Letters from the Soul: The Transformative Power of The Color Purple

Written by Amelia Cropley

Disclaimer: The Colour Purple features strong violence, racialised and sexualised language and abuse. This review shall discuss these issues with concern and awareness, however please only continue this read at your own discretion.

Alice Walker’s The Color Purple is certainly one of those books that sticks with you long after you’ve turned the last page – as it is with me right now as a write this. Walker sets her novel in the harsh environment of the American South in the early 1900s, and she tells a powerful story of Celie, a fourteen-year-old Black woman trying to find her voice in a world that constantly tries to silence her. The book, before I go any further, tackles some immensely heavy topics — abuse, racism, sexism — but it does so with honesty and heart. So, this novel may be a hard read for many, and rightfully should come with this disclaimer. But, I must say, that despite the darkness within this novel’s pages, there is a strong sense of hope, light, and connection to an empowering pinnacle.

Celie, from the get-go, is a complicit victim of decades of abuse, from her step-father to her husband, she is a woman that men have forced her to be – domestic, obedient, and silent. She endures the racism of Georgia, South America, the sexism and gendered oppression of the first half of the twentieth century and the loss of the few familial women she has truly loved. Written in epistolary form, Walker very smartly allows readers to understand the side of Celie no one else has access to, as she writes letters to God, and then her sister Nettie – the only two figures she can confine in, and whom do not neglect or oppress her.

“Walker, I thought, very craftily revealed Celie’s trauma and experiences slowly throughout the novel in her letters, and with it, we as readers are able to witness as she internalises this treatment.”

Seeing domestic oppression of women in the treatment of her mother, and then again when that treatment is turned to her, becoming pregnant again with her step-father’s child, Celie soon becomes accustomed to the ways and working of a man’s world, and where women are positioned. Especially when her babies go to heaven, but suspecting her abuser of giving them away, or when she sees an older man interested in her younger sister, or when her step-father gives Celie away to him in marriage, Walker presents that women are, in Celie’s society, property. Walker, I thought, very craftily revealed Celie’s trauma and experiences slowly throughout the novel in her letters, and with it, we as readers are able to witness as she internalises this treatment.

The novel truly begins when Celie starts her married life in the home of her new husband, Albert, who she always calls Mister. Sold to him, forced to bring up his children, endure the force and overbearing power of not only her husband, but his son, whom despite bringing him up shall always be in power over her, as a woman.

Walker, amongst her overpoweringly dominant male characters, fills her work with a handful of strong and tough female characters. Shug Avery, Celie’s husband’s mistress and a lounge singer desired by all men, and the only woman he cares for, and somewhat respects, begins as an opposition to Celie, however a woman Celie, silently watches and admires over time. Becoming friends, sisters and if you read between the letters on the page, burgeoning desired lovers, Celie comes into her own. Other female characters, like Sofia, the wife of Harpo, who is untameable and wild in the most beautiful, charismatic and rare way of any woman, especially woman of colour, in rural Georgia. In fact, a side of the novel I especially liked was the struggle that Sofia brought out in Harpo, struggling to be a power-filled man like his father to tame his wife, how this made Harpo look like a failure in the eyes of his father – but also how patriarchy can slowly, complexly and hopefully, be unlearnt, unraveled, opposed.

As the novel persists, sisterhood and solidarity become the one true focus. Shug Avery becomes a role model for Celie, loving her and helping her resist her husband. Shug allows Celie to find her voice, to resist against sexism, to say no, to answer back or simply speak. Through this she develops a sewing business, Shug sings for money and the women can live by their own means, with the men in their life slowly becoming the quiet ones. Walker illustrates her through her themes of sisterhood and female supportiveness can be the one solution to help women survive patriarchal climates, racist agendas and oppressive environments.

Similarly, Walker, through Celie’s sister Nettie, Celie and Walker’s readers are enlightened to intersexual feminism, and the different experiences and oppression women endure across the world. Nettie, as a missionary, and to perhaps the biggest plot twist of the novel which I won’t reveal, Nettie’s letters to Celie from Africa compared to Celie’s African-American experiences, compare and contrast cultural norms, alongside racism, sexism, feminism, and oppression to say the least, are depicted and lived in the rural South with the Jim Crow laws and globally with colonialism. Through this, Walker demonstrates how race and sex go hand in hand, impacting identity and heritage.

“Walker does not frame Celie’s sexuality through explicit labels but through subtle and natural expressions of the self.”

But perhaps the most monumental demonstration is the ever so wholesome and uplifting, female empowerment through character development. Celie, most beautifully flourishes in transformation from a voiceless young victim to an empowered woman. In a society dominated by men and their power and abuse, Walker expresses her female relationships as emotional, intimate and supportive whilst offering these women an identity and agency. Celie soon learns her female relationships are more empowering, romantic and, for the first time, pleasurable, in comparison to her time with men.

And as The Literary Lounge, has included The Colour Purple in our pride month section, Walker was also able to deliver this novel as a queer read alongside every other thematic success it is. Celie explores her sexuality with Shug Avery, an already confident, open, and non-conforming woman – introducing Celie to pleasure and freedom. An enlightening moment to read.

Alongside the discovery and embracing of sexuality, female safety becomes central. I thought that the necessary involvement of love becoming about safety was a happy, bright and hopefully moment for a reader. As a queer read, Celie’s ideals of love become so organically centred around safety than heterosexual norms. Her female relationships are stronger than any with a man, both about sisterhood, solidarity and intimacy, she loves her female friends, presents no attraction to heteronormativity and finds pleasure in sex without men.

In a delicacy I admired, Walker does not frame Celie’s sexuality through explicit labels but through subtle and natural expressions of the self. Celie’s attraction to women helps her reclaim her body, voice and agency, becoming a source of healing and resistance against the backdrop of oppression. This is not in suppression of her sexuality, but I thought, out of the normalcy in the laws of attraction, how her sexuality is just an extension of her identity and most importantly, how this should be in a way that sustains the self, not to oppress.

To return to the epistolary form, this unique and original style has infrequently been replicated in the space between Walker and today. For a woman hidden in the shadows, this form allows Celie to be close to her readers and in her African American vernacular, her writing makes the novel so much more touching, human and delicate. As her letters progress, so does her power, her feminism, agency, voice and even her literacy – as she comes into her own.

This novel, simplistically complex, so layered and a mirror to the world we live in, despite being over 40 years old now, Walker’s The Colour Purple, shall never not be a classic novel, a masterpiece, a beacon to equality and human rights.

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In-article image courtesy of Good Reads. No changes were made to this image. 

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