one girl, Tashi, as a kind of feminist fable: The Olinka do not believe girls should be educated. Nettie could be seen as an example of a very famous quote that brings truth to her situation, You dont need a man to complete you.Once she eventually does get married, it is a non-violent and solid marriage. There is no use of the word we. The actual language of the letters, which are written in Celie's folk speech without any attempt at editorializing on Walker's part, is similarly reaffiming; something essential to her personality is given shape on the page. She helps Mary Agnes, she helps Shug, and what is even more impressive, she helps Mr. Mr. has been a role, a puppet of his father's patriarchal ideas. She starts writing to God because He is the only thing she has left. When Sofia returns she is quite nasty to her, but she also helps Sofia out when she is jailed for standing up for herself from being insulted by whites. Nothing. Albert, Shug (Yes, Shug come back too), and I was sittin on the porch when us saw them. Nettie has a boyfriend, Mr.__, but Pa refuses to let them get married. Ethnicity: Theory and Experience, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1975. I think bout Nettie, dead. And she shares with many of the other Walker women the subservience to men. It is all very familiar. She will take any abuse to her body and mind as long as she is allowed to stay alive. Today: Violence against women is illegal, and perpetrators are being vigorously prosecuted in both civilian and military life. For most of the book, Nettie is unmarried and self-sustaining. Change), You are commenting using your Facebook account. Meanwhile, Nettie runs away from Pa and comes to Mr.'s house, but when she rejects him, he throws her out. Both women find a moment of community, they do something together. She moves from seeing God as the center of her universe to redefining the concept of the supernatural as an "It" that dwells in everyone. Surprisingly, one of the most positive reviewers of the book was Richard Wesley. Many of her stories have been included in anthologies. Before that, though, let's analyze the two sentences which are outside the letters. Characters Her characters in future works, she said, would no longer go crazy, as Myrna does in "Really, Doesn't Crime Pay?" You talking crazy. The Color Purple Section 8 Summary and Analysis They have to speak when others dare not." Contemplating a new life, and moving geographically to achieve it, adds a new dimension to the consideration of Celie as stifled character. Celie goes through the somnambulism of her days without consideration of it in any special way; her emotional state is such that few things draw her far out of her passive existence. Celie manages to get a picture of Shug and falls in love with her. The Color Purple Test Flashcards 1930s: Most religious African Americans belong to either a Baptist or Methodist congregation. Harpo accepts her strong character and stops trying to dominate her. At times the message is confusing, too. One of the three major female characters in the story who have a positive influence on Celie. Meanwhile, Squeak takes care of Sofia's children. Patriarchal society forbids him to sew and love, and turns him into Mr. the Man. Historical Context On one of her visits she tells Albert to buy Celie some clothes. 23-48. Where does Celie find all of her letters from Nettie? S-12. The officer in charge of the prison where Sofia is sent after she insults the mayor's wife. She moves from being Hurston's mule, the beast of burden, to physical and mental declarations of independence, to a reunion with her children and her sister. While no longer slaves, many blacks remained on the land as sharecroppers. [Shug says.]. They finally recover them from Mr.'s trunk. When Sofia thinks of leaving Harpo because he will not accept the fact that she refuses to be beaten, Celie says, "He your husband Got to stay with him. Reviewers praised her for her use of the epistolary form, in which written correspondence between characters comprises the content of the book, and her ability to use black folk English. Mr. _____ puts a letter directly in Celie's hand. She continues to raise his adopted children, who happen to be Celie's by her stepfather. The end of the novel finds Celie thirty years older than when the novel began. She has visited her old house with Shug and Many epistolary novels are written from the main female character's point of view. Olivia's only girlfriend, Tashi, could not come to school because her parents forbade it. Through making pants for Shug, Celie discovers her final declaration of independence. According to the African myth, there is a way to cut this horror, and that is to stop inventing serpents and "accept everybody else as a child of God, or one mother's children, no matter what they look like or how they act." She also questions the novel's morality, which other critics praise. See Important Quotations Explained Nettie confesses to Samuel and Corrine that she is their children's aunt. How old is Celie when the novel ends? Richard Wesley, "The Color Purple Debate: Reading between the Lines," in Ms., September, 1986, pp. When the life here gets too difficult and one lacks the strength to change it, one turns to Jesus and heaven. The most detailed section of the book is devoted to the problems faced by African Americans in the United States. Grange cannot see an end to the life he is forced to lead under the sharecropping system in Georgia, so he destroys his marriage and indirectly destroys Margaret and her child. In fact, they go kill off so much of the earth and the colored that everybody gon hate them just like they hate us today. Compare Celie's letters to Nettie's letters by listing three characteristics of each writ-ing style. She puts on, then takes off, a new dress because it "won't help none with my notty head and dusty headrag, my old everyday shoes and the way I smell." Along comes Shug Avery, a blues singer of legendary beauty. Influenced by Roots The reunion lasts only fifteen minutesthen the mayor's wife insists that Sofia drive her home. Samuel was a member of a Missionary Society, and Nettie decided to go to Africa with the family. Website of a college (Georgia State University) she might want to attend to further her education and earn a degree. But I just say, Never mine, never mine, long as I can spell G-o-d I got somebody along." During the period of the novel, it was a commonly held view among white males that they could do whatever they pleased with black women, a view that many black males shared as well. You shape funny. Celie curses Mr. and tells him that everything he did to her, he did to himself. Nettie's letters to Celie are written in standard English to reflect the fact that she received a better education than Celie. Until Mr. starts looking around and belonging to the world and caring for it, he is condemned to be Mr. and not Albert. Carol Pearson and Katherine Pope, The Female Hero in American and British Literature, Bowker, New York, 1981. When her "father" dies, she inherits his farm and returns to Georgia, where she sleeps in a room painted purplefor Walker, the color of radiance and majesty (and also the emblematic color of lesbianism). The womens smile in his direction every chance they git. Still, it is not enough to make her change her behavior. And this house ain't been clean good since my first wife died. I jump up and do just what they say." In frustration, many black males turned their anger towards women. Plot Summary Her real father was lynched years before by a white mob. Nettie refuses Mr. ____, thus angering him. Sound like some kind of motor. Celie knows that Sofia is a good wife, just as she knows that Harpo is happier with her (when he did not try to beat her) than he has ever been, yet she advises Sofia to stay even after the attempted beatings. Sofia and Squeak hit each other in the juke joint, and finally Sofia leaves. Test Match Created by icraft20 Terms in this set (67) Celie marries Mr. because she is forced into it by her pa nettie moves in with celie and mr. for a while, but leaves after a short time because mr. tries to seduce nettie and when he fails, he forces her to leave which best describes the relationship between harpo and sofia? Eventually, Sofia and Harpo reunite in a different relationship. She also criticizes the sections dealing with Nettie and Africa because she feels they "were really extraneous to the central concerns of the novel" and accuses Walker of including them "more for the exhibition of a certain kind of knowledge than for the good of the work."