From Imposed Silence to Selfhood
A Womanist Reading of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple
Keywords:
Womanism, Patricia Hill Collins, Enforced Silence, Selfhood, Intersectional Oppression, Domestic Tyranny, The Color Purple.Abstract
For centuries, the subjugation of Black women has remained a global tragedy, rooted in racial and patriarchal hegemony. Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Color Purple (1982), vividly encapsulates this intersectional struggle within the African American community, illustrating a rigid gender stratification divided into patriarchal rulers and subjugated women. This study provides a qualitative, womanist critique of the novel, examining the domestic injustices that enforced Black women to silence and trauma. Utilizing Patricia Hill Collins’s black feminist thought as a theoretical framework, the research analyzes the harrowing trajectory of the protagonist, Celie. Initially trapped in a cycle of domestic brutality and sexual violence inflicted by her stepfather and later her husband, Celie’s destiny appears to be fabricated by male tyranny. However, the study illuminates how despite the imposed subjugation, Celie holds enough courage for her eventual liberation. This emancipation is catalyzed by the transformative power of a marginalized female community.
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