The Color Purple

The life story Celie recounts in her letters to God document decades of verbal, physical, and sexual abuse that begins when she is only fourteen, and the real question for most readers will be how Celie manages to endure such traumatizing events and still survive.

For much her life, Celie’s only means of surviving abuse was in the creative act of writing down letters to God. Her decision to write to God makes sense for a child raised within Christianity, which encourages confession or prayer to God as an appropriate response to suffering. There is no sense of dialogue or communion with God in the letters, however. The God who emerges in the letters is a spare, silent one who never responds or intervenes to protect Celie. She is alone, and what actually helps her to survive is not the protection of God but the act of writing down the record of her experiences.

In the early letters, Celie barely understands the violence visited on her by Alphonso, but she eventually comes to understand that the results of that violence—both her children and her marriage to Albert at her father’s instigation—inspire pity from other people. It through this pity that Celie comes to understand the depth of the wrongs done to her.  Her early lack of awareness about the implications of abuse are the result of innocence and lack of experience, but she gains wider exposure to life as the stepmother of children and as a grown woman who provides support to her community and others.

In the company of other women, Celie gains the chance to see the lives of others up close, and it is in these relationships that she comes to see that how she lives is not the only kind of life available to a Black woman, even if she is poor. Albert’s sisters take Albert to task for his mistreatment of Celie, and one sister forces Albert to clothe his wife. Sofia assumes that marriage is an egalitarian affair, and her absolute refusal to compromise teaches Celie that there are women who fight against abuse.

Sofia’s interventions—calling Celie to task for perpetuating abuse by telling Harpo to beat her and asking Celie to engage in self-reflection about what she does with the anger that must be there because of the abuse—are important because they force Celie to reflect, perhaps for the first time in her life, on how she has had to compromise her authentic self to survive.

Having spent much of her life under the thumb of brutal men, however, Celie as a woman continues to take refuge in passivity and in Christianity, which encourages her to stoically bear gender-based violence as her lot in life. Her lack of other options and her faith, as Walker sketches them in this section of the novel, explain this resignation. Celie’s life is devoid of joy, and the people upon whom she practices her duty to be a good wife fail to appreciate her efforts. Celie is essentially a husk of a person, and Walker’s implication is that a faith and a world that expect women to bear such violence and lack of love are fundamentally insufficient.

Celie only begins to assert herself and her right to joy after establishing a relationship with Shug. Shug is a woman who violates every gender norm Celie has learned as a Christian and woman of her place and time. Like Sofia, Shug uses her sharp tongue to defend herself. She is ill, but even in her fragile state, she takes a joy and pleasure in her body in a way that inspires Celie to begin thinking of herself as a woman that feels and desires. Celie endures continued abuse from Albert and even tolerates the presence of his mistress because being in relationships with others is what she needs to survive in this moment in her life.

At the end of this section, Celie begins to grasp what she needs to do. She discovers contentment and joy in creative acts—such as quilt making, homemaking, and sewing—in the company of Sofia and Shug. She also begins engaging is small acts of defiance such as spitting in the glass of Albert’s father. She dares to engage in the acts on the basis of her growing attachment and loyalty to Shug. As a character, Celie has now evolved from a woman who quietly bears maximum oppression to one who, in small ways, begins to reflect on the meaning of her own life and make more active choices.