Female Bonding in ‘The Colour Purple’
Black Aesthetics has for its ingredients the black experience which is the experience of a black sensibility and black consciousness. An experience that takes us back to the African beginnings, the Trans-Atlantic journey, the humiliation of slavery, oppression, racism and survival against all odds. The need for a black aesthetics arouse because black literature was never considered to be a part of the main stream White literature. The slave narratives of the 19th century can be said to be the beginning of Black literature.
Black Aesthetics was a protest against any single monolithic theory. It is a demand for plurality, a demand to be included; it was an assertion of self-determination. But besides these positive aspects, the negative aspect was that the Black Aesthetic critics believed that only blacks could write, read and understand the Black experience. And too much concentration on this black experience resulted in being the righteous victim, the injured party. So the Black aesthetics was totally ignored by two very important writers – Alice Walker and Toni Morrison. They show the black with a total disregard of a favourable light. Both writers bring to centre stage female characters not so important.
Walker’s characters are strong; and free despite being downtrodden; her clearest articulation of the source of their power can be found in the distinction she makes between ‘being a slave and being enslaved’. A slave, however limited in terms of physical or maternal freedoms, can still retain freedom of spirit. The enslaved however, have succumbed to a far more insidious form of oppression. Those who have been enslaved by their oppressors internalize the values of those oppressors. They identify themselves with the very system that represses them and in trying to subvert or destroy patriarchal structure they adopt the very tools of the patriarchy and in so doing, doom themselves to failure.
In ‘The Color Purple’, Celie is essentially a free woman, despite her status as a slave, first, to an abusive step-father, and then to an equally abusive husband. Though she seems to accept their negative images of her, her slavery is more physical than spiritual. Her survival resides in her failure to internalize patriarchal structures. Celie’s transformation from slave to free woman is effected through her interaction and identification with a series of non-traditional, female role models. In spite of all this, Celie serves as a role model to the other female characters of the novel. Nettie, Sofia, Shug and Mary Agnes all learn much from Celie’s example as she from theirs. Although each of them is remarkably independent by comparison with Celie, they are nonetheless enslaved; trapped by their internalization of a patriarchal value system even as they reject the roles it assigns them.
Celie’s most salient strength is ignorance, initially defined as weakness. She herself says, ‘I don’t know how to fight. All I know how to do is stay alive.’ Celie selflessly gives her away to her step father in order to save Nettie from his advances. Later Nettie becomes the fairy god mother for Celie’s two children, Adam and Olivia.
For both Celie and Nettie strength is defined in patriarchal terms as mastery and dominance. Nettie exhorts her sister to fight, to exert her authority over her step children and later Celie tells Harpo that Sofia would be a better wife if she received a beating.
Sofia is a complete antithesis to Celie; a strong woman endowed with masculine power. Sofia knows how to fight, but she does not know how to survive. She does not yet realize that any attempt to fight the system by its own rules and on its own ground is doomed inevitably to failure. Celie survives because she has never completely internalized the values and methods of the patriarchy. Her capacity to endure the physical and psychological abuses and transcend it is exemplary in comparison to Sofia’s complete inability to do so. It is only in the prison that Sofia learns the harsh lessons of survival, lessons first taught to her by Celie’s example, as she explains: ‘Every time they ask me to do something, Miss Celie, I act like I’m you. I jump right up and do just what they say.’
There is a bond of sisterhood that the female characters share. This sisterhood we find when Squeak allows herself to be raped in order that Sofia gets a better deal. This sisterhood is again seen when Sofia comes back, takes care of Squeak’s children and husband so that Squeak can pursue her career.
The terrible nothingness that exists in Celie’s life is removed by Shug Avery who teaches her how to laugh, how to speak her mind, and how to see herself as a woman deserving of love. Celie and Shug have a same man at the centre. Celie nurses Shug in her sickness and admires her. Shug on the other hand is a friend, sister, teacher, preacher, comforter and guardian angel who protects Celie from Mister’s brutality and teaches her a new song of self. Physical love between Shug and Celie develops naturally from their spiritual bonding. Shug’s spirituality is a greater influence on Celie’s life than the women’s moments of physical pleasure. She cares most profoundly about Celie’s lack of self-love. The most important gift to Celie is not sexual pleasure, but a liberating definition of God. Celie pictured God as a man, a view which itself is enslaving rather than liberating. Shug, always the voice of reason and love, tells Celie that God ‘ain’t a picture show’. She tells her that God is there in everything and everybody.
Celie’s metamorphosis from an ugly girl who submits to brutality to a beautiful woman who loves self is gradual. It begins of course with Shug’s arrival in Celie’s life and in the lives of other women in the novel; it continues and culminates in Celie’s personhood because of sisterhood. In various ways, the women characters – Celie, Shug, Sofia, Squeak (Mary Agnes) – defend, protect, fight for, and love one another. ‘Sister’s Choice’, the quilt Celie makes, is a symbol of the female bonding that restores the women to a sense of completeness and independence.
“Black women are called, in the folklore that so aptly identifies one’s status in society, ‘the mules of the world’, because we have been handed the burdens that everyone else – everyone else – refused to carry”. When Alice Walker embraces rather than denies the identification of women as ‘mules of the world’, she shifts our focus from the immediate negative charge carried by the word ‘mule’ to identify a peculiar strength and ability to survive embodied in the image.
Black Aesthetics has for its ingredients the black experience which is the experience of a black sensibility and black consciousness. An experience that takes us back to the African beginnings, the Trans-Atlantic journey, the humiliation of slavery, oppression, racism and survival against all odds. The need for a black aesthetics arouse because black literature was never considered to be a part of the main stream White literature. The slave narratives of the 19th century can be said to be the beginning of Black literature.
Black Aesthetics was a protest against any single monolithic theory. It is a demand for plurality, a demand to be included; it was an assertion of self-determination. But besides these positive aspects, the negative aspect was that the Black Aesthetic critics believed that only blacks could write, read and understand the Black experience. And too much concentration on this black experience resulted in being the righteous victim, the injured party. So the Black aesthetics was totally ignored by two very important writers – Alice Walker and Toni Morrison. They show the black with a total disregard of a favourable light. Both writers bring to centre stage female characters not so important. Walker’s characters are strong; and free despite being downtrodden; her clearest articulation of the source of their power can be found in the distinction she makes between ‘being a slave and being enslaved’. A slave, however limited in terms of physical or maternal freedoms, can still retain freedom of spirit. The enslaved however, have succumbed to a far more insidious form of oppression. Those who have been enslaved by their oppressors internalize the values of those oppressors. They identify themselves with the very system that represses them and in trying to subvert or destroy patriarchal structure they adopt the very tools of the patriarchy and in so doing, doom themselves to failure.
In ‘The Color Purple’, Celie is essentially a free woman, despite her status as a slave, first, to an abusive step-father, and then to an equally abusive husband. Though she seems to accept their negative images of her, her slavery is more physical than spiritual. Her survival resides in her failure to internalize patriarchal structures. Celie’s transformation from slave to free woman is effected through her interaction and identification with a series of non-traditional, female role models. In spite of all this, Celie serves as a role model to the other female characters of the novel. Nettie, Sofia, Shug and Mary Agnes all learn much from Celie’s example as she from theirs. Although each of them is remarkably independent by comparison with Celie, they are nonetheless enslaved; trapped by their internalization of a patriarchal value system even as they reject the roles it assigns them.
Celie’s most salient strength is ignorance, initially defined as weakness. She herself says, ‘I don’t know how to fight. All I know how to do is stay alive.’ Celie selflessly gives her away to her step father in order to save Nettie from his advances. Later Nettie becomes the fairy god mother for Celie’s two children, Adam and Olivia.
For both Celie and Nettie strength is defined in patriarchal terms as mastery and dominance. Nettie exhorts her sister to fight, to exert her authority over her step children and later Celie tells Harpo that Sofia would be a better wife if she received a beating.
Sofia is a complete antithesis to Celie; a strong woman endowed with masculine power. Sofia knows how to fight, but she does not know how to survive. She does not yet realize that any attempt to fight the system by its own rules and on its own ground is doomed inevitably to failure. Celie survives because she has never completely internalized the values and methods of the patriarchy. Her capacity to endure the physical and psychological abuses and transcend it is exemplary in comparison to Sofia’s complete inability to do so. It is only in the prison that Sofia learns the harsh lessons of survival, lessons first taught to her by Celie’s example, as she explains: ‘Every time they ask me to do something, Miss Celie, I act like I’m you. I jump right up and do just what they say.’
There is a bond of sisterhood that the female characters share. This sisterhood we find when Squeak allows herself to be raped in order that Sofia gets a better deal. This sisterhood is again seen when Sofia comes back, takes care of Squeak’s children and husband so that Squeak can pursue her career.
The terrible nothingness that exists in Celie’s life is removed by Shug Avery who teaches her how to laugh, how to speak her mind, and how to see herself as a woman deserving of love. Celie and Shug have a same man at the centre. Celie nurses Shug in her sickness and admires her. Shug on the other hand is a friend, sister, teacher, preacher, comforter and guardian angel who protects Celie from Mister’s brutality and teaches her a new song of self. Physical love between Shug and Celie develops naturally from their spiritual bonding. Shug’s spirituality is a greater influence on Celie’s life than the women’s moments of physical pleasure. She cares most profoundly about Celie’s lack of self-love. The most important gift to Celie is not sexual pleasure, but a liberating definition of God. Celie pictured God as a man, a view which itself is enslaving rather than liberating. Shug, always the voice of reason and love, tells Celie that God ‘ain’t a picture show’. She tells her that God is there in everything and everybody.
Celie’s metamorphosis from an ugly girl who submits to brutality to a beautiful woman who loves self is gradual. It begins of course with Shug’s arrival in Celie’s life and in the lives of other women in the novel; it continues and culminates in Celie’s personhood because of sisterhood. In various ways, the women characters – Celie, Shug, Sofia, Squeak (Mary Agnes) – defend, protect, fight for, and love one another. ‘Sister’s Choice’, the quilt Celie makes, is a symbol of the female bonding that restores the women to a sense of completeness and independence.
“Black women are called, in the folklore that so aptly identifies one’s status in society, ‘the mules of the world’, because we have been handed the burdens that everyone else – everyone else – refused to carry”. When Alice Walker embraces rather than denies the identification of women as ‘mules of the world’, she shifts our focus from the immediate negative charge carried by the word ‘mule’ to identify a peculiar strength and ability to survive embodied in the image.
