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The Color Purple Research Paper

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Alice Walker is the famous novelist with her novel, The Color Purple, which was one of her bestsellers, The Color Purple has its narrator: Celie, the African American women with her stormy life. The novel told a rough truth about the 1930s for the African American women. Celie was not a fighter, she was a lover and she accepted whatever life came to her as it has always been. By creating Celie, Walker made Celie’s voice unheard, yet they were growing discussions of the sexual problem of African-American women. In this time period of the 1930s, colored people were considered American citizens, based on the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments. These amendments ended slavery in 1865 through 1870. Although, colored people had the …show more content…

Black women’s sexuality was either ignored or included primarily in relation to African-American men’s issues. Just like Celie, she had been raped by her stepfather and had no choice but to marry Mr_. Most of Celie’s life is miserable, and her unhappiness is caused mainly by men. “Walker’s description of Celie’s bonding first with the biological mother of infancy and ranges from the ministrations of Celie’s younger sister Nettie to Kate and Sofia, and to Shug’s facilitating Celie’s sensual awakening to adult female sexuality and a healthy emotional life. This “female bonding,” which occurs over an extended period of time, enables Celie - a depressed survivor - victim of parent loss, emotional and physical neglect, rape, insect, trauma, and spousal abuse - to resume her arrested development and continue developmental processes that were thwarted in infancy and early adolescence.” (Charles L. Proudfit, Celie’s Search for Identity: A Psychoanalytic Developmental Reading of Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple”)
But, African-American women’s persistent silence about sexuality does not explain by suppression only. African-American women don’t have the support from even their own community to speak out on this topics. To speak up about sexuality that has the effect on the African-American community, was not acceptable. Racial solidarity was more important than just Black women’s problem, that is why Black women to always put their own needs second. Keep their mouth shut is one of the best ways for them to survive under the control of

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