Discuss the presentations of the character Celie and how she functions in the novel. How successful do you think Celie is as a viewpoint to portray Walker’s view of female/male relationships in the novel?
The early twentieth century in the Deep South of America, was a time when a majority of Black women lived in a patriarchal society. In the novel ‘The Color Purple’, written by Alice Walker, we see a lot of male domination, where men are seen as superior. Walker does not only show male relationships but also female solidarity. Throughout the novel we are only shown one point of view, Celie’s point of view, so any of our own opinions and views comes from Celie’s views. This is because the novel is written in epistolary form allowing us to see what Celie is feeling. The novel goes in chronological order, where we see Celie as a young teenager mature in to an old woman, allowing the readers to see how Celie develops as a character.
The portrayal of men in the novel is very brutal, where they are known to be superior over women and abuse them to a point where they’re scared of men. Walker creates sympathy for women being abused by men from the very start of the novel, for example, Celie’s step-dad, ‘Pa’, who rapes her aggressively repeatedly as he ‘pulls’ on her and ‘chokes’ her. This shows us that men are more powerful than women and women are supposed to accept that. Being abused from a young age a massive impact on her views of men as she sees them as ‘frogs’ and also on her sexuality as she falls in love Shug. Walker uses Black Georgian dialect in the novel, where the protagonist, Celie, uses words like ‘kilt’ instead of killed and ‘git’ instead of get, which causes the reader to empathize Celie as she was pulled out of school as she got pregnant and lacks basic education. Another example of women being abused is when Sofia ‘sasses’ the Mayor’s wife, which in result she gets beaten up cruelly as they ‘crack’ her bones and ‘tear’ her nose. Before this...