Walker arranges the letters of ‘The Colour Purple’ in terms of the Afro-American literary tradition. Robert Towers said that Celie’s letters convey “a sub-literate dialect into a medium of remarkable expressiveness, colour and poignancy.”3
The letter is a form of narrative that combines both the objective and the subjective. Feminist historians have used women’s letters as an important source of researching women’s history in its concreteness as well as in its subjective ramifications. Walker has adopted this genre so useful in history as a specifically female literary genre.
The tone of the book is very confessional and uninhibited, as Celie’s letters to God are private, much like journal entries “I don’t sleep. I don’t cry. I don’t do nothing. I’m cold to. Pretty soon I think maybe I’m dead.” Comparing ‘The Colour Purple’ with Doctorow’s ‘Ragtime’ Gloria Steiner makes the comparison “ what he did with an episodic style and pace of chapters, Celie can do with the placement of a line, a phrase, a verb.” 4
The novel deals with the struggle, both in America and Africa, of women to gain recognition as individuals who deserve fair and equal treatments.
Thadious Davies affirms that the ethos of all Alice Walkers novels is that an individual can struggle out from the “external constrictions” to find oneself. Who is it that Celie finds by the end of the novel? Herself.
“And us feel so happy. Matter of fact I think this the youngest I ever felt!”
What the novel asserts is that people can be weak or strong and gender should not dictate perceptions of qualities that are essentially human.
Margaret Atwood’s poetry is often symbolic. She has moved easily between satire and fantasy and enlarged the boundaries of traditional realism. Atwood’s protagonists are often ‘every women’ characters. As in ‘A Women’s Issue’ where the women mentioned are all weaker members of society.
As the critic, Northop Frye has said “ we learn poetry through the seat of our pants, by being bounced up and down to nursery rhymes as children. Poetry is essentially oral, is close to song; rhythm precedes meaning.”5
Celie is the central character in ‘The Colour Purple’, when we are first introduced to her we recognize her innocence and simple mind “ he puts his thing up against my hip” and then “he grab hold of my titties”. Her failure to sign her name also highlights that she has neither identity nor voice and that she is ashamed of the person she perceives herself to be. At first Celie is isolated and God is the only person in her life. All her early letters are addressed to him and we find out that she has been betrayed and abused by those who should have cared for her. Celie is able to cultivate her individualism through experience of mistreatment and rise above it because of the aid from three influential women in her life, Nettie, Shug and Sofia. All of these women play roles of importance throughout different stages of Celie’s life and while Celie would have survived on her own these women taught her not only how to survive but how to really live. With the encouragement of these women, Celie successfully reaches a point in her life where she too is strong and self-able.
Nettie is the secondary narrator in the novel and maybe some would argue the secondary heroine to Celie. When signing off, Nettie often writes “from your devoted sister” symbolising a sure faith in the friendship and love that the two sisters hold for one another. Nettie has always been like a teacher to Celie, she is a provider of hope. She like Shug reaffirms Celie’s belief in God. Nettie helps Celie from her own conclusions about life. Nettie has a strong sense of duty she writes even when she believes that there is no possibility of the letters reaching Celie as an act of faith.
Both Nettie and Celie complete a personal journey towards a deeper knowledge of God. Celie is inspired by her sister’s independence, determination and perseverance in Africa among foreign people who Nettie cares for deeply. As the novel ends, Celia last letter begins “ Dear God, dear stars, dear trees, dear sky, dear peoples, dear everything, dear God” simple, naive in the extreme but sincere and very optimistic.
Sofia is the wife of Celie’s stepson Harpo. Throughout the novel, she exhibits a rare and admiring sense of strength. She is one of the few women of that time to fight back to violent men. Sofia is a strong woman, who Celie looked to for strength. Sofia and Nettie are family to Celie and were there to support and inspire her. Sofia is a character that, like Walker, battles to achieve egalitarianism. Many have been critical of Sofia’s portrayal in the novel. She is after all the only one who does fight and as a result is put in jail.
“Sheriff say, She a crazy women, your boy’s wife. You know that?”
All Celie’s life she looked to Nettie for support but when Celie was not receiving her letters she looked to Sofia for inspiration. The relationship between Celie and Sofia is an interesting one because they are two very different people. Celie is very submissive and stoical because she puts up with the ways he is treated. Sofia has a voice and uses it she wants to be in a fair relationship with Harpo and she is prepared to fight for it, even with him. Sofia asks Celie for advice about Harpo and his eating, Celie finds out of concern for Sofia, which shows how much she cares.
Shug has many similarities to Sofia, in that she will not let anyone take control of her. Shug is the main strength behind Celie; she offers Celie love and kindness something that no one other than Nettie had done. Shug Avery silences by her very dominance and unlike Sofia, she actively challenges men rather than just resisting their control. In Celie’s life, Shug becomes parent, teacher and comforter. Shug’s doctrine is that “God is everything” but unlike the missionaries in Africa Shug can offer Celie something she needs, she offers her the chance to be no longer a “motherless child” but “part of everything not separate at all. Shug is one character that refuses to be put in a box. Her innate ability to control men is evident when both she and Celie leave. Throughout the novel, Shug is a woman with two sides to her character. The dichotomy of Shug’s personality is summed up by her nickname “The Queen Honeybee” in that she can be as sweet as honey but she also has a sting in her tail. Shug liberates Celie in all aspects of her life, guiding her into an emotional, sexual and financial independence and combining the roles of sister, lover and friend. Shug possesses equality because of her own integrity as a person and she passes this on to Celie. Shug is a truly liberated women in so many ways holding a prosperous career, owning her own home, directing her own affairs with men and women to her own liking, travelling as she pleases and enjoying a prominent place in artistic society as an accomplished musician. Sexually and in terms of faith Shug is obviously the most liberated character in the novel, she has no false modesty about intercourse and passes her freedom onto Celie in a practical way. Shug teaches Celie how to speak up for herself against Mr____; Shug is the one who helps Celie escape by taking her on tour.
Celie’s life as a wife and stepmother is horrific until she meets and falls in love with Shug, her husband’s lover. Caring for her after an illness, she begins a friendship that later turns to love and an enduring relationship that eventually leads to Celie’s emancipation and emergence as a mature, self – possessed women. When Shug teaches Celie about sexual intercourse and enjoying it, we see the two women’s bond and the way that they interact is positive and loving.
Throughout the novel, we get the sense that sisterhood is a women’s “living bread” and without it even, the strongest women would be crushed. Sisterhood is a very important theme in the novel as the legacy of slavery was still around; the women found that sticking together was the best form of coping with their lives.
Walker acknowledges the forces and the powers that destroy but she insists that every effort on behalf of blesses change, every gesture of reverence, and every act of love matters.
‘Half-Hanged Mary’ is a poem about a real person, Mary Webster, who was accused of witchcraft and sentenced to death by hanging, but after being left out all night she was found to have survived and lived for another fourteen years.
‘Half-Hanged Mary’ is Atwood’s version of Mary’s thoughts and feelings from the time when they came to get her to the next day when she was cut down and they found her alive. Both ‘Half-Hanged Mary’ and ‘A Women’s Issue’ are in chronological order like ‘The Colour Purple’. This lets us see how the characters change during their suffering.
Both ‘A Women’s Issue’ and ‘Half-Hanged Mary’ contain lots of imagery. ‘Half-Hanged Mary starts with a verse full of imagery of, and words about, hanging. Atwood wastes no time in getting her point across.
“Rumour was loose in the air, limiting for some neck to land on.”
Atwood uses imperatives, instructing the reader to wake up and take notice. She uses imperatives in ‘A Women’s Issue’, one of her extraordinarily political poems.
“You’ll notice what they have in common is between the legs. Is this why wars are fought?”
Not long into the poem, we see the reason for Mary’s hanging and that of many others from that time. Mary is accused because of her gender and she knows this.
“I was hanged for living alone, for having blue eyes and sunburned skin”, “And breasts and a sweet pear hidden in my body Whenever there’s talk of demons these, come in handy.”
At 9PM, the women of the town come to see Mary but unlike in ‘The Colour Purple’ the women do nothing for fear of being tarnished with the same brush. Atwood uses very dark imagery to describe these women. The words paint the picture of an empty skull. Skulls are brainless as maybe Atwood is suggesting these women are. “Mouths closed so tight they’re lipless, I can see down into their eyeholes and nostrils.” The women are not like sisters to Mary. They only interacted positively with her when they wanted something. “I cured your baby, Mrs, and flushed yours out of you, Non-wife, to save your life.”
Mary seems to understand this and in a way seems to accept her fate, she seems to understand how her society works and that she is always going to be wrong regardless of what she does. At 10PM, Mary starts to pray to God like Celie does in times of trouble knowing he is the only one who can help her now.
Throughout the poem, the structure changes. It becomes increasingly disjointed as the poem progresses and maybe this reflects Mary’s state of mind or body throughout her experience.
In ‘A Women’s Issue’ Atwood shows how men take ownership of women by taking control of their genitals. The poem talks about the dehumanisation of women by men and other women throughout the ages and the different countries in the world.
Like Celie, “I can let you have Celie … she aint fresh tho… she spoiled” these women do not know what love is: “now she can be married…men like tight women”
Atwood talks of the women in terms of exhibits as society seems to, they are no longer women or even people they are just objects. “The next exhibit lies flat on her back”. As in ‘Half-Hanged Mary’ the women in ‘A Women’s Issue’ do not help these women to escape they only help the men to keep them there. “The young girl dragged into the bush by the midwives”
The structure of ‘A Women’s Issue” reflects not only the women in that poem, ‘Half-Hanged Mary’ and ‘The Colour Purple but women in general as well. The stanzas are all the same yet different like women who are all different but treated the same.
Atwood uses an intimate and compelling voice in both these poems: “My audience is God, because who the hell else could understand me?, “A bell keeps ringing. Nobody knows how she got here.”
Atwood commands her readers to pay attention to their lives and their surroundings:
“Who else has been dead twice?”
Atwood uses her poetry, like Walker uses her novels, to awaken and unite us all. One line from each Atwood’s poems seems to sum up the whole of the history of women:
“I hurt therefore I am”
“Who invented the word love?”
Robert Towers praises Walker’s use of Black American vernacular in the novel and the way in which Walker captures the life of the poor southern blacks but he does point out what he believes to be certain improbabilities. He doesn’t believe that someone of Celie’s limited education would know what an Amazon was, he also doubts that pant making would have held any fulfilment for someone growing up in the 30’s. However Celie has led a sheltered life, any sort of freedom for her is an achievement.
Truder Harris is arguably Walker’s severest critic. She protests “that the portrayal of Celie was unrealistic for theme that the novel was set” and that Celie and Shug’s sexual interaction was “the height of silly romanticism”. But I believe it shows how women’s relationships change and progress.
In a contrast to Harris, Gloria Steinem writes that ‘The Colour Purple’ symbolises the “miracle of human possibilities.” Steinem also pointed out that a disproportionate number of read Walker’s books are black women and that a disproportionate number of her negative comments are written by men.**
Richard Wesley said that no one should have autonomy over what an author can or cannot write, but more importantly, it should be writers we rely upon to “speak when others dare not.”6
In my opinion, both Walker and Atwood are effective in arousing sympathy for women but they do it in two different ways. Walker uses women’s positive relationships to show how if we stick together women will survive. Whereas Atwood tells us that, we should do it on our own because women only want to bring other women down.
Celie is the example of the good character that without the help of other women would not survive yet Mary the opposite because of her friendships and the fact that she helped other women she was persecuted.
Atwood however believes that evil and unhelpful women are necessary in story traditions for two reasons. “Firstly they exist in life so why shouldn’t they exist in literature and secondly women have more to them than virtue. They are fully dimensional human beings; they too have subterranean depths; why shouldn’t their many dimensionality be given literary expression.”8
Women can get tired of being portrayed as good all the time and as Dame Rebecca West said in 1912 – “ Ladies of Great Britain….we have not evil in us!”9
I personally believe that women do need other women to survive. And that it is people like Shug, the ones that wont be put in a box, that inspire the weaker members of society, like Celie an the women in ‘A Womens Issue’, to strive and become what they should be regardless of gender, social class or education. This I feel is more effectively explored in Alice Walker’s ‘The Colour Purple’ than in Margaret Atwood’s poetry.
*Although it is worth noting that the real blues singer, Bessie Smith, upon whom Shug Avery is loosely based, died as a result of being neglected after an accident because she couldn’t be treated in a white hospital.
** However, could Steinem not have a bad word to say about Walker because she is Walker’s daughter’s godmother or is it because she is writing at time when she feels her friend needs protection from bad press?