In the beginning of the book Celie’s writing is very poor, with many vernacular spellings, “He never had a kine word to say to me” and poor punctuation, “She say It too soon” these back up the fact of her age and that she is poorly educated. During the first fifteen letters Celie takes education in to her own hands and along with Nettie tries to learn to read and write better. We can see the improvement by letter fifteen, “I been chopping cotton three hours by time he come” and although the grammar is quite poor the actual spellings is perfect.
Another point to consider is the length if the letter, for the first six letters they are only half a page but letter seven is a page and a half whilst letters 10 and twelve are well over two pages long. I believe this shows that Celie is becoming more aware of her situation and also feels more comfortable about wring about the issues she faces.
I believe that Celie becomes more confident within herself through out the first fifteen letters. She writes longer letters and with more detail and emotive language, “I just be thankful to lay eyes on her” She also shows that she feels more positive about asking questions to people, in the first letter she only believes she can talk to God, “Dear God… Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know what is happening to me” but by letter fifteen she says “But I got a million question to ast”. I think that the changes in her self esteem start after she meets Olivia and later when she finds out about Shug Avery.
Celie also becomes more mature as she writes her letters, she is very naïve in the first letter, not understanding where children come from and talking about taboo subjects with childish words, “his thing”. In letter thirteen she says “I say, just born that way” this shows that she understands she should just keep quiet and she also protects Harpo showing more mature emotions.
Overall I think that the most obvious change is Celie’s confidence and i believe as she writes more and faces more issues she will become even more confident in her writing, her personality, I also feel that this will make her more mature.
