The Color Purple: A Brief Analysis of Alice Walker’s Novel

The formal resources that an author adopts inevitably influence the representation of the characters in his narrative. In terms of gender The color Purple it is difficult to classify. At a basic level, it could be thought of as a contemporary historical novel – it’s set in rural Georgia in the early 1900s. However, the fact that its author is of the same gender and race as her heroine, and that she has stated that The color Purple is openly concerned with highlighting the weighty issues of gender, race, and class, and the effect that their intersection has on a hitherto marginalized group in society inevitably invites a reevaluation of the book’s categorization.

In view of these contextual perceptions, as well as if the novel is read with gender in mind, it could be argued that Walker has chosen to focus his concerns through the main female characters in his story. From this point of view, the novel could be considered black feminist fiction. However, things get even more complicated when The color PurpleThe shape of is taken into account. The story is told in its entirety through a series of letters, which means that it reads like an epistolary novel, an approach that has a huge influence on the narrative structure.

Letter writing is an essential motif in Walker’s novel, and its use affects many factors in addition to gender. One of them is the sense of intimacy that occurs between the reader and Celie: the heroine and the narrator. This epistolary approach brings the reader closer to the current situation of the protagonist in life, which involves the intersection of gender, race and class: she is oppressed by her abusive Albert, who himself is a member of a discriminated lower class. The brutal existence of the protagonist is uncompromisingly direct “Well, at some point, Mr. git on me pretty harsh … This life will soon end, I say” (p.39), and his impact is not softened through any filtering possible that could have been provided by a possible third-person narrator. The epistolary form itself is not new: it originated in 18th-century Western writing, specifically the novels of British author Samuel Richardson. But it is the means with which Walker capitalizes on this form that makes his novel so groundbreaking.

The style of language used in The color Purple it is strongly influenced by the formal structure of the novel. Walker believes that a woman’s identity can be strengthened through successful relationships with other women. It seems that she considers effective communication and the mastery of language that this entails to be crucial for female empowerment. These concerns feed into the multifaceted relationship Celie develops with the sultry lounge singer Shug Avery.

The potential creative possibilities of women and their contribution to their empowerment are another concern of Walker’s novel. The sewing motif in The color Purple it symbolizes the autonomy that women can achieve by channeling their creative energy. The trouser-sewing business that Celie establishes towards the end of the story can be seen as a woman who achieves financial independence and therefore does not need a violent husband. The construction of the quilt echoes the detective framework of the novel, but could also be seen as related to the theme of empowerment. Walker herself has claimed that the idea of ​​quilting was a means for a silenced group (black women in her case) to express themselves creatively, arguing that if they weren’t so oppressed, they could be writers or artists.

Walker shares the intentions of the English author Virginia Woolf in her concern for female writers. The marginalization of women in The color PurpleDeep South recalls the repressive attitudes towards women that white middle-class Woolf recognized in 1920s Britain. Woolf identified a large number of oppressed female writers throughout history and set out to represent them collectively in his fictional construction “Shakespeare’s Sister.” With The color PurpleAlice Walker seems to have similar intentions when telling the stories of marginalized women.

The color Purple is a powerful work of prose fiction that shares many concerns with female writers of earlier times. Walker uses several long-standing narrative devices, such as the epistolary form, as well as symbolism and metaphor, to effectively construct the identities of his characters.