The Color Purple Womanism Analysis

Woman- woman is the biological other of man. A creation of God responsible for the creation of human race. In no respect a woman is inferior to her other half i.e. the man. She is equally endowed with intelligence, power and individual personality. A woman plays multiple roles during her lifetime starting from a sweet little daughter to a sister, to a mother to a working woman, so on and so forth. They play a strong role not only by supporting their families but also by determining the destiny of their community as well as their nation. But, from times immemorial, man has kept her as his own personal property and thus not allowed to develop her own individuality. Our patriarchal societies have a particular mindset that the male is superior to the females, physically as well as

womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender. (xi-xii) ‘Womanism’ does not divide black society from within on the lines of gender but, stands for integration and has faith in the wholeness of the society. Throughout her literary career Alice Walker delveddeep into the oppression and victimization of African American women and this also forms the basic structure of the novel The Color Purple which has ‘womanism’ as its basic theme. To quote Krishna Mohan Mishra the novel; . . . depicts the antagonism between black men and black women, and the physical and emotional relationship between black women. It concerns Black women victimized by black men physically, sexually and economically, their lesbian bonding against the tyrannical forces of patriarchy and their ultimately gaining triumph over them. (Sinha 178)
The women in the novel with special reference to the protagonist, moves from being victims to self conscious beings and not only women but men also undergo a sea change. The concept of ‘Lesbianism’ which is also a corollary of ‘womanism’ has also been incorporated in the novel through the physical bonding that emerges between Celie and Shug Avery in the due course of the