A Black woman's fight against oppression: Celie's transformation in the Color Purple

Abstract: In the novel the Color Purple (1982), the author, Alice Walker, highlights the oppression African American women had to endure in the South, during the 1920s. It tells the story of the protagonist Celie's life, from being a sexual abused girl, to becoming an independent woman. Through Celie's collection of letters, the novel is a documentation of an African American woman's transformation from a life of oppression to finding her voice. The analysis seeks to display the connection between Celie's fight against oppression to her becoming a "masculine female". In order to investigate Celie's transformation, in this paper I explore the cause of her transformation and look more closely at the factors that that resulted in her change. This is discussed by focusing on stereotypical gender traits, role models, motherhood, the elimination of male power, and lastly, multiple forms of oppression. In the end it is concluded that Celie's liberation from the patriarchy helped her find her new identity as a masculine female.