CELIE IN THE COLOR PURPLE
Estetisk-filosofiska fakulteten
Sofia Sundqvist
The Emancipation of Celie:
The Color Purple as a womanist Bildungsroman
Engelska
C-uppsats
Termin:
Handledare:
Karlstads universitet 651 88 Karlstad
Tfn 054-700 10 00 Fax 054-700 14 60
Information@kau.se www.kau.se
1(18)
Vårterminen 2006
Maria Holmgren-Troy
The Emancipation of Celie: The Color Purple as a womanist Bildungsroman
In Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, the protagonist Celie undergoes a remarkable personal change. She evolves from being joyless, submissive and abused by her Pa and her husband
Mr._ to running her own business, owning her own house and feeling younger than ever.
Celie’s most noticeeable change is in the ways she relates to traditional gender roles throughout the novel. Initially, Celie believes that being a woman inescapably means that she has to serve and obey men and she is thus a victim of patriarchy. She is eventually introduced to another way of living by the strong female characters of Sofia and Shug who embrace her in a kind of sisterhood, which is a way for oppressed women to resist patriarchy (Tyson 101).
In The Color Purple, sisterhood is vital for Celie as she has nothing else to help her liberate herself from the patriarchal values that keep her down. Celie enters with ease into a lesbian relationship with Shug, which in itself is a “testament to the good things that Shug evokes in
Celie” (Harris 10). Sofia and Shug help Celie make many new discoveries, from showing her that women can fight too, to helping her discover her sexuality, and introducing her to a new kind of religion. In addition, Sofia and Shug help her see that she is not bound to a fate of serving others without receiving any gratitude or appreciation and that only she, Celie, can control her own destiny.
Her personal progress is in many ways consistent with the Bildungsroman, a genre which is defined by Petra Rau in short as the “novel of development”, and more extensively by Suzanne Hader as follows: “A
Sofia Sundqvist
The Emancipation of Celie:
The Color Purple as a womanist Bildungsroman
Engelska
C-uppsats
Termin:
Handledare:
Karlstads universitet 651 88 Karlstad
Tfn 054-700 10 00 Fax 054-700 14 60
Information@kau.se www.kau.se
1(18)
Vårterminen 2006
Maria Holmgren-Troy
The Emancipation of Celie: The Color Purple as a womanist Bildungsroman
In Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, the protagonist Celie undergoes a remarkable personal change. She evolves from being joyless, submissive and abused by her Pa and her husband
Mr._ to running her own business, owning her own house and feeling younger than ever.
Celie’s most noticeeable change is in the ways she relates to traditional gender roles throughout the novel. Initially, Celie believes that being a woman inescapably means that she has to serve and obey men and she is thus a victim of patriarchy. She is eventually introduced to another way of living by the strong female characters of Sofia and Shug who embrace her in a kind of sisterhood, which is a way for oppressed women to resist patriarchy (Tyson 101).
In The Color Purple, sisterhood is vital for Celie as she has nothing else to help her liberate herself from the patriarchal values that keep her down. Celie enters with ease into a lesbian relationship with Shug, which in itself is a “testament to the good things that Shug evokes in
Celie” (Harris 10). Sofia and Shug help Celie make many new discoveries, from showing her that women can fight too, to helping her discover her sexuality, and introducing her to a new kind of religion. In addition, Sofia and Shug help her see that she is not bound to a fate of serving others without receiving any gratitude or appreciation and that only she, Celie, can control her own destiny.
Her personal progress is in many ways consistent with the Bildungsroman, a genre which is defined by Petra Rau in short as the “novel of development”, and more extensively by Suzanne Hader as follows: “A