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How Alice Walker signifies on the slave narrative in her novel The Color Purple
The Color Purple written by Walker Pulitzer is the first novel written by an African American woman to fit within the traditional definition of the epistolary novel. In the ninety-four letters that cover the span of over thirty years between the two world wars, we hear and symbolically bear witness to Celie’s story, a young female physically and psychologically battered in a serious of abusive relationship with men. At fourteen years old, Celie is raped and impregnated by her stepfather whom she thought was her real father and soon after, is bartered off in a loveless arranged marriage. Significantly, the first section of the letter is addressed to God, whom she thinks is a white, male, and conspicuously silent in her persecutions. The choice of God as the addressee of her letters signifies upon her isolation from the human community surrounding her. It is signifies the complicity of the male patriarchal system that stifles her voice and leaves no outlet for confession and introspection except a God graven in the image of her persecutors (Walker 66). It is at this instance that Celie develops a support system of females around her, in specific through her relationship with Shug Avery and her sister Nettie, whom she thought had died and her letter retained from Celie by her abusive husband. This makes Celie to develop a positive self-image and is able to change to address the letters to her sister Nettie. The letters that shape the novel thus become Celie’s psychological growth markers, and development of woman-driven life philosophy. Additionally, Celie, through the letters, discovers a fresh system of gender equity and a burgeoning sexual identity that reflect her growing sense of independence and selfhood (Funderburg & Altman 56-58). Thus, the Alice Walker uses various methods and tactics to signify on the slave narrative in her novel The Color Purple. This papers main objective is to identify and elaborate theses tactics and methods as used by Alice Walker.
The first aspect used by Alice Walker to signify on the slave narrative is by the use of slave narrative. This might appear more complicated, for instance, suppose we take the slave narrative as our best example, for this case, Celie narrates her own story to portray the slavery elements in the novel. She proves and puts it in black and white and more specifically, writes using the slavery language as used by her slave master. This might have been done, not for just other purposes, but specifically for the reader to realize, and fully comprehend the master’s language and discourses. Using Baker’s insight, and Jacob’s historical example, in The Color Purple, both cases shows evidence of slavery. The author makes best out of the era to demonstrate but self-image and public image of slavery. The novel is written in letters and notes, form associated with the women’s history, in regard to slavery (especially women), and the novel uses both narrative and the sentimental romance in its structure. The literature that African American women write refutes the perception not only that their subjects are nothing at all” but that their subjects can be reduced to categories so often imposed on those who are devalued. Perhaps, the setting and the characters can well portray how the African American women were treated. Though, the slavery aspect is never brought out in openly, but through narratives, letters and notes in this case, and the characters. As Walker writes in her essay, “a black woman is the mule of the world, because we have been handed the burdens that everyone else – everyone else – refused to carry”(5, 237). As well, the novel touches “reclaiming one’s history…inheritance, language…and voice…”(6, 183).
The women oppression, maybe, can be another method of signifying on the slave narrative. The author’s privileging of speech plus other cultural practices, for instance needlework, music, sexuality, and even spirituality all portrays the slave narrative. The novel, to start with, as much as in the first letter, God is the addressee, brings a clear picture that Celie’s writing was not by any means directed to her or method of self-expression. Celie writes, in most conditions, when telling it is impossible, one better tell nobody but God and this is how the novel starts. The taboo is never broken by Celie until midway through when she tells Shug that she had been beaten. This was the community taboo, to tell other people of your problems and misfortunes. Telling was thus confined to spoken, human communication, whereas writing to God does not count on an act of self-empowerment. This appears to the reader, majority in fact, significant distinction to make, because it crucially defines the difference between the dominant (white) culture’s writing valorization as against speech. She writes, “No one could wish for a more advantageous heritage than that bequeathed to the black writer in the South: a compassion for the earth, a trust in humanity beyond our knowledge of evil, and in abiding love of justice. We inherit a great responsibility as well, for we must give voice to centuries not only of silent bitterness and hate, but also of neighborly kindness and sustaining love”(14,100).
Writing letters or notes is as close to speaking as writing can get, and yet we see in the novel, how writing can malfunction as communication mode. This is because writing in its pure form, as it were, is an abstract activity requiring solitude and stillness, whose end product is removed from the circumstance in which is aimed at no one in particular and shows no personal markers is prized most highly of all. Speech, by contract, is a communication practice; a call that only works it elicits a response. And response and call is another trait is African American cultural practice, whether it takes the form of screaming at the top of one’s voice in the gathering audience’s interjections of approval in oral shouting in oral storytelling or jazz performance. Speech is not normally considered as an art form in the way that writing is, due to its communal, evanescent and interactive nature. Restraining the people and women especially in this novel from making speeches but rather encouraging writing clearly signifies the slavery. Furthermore, only God was supposed to be addressed in case of one’s misfortunes and suffering. This made the condition worse and encouraged slavery.
The feminist tone with which the novel is written and the sympathetic voices ass signify slavery and especially, when referring to women. In the novel, the author joins other late 21st century feminist in building up, and on, an allegorical construct which personifies the traditional gender roles of women as constituting slavery. Female sexual slavery exists in every situation where females do not have the ability to the immediate environs of their existence, where regardless of how they got into the situation they cannot get our, and where they are the subject to sexual violence and exploitation. The novel doers not only play upon the form of traditional as narratives, as an allegory The Color Purple gives a devastating critique not only of racism (as the writer is African American and clearly brings out the factors affecting and contributing to racism) but also of sexism. A striking allegorically representation of a kind of continuing slavery occurs in the novel (The Color Purple). In fact, the violations of realist convention are so flagrant that one can cal into a question whether The Color Purple is really a novel. For example, Celie, is abused and raped by Pa, who takers away her children after they were born. Celie’s new husband, whose name is not mentioned, simply marries Celie to take care of his four kids, look after his house, and work in his fields. This clearly portrays slavery in the novel.
Based on Alice Walker’s novel, The Color Purple negotiates power relationship within heterosexuality that lead to abuse. Heterosexuality and whiteness have been, in the main center, resulting into the other, for example the female or the disabled as compliant infant, the gay man as child molester, and the black man as criminal and rapist (Hubert 46, 57, 63). By aiming at the depth of passion of women in the novel, it divulges the damaging the nature of the dominance of patriarchal heterosexuality, where the persecution of women and emphasis on sex as consequent result in the child abuse, for example, when Celie was raped and impregnated by her own stepfather. Even the setting of the novel was at the beginning of the child sexual abuse panic that swept America, and then Europe and Australia. Walker writes, “to give voice and representation to these same women who have been silenced and confined in life and literature”(10, 67).
In brief, Alice Walker signifies on the slave narrative in her novel The Color Purple in various open and hidden ways. The various cases, foe example of rape, and the hard labor imposed on women signify on the slave narrative. Alice Walker, in numerous forms portray other related scenes intended to clarify what women went through and especially the Afro-American.
Work cited
Funderburg Lise, and Altman Jennifer. The Color Purple: A Memory Book of the Broadway Musical.
Publisher Da Capo Press, 2006.
Hubert Christopher. Alice Walker’s The color purple. Research & Education Assoc Publisher,
1996.
Walker Alice. The Color Purple. Harcourt Bruce Jovanovich, Publishers. New York, San Diego,
London, 1992
