Research Direction. International Multidisciplinary Research Journal. Vol 1 Issue X April 2014 ISSN No: Editor-in-Chief S.P.

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1 Vol 1 Issue X April 2014 ISSN No: ORIGINAL ARTICLE International Multidisciplinary Research Journal Research Direction Editor-in-Chief S.P. Rajguru

2 Welcome to Research Direction ISSN No Research DirectionJournal is a multidisciplinary research journal, published monthly in English, Hindi & Marathi Language. All research papers submitted to the journal will be double - blind peer reviewed referred by members of the editorial board readers will include investigator in universities, research institutes government and industry with research interest in the general subjects. CHIEF PATRON PATRON Mr. Sanjeev Patil Suhasini Shan Chairman : Chairman - Central Div. Rayat Shikshan Sanstha, Satara. LMC & Director - Precision Industries, Solapur. EDITOR IN CHIEF S.P. Rajguru Asst. Prof. (Dept. of English) Rayat Shikshan Sanstha's, L. B. P. Mahila Mahavidyalaya, Solapur. (M.S.) Sub Editors (Dept. Of Humanities & Social Science) Dr.Prakash M. Badiger Guest Faculty,Dept. of History, Gulbarga University,Gulbarga. Nikhilkumar D. Joshi Dr.kiranjeet kaur Nikhil joshi Gujrat Dept.of English G.H.patel college of Engineering and Technology,Gujrat. Advisory Board S. N. Gosavi Shrikant Yelegaonkar Punjabrao Ronge D. R. More T. N. Kolekar Seema Naik M. L. Jadhav Annie John Suhas Nimbalkar Adusumalli Venkateswara Raw Deepa P. Patil R.D.Bawdhankar Ajit Mondal Guest Referee Maryam Ebadi Asayesh Islamic Azad University, Iran Judith F. Balares Salamat Department of Humanities, IASPI, Philippines Henry Hartono Soegijapranata Catholic University, Indonesia Mukesh Williams University of Tokyo, Japan Address:-Ashok Yakkaldevi 258/34, Raviwar Peth, Solapur Maharashtra, India Cell : , Ph No: ayisrj@yahoo.in Website:

3 Research Directions Volume 1 Issue 10 April 2014 Research Article ISSN: CONCEPT OF FEMINISM IN ALICE WALKER'S 'THE COLOR PURPLE': AN ANALYSIS Rajendra Thorat Head, Dept. Of English, Venutai Chavan College, Karad, Satara. Abstract: American women began their study of the stereotyped characterization of women in men's writing in 1960s. Mary Elman, in Thinking about Women (1968) discusses stereotypes of women in literature written by men and alternative and subversive points of view in some writings by women. But the more fierce attack on the male literary tradition was made by Kate Millett in Sexual Politics (1970). She explores how women are dehumanized in the novels of male writers like Henry Miller, Norman Mailer, Jean Genet and D. H. Lawrence. According to her, patriarchy is the sole cause of women's oppression where women are subordinated by the male, and they are assigned an inferior position. She argues that 'sex' is biologically determined but 'gender' is a psychological concept which is cultural identity. KEY WORDS: Color Purple', Analysis, characterization, literature. INTRODUCTION Elaine Showalter in A Literature of Their Own (1978) speaks about the contributions of female writers in literary history. As pointed out in A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature, Showalter identifies four models of difference which are as follows: The biological model is the most extreme; if the text somehow mirrors the body, this can reduce women merely to bodies.... Showalter's linguistic model of difference posits women speaking men's language as a foreign tongue; purging language of sexism is not going far enough.... Showalter's psychological model identifies gender difference as the basis of the psyche, focusing on the relation of gender to the artistic process. It stresses feminine difference as the free play of meaning outside the need for closure. Showalter's most important contribution has been to describe the cultural model that places feminist concerns in social contexts, acknowledging class, racial, national, and historical differences and determinants among women, but offering a collective experience that unites women over time and space a binding force. ( ) Showalter uses the term gynocritics for feminist criticism which studies women as writers. The other feminist works which represent gynocriticism are Patricia Spack's The Female Imagination (1975), Ellen Moers's Literary Women (1976), Nina Baym's Woman's Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, (1978), and Barbara Christian's Black Women Novelists (1980). Ellen Moers analyzes the 'feminine' metaphors in the nineteenth century fiction in her works. She finds women writers quite interesting as she reads them as a woman. Patricia Meyer Specks concentrates on sexuality in personal life. She addresses issues like adolescent development, self-perception, passivity and independence in her discussions. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Guar in The Madwoman in the Attic: The Women Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Imagination (1979) focuses on the existence of a female aesthetics. 'However, they also draw on the Beauvoir Millett vein of feminist criticism in stressing the evidence in Austen, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Emily Dickinson, and others of the pain and effort produced by the struggle against traditions that regarded women as inferior and passive and at the same 1

4 CONCEPT OF FEMINISM IN ALICE WALKER'S 'THE COLOR PURPLE': AN ANALYSIS time as angels, monsters, or both (Harris 92). Another notable contributions to the American feminist criticism are Anis Pratt's Archetypal Patterns in Women's Fiction (1981), Elizabeth Meese's Crossing the Double-Cross: The Practice of Feminist Criticism (1986) and (Ex)Tensions: Re-figuring Feminist (1990). Pratt discusses archetypes and similarities of novels including political ideologies and lesbian experience. She is sensitive to issues of class and race. Meese opposes and warns against the dangers of factions within feminist criticism. The revolutionary writing about feminism and theology was done by Mary Daly in her Gyn/Ecology: the Metaetics of Radical Feminism (1979), Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy (1984), and Beyond God the Father (1986). Daly vigorously exposes what she sees as 'the misogyny that lies at the core of Judaea- Christian tradition, and in her later work concludes that it is not possible to reform patriarchal society, and argues instead for a separate women's culture'(qtd. Alexander 3). Thus American feminists are mainly concerned about images of women. They see reading of a feminist as a communication between the life of the writer and the life of the reader. BLACK FEMINIST CONSCIOUSNESS: It is essential to understand what is meant by the term 'black feminist consciousness' very clearly before analyzing Walker's idea of womanism. The word 'black' denotes the race and feminist means a person who knows that the exploitation is caused by patriarchal hegemony and that one is ready to end that hegemony to reconstruct the lives of women and to build a society based on nondiscrimination. Hence, one is also prepared to struggle to redress the situation so as to bring racial, social, sexual and economic equality for the black women. Since most of the black male writers have failed in depicting black women's genuine and authentic life, many black women writers come to the forefront to depict their own, real, genuine and authentic selves. Their writing is an outburst of the voices long suppressed and suspended by the victimizers. The consciousness of victimization is immediate and revelatory, it allows women to discover what social reality really is (Bartky 254). A feminist is one who is awakened and conscious about woman's life and problems and feminist consciousness is the experience in a certain way of certain specific contradictions in the social order. Feminists believe in transformation of the society for better future and dislike intolerable things. It is on the day that we can conceive of a different state of affairs that a new light falls on our troubles and we decide that these are unbearable (Sartre 531). To transform this, power should play its role. Feminists, who value women's experience and potential, have re-read 'women's novels' with new perspectives and have found a wealth of psychological, social and political insight. Feminist consciousness is the experience in a certain way of certain specific contradictions in the social order. Feminist consciousness turns a fact into a contradiction, and often, features social reality. Thus, women understand what they are and where they are in the light of what they are not yet. Thus, they comprehend their world and also what it is not and the world that could be if changed. Feminist consciousness is a joyous consciousness of one's own power, weakness and strength. In this connection Simon de Beauvoir rightly says, 'the humanity is male' but for the black women the 'humanity is white and male.' As they suffer from racial and gender oppression, they differ from both the white women and the black men. The black woman has to struggle for equality both as a woman and as an African American. Thus their experiences gained from the living as African American women stipulate their sensibility called black feminist sensibility. The overall social status of the black is lower than any other social group; hence they are supposed to bear the attacks of sexist, racist and classist oppression. As a group they have not been socialized to assume the role of oppressor. White women and black men can act as oppressor or be oppressed. Black men may be victimized by racism, but sexism allows them to act as oppressor or exploiter of women. Black women without institutionalized 'other' that they may discriminate against, exploit or oppress often have lived different experience directly challenging the prevailing classist, sexist, racist social structure and its concomitant ideology. This lived experience shaped their consciousness and changed their attitude different from their oppressors. Bell Hooks has rightly pointed out it is essential for continued feminist struggle that black women recognize the vantage point of their marginality that gives them and make use of this perspective to criticize the dominant racist, classist, sexist hegemony as well as to envision and create a counter hegemony (58). According to Sandra Bartky, feminist consciousness is a consciousness of victimization. To apprehend oneself as a victim is to be aware of an alien and hostile force which is responsible for the blatantly unjust treatment of women and for a stifling and oppressive treatment of sex-roles; it is to be aware too, that this victimization in no way earned or deserved, is an offense (254). Feminist consciousness is an understanding that one is victimized as a women as one among Research Directions Volume 1 Issue 10 April

5 CONCEPT OF FEMINISM IN ALICE WALKER'S 'THE COLOR PURPLE': AN ANALYSIS many, and in the realization that others are made to suffer in the same way that one is made to suffer lies the beginning or a sense of solidarity with other victims. It is a joyous consciousness of one's own power of the possibility of unprecedented personal growth and of the release of energy long suppressed. In this manner, it is a consciousness both of one's weakness and strength. All African American women share common experience of being black women in a society that denigrates women of African descent. They had to fight on many fronts against white patriarchy, against white women's racism and against sexism of black men. This commonality of experience suggests that certain characteristics and themes will be prominent in black women's stand point. The interrelationship of white supremacy and male superiority has thus characterized the black women's reality as a situation of struggle- a struggle to survive in two contradictory worlds simultaneously, one white, privileged, and oppressive and the other black, exploited, and oppressed (Canon 30). Black feminist criticism is establishing norms to examine the distinct cultural values of black women writers to prevent their being subsumed into 'universal' literary studies dominated by male or white writers. Black women writers such as Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Buchi Emecheta, Gloria Naylor and many more write to shape their experiences and to reclaim both their history and self-image battered by their three enemies: racism, classism, and sexism. Black women writers usually offer a wider critique of patriarchy in their struggle to find themselves and validate their language. The black women's ability to forge the individual unarticulated, yet potentially powerful expressions of everyday consciousness into an articulated, self-defined, collective stand point, is a key to black women's survival. It is an attempt towards self-definition to indicate who one is, what one is and what one would like to be? The black feminist consciousness indicates the black woman's self definition. Thus, for the black woman, struggle involves in embracing a consciousness that is simultaneously Afro-centric that reveals the black perspective and at the same time feminist. By being accountable to others, African American women develop more fully human, less objectified selves. Sonia Sanchez points this version of self by stating we must move past always focusing on the personal self because there is a large self. There is a self of black people (Qtd. Tate 134). Rather than defining self in opposition to others, the connectedness among individuals provides black women a deeper, more meaningful self-definition. Black feminist consciousness is awareness on the part of the black women about their oppression, plights, position and positive and negative aspects of life to change the patriarchal, racist and sexist social order to restore the equality of human beings irrespective of sex, race or class. Thus the two terms, black feminism and womanist consciousness are concerned with the struggle of the black women against racism and sexism who are themselves part of the black community's efforts to achieve equality and liberty. She is, Walker says, purple -purple with rage, purple as restored royalty, purple blossoming wild in an open field. Therefore, according to Walker, womanism is an empowered form of feminism just as purple is a bold and empowered version of lavender. Purple as a color is regarded as a symbol of the indomitable female spirit and an encoding of the joyous vitality of the female spirit. In short, Walker is one who is committed to the survival whole of the black women in the highly charged, sexist, classist and racist society of America. The Color Purple: Like Mem and Meridian, Celie in The Color Purple (1982), Alice Walker's most celebrated novel which won both the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for Fiction, struggles in life for survival. The novel depicts the life of a black girl, Celie who despite poverty, illiteracy, physical and mental exploitation transcends her plight through self awareness to gain respectable place in the American society. Celie first writes letters to God to help her to survive the spiritual, emotional and physical abuse she suffers at the hands of her step father, Alphonso and later on her husband, Mr.. The Color Purple depicts in an epistolary manner thirty years of a struggle in the life of Celie, a poor Southern black woman who is victimized physically and emotionally both by her stepfather and her husband, Albert. While in her teens, Celie is repeatedly raped by her stepfather, who sells her two children she bore of him. Celie is eventually placed into a loveless marriage with Albert, a widower who for the next three decades subjects her to beatings and psychological torment. Celie writes letters describing her ordeal to God and to her sister, Nettie, who escapes a similar fate by serving as a missionary in Africa. However, in the company of Albert's mistress Shug Avery, a charismatic singer, she gains self-esteem and the courage to leave her marriage. Shug is even responsible for Celie's reunion with her children sold by her stepfather, Alphonso and with Nettie at the end of the novel. She begins her journey from powerlessness to the state of full empowerment and from self-abnegation to self-recognition. Walker also chronicles the oppressed and miserable lives of the black women Shug and Sofia who Research Directions Volume 1 Issue 10 April

6 CONCEPT OF FEMINISM IN ALICE WALKER'S 'THE COLOR PURPLE': AN ANALYSIS are the victims of highly charged rapist, sexist and male-dominated society of America. They fought valiantly to gain respectable position and place in society. All the women folk in the novel have to suffer at the hands of their men folk. It describes the ill treatment given to the black women by their men. At the same time the novel highlights the awareness among the black women about their self status and rights. The Color Purple tells us a story of two women in love with one man. The character of Shug Avery, a dynamic singer whose real name is Lillie but is called Shug, is a transforming force in Celie's life. Walker knows very well that she was writing a story of two women who marry to the same man. What completes the love triangle in all its symmetry is Celie and Shug's love for each other. Womanist consciousness is clearly seen in the relationship between the Celie and Shug. Walker's idea of womanism is ingrained in the novels under discussion. For her the term involves, in bonding of women as a continuation of the struggle for self-definition and affirmation that is the essence of African American means. She portrays a galaxy of black women who love other women as being whole or round women and have concern in a culture that oppresses entire black community. Women in these novels--margaret, Mem, Josie, Meridian, Celie, Nettie-stress the sense of solidarity and sharing, the sense of community, that brings about blossoming in self and society. They demonstrate consciousness of their continuous exploitation and slavery due to color and gender. Like Sula who quests for creating her own self and coming to terms with her identity as a black and female in Toni Morrison's Sula, they fight valiantly against their oppressors to quest their identity in sexist and classist society of America. Ruth, Meridian and Nettie believe in change which is essential for the survival and harmony in society. They show indomitable female spirit and vitality that help for their empowerment. As a result they become selfreliant and challenged their men that they can survive without them. 3. IV. Comparative perspective: The study of the first phase novels in the light of the thematic statement reveals Walker's womanist ideology that is committed to the survival of the black women everywhere in the world. Women characters in these novels struggle hard to quest their identity and ask for freedom and self-respect. Womanist consciousness is reflected in the man-woman relationship where man always tries to marginalize their counterparts. In the portrayal of husband-wife relationship, husbands are shown as atrocious human beings. Walker depicts black men who are poor, illiterate, oppressive and doing traditional work of sharecropping or working on the fields of white men. Grange in The Third Life of Grange Copeland victimizes his wife Margaret by beating and abusing her for no reason. He even wants to sell her in order to free himself from the debt of a white man named Shipley. His son, Brownfield also follows the footsteps of his father and beats his educated wife Mem as and when he likes without having knowledge of what she does for him and their family. Albert, Celie's husband in The Color Purple, beats her like he beats his children and doesn't treat her as a human being. He even doesn't look her in the face: He looks at me. It like he looking at the earth (TCP21). Men depicted by Walker are drunkard and immoral having extramarital relationship and no sympathy to their suffering wives. CONCLUSION - However, reversal of gender roles is seen in the couple Sofia and Harpo, a son of Albert whose face looks like a woman's face. He truly enjoys woman's works like cooking and washing dishes, while Sofia does a field work and traditional man's work. They fight constantly like two men getting Harpo the worst of beating. Perhaps Walker shows this kind of irony in order to predict the reversal of roles that is likely to take place in the near future. Some of these oppressive black men undergo a metamorphosis when they realized their follies in the course of time. Grange Copeland repents for what he has done to Margaret and determines to provide utmost facilities and security to his granddaughter Ruth, the child of the future. He even kills his son Brownfield and prefers to go in jail hoping that she will be free and happy in his absence. Brownfield compounds one of the greatest sins in Walker's fiction that is the refusal or inability to change. Ironically, his death makes possible the completion of change in the life of Ruth, his daughter. Albert too changes in the end and gives utmost love to all. Albert discovers reflection which makes him a defined person who can accept the responsibility for his mistakes and the suffering he has caused to his wife. His apparent psychological return to roots, though inadequately motivated, is primarily a portent of a healing process. Truman, Meridian's husband in the novel Meridian, changes when he realizes his mistake of marrying a white marcher woman Robinowitz looking at her color. Being womanist Meridian wholeheartedly forgives him and allows him to stay with her. As a part of womanist strategy, Walker shows sexual and emotional bonding between black Research Directions Volume 1 Issue 10 April

7 CONCEPT OF FEMINISM IN ALICE WALKER'S 'THE COLOR PURPLE': AN ANALYSIS women against patriarchal tyrannies. It can be seen in the intense emotional longing and readiness to sacrifice for each other between two sisters, Celie and Nettie. Celie's offering herself sexually to her stepfather to save her sister from being raped by him is one of the touching examples of womanism. Women show a persistent tendency of falling into a bond of mutual sympathy and admiration. They are portrayed as women helping oppressed black women to come out of their depression. Shug provides economic cooperation by teaching Celie the art of sewing. Thus she helps her to be independent and selfreliant. Josie assures Grange to provide utmost security and love to Ruth after his imprisonment for killing his son, Brownfield. Josie is generous enough to sell her Dew Drop Inn in order to save Grange from his debt. Despite the shabbiness, brutality and humiliation, the women refuse to be meek and submissive and question for their rights. Women characters depicted in these novels are highly influenced by the myths in the past. Meridian is highly inspired by the story of the Sojourner Truth that commemorates the atrocities inflicted on the black women during the time of slavery. Her story encourages her to throw herself actively in the Civil Rights Movement that aimed to bring equal rights and opportunities to the black women in all walks of life during her college days. Meridian divests herself of immediate blood relations- her child and parents- in order to align herself completely with the larger racial and social generations of blacks. She has created fusion with her generation of activist and older generation of oppressed black. Her personal identity has become a collective identity. Nettie's commentary through her letters from Africa on the Olinka people's discrimination against their men suggest the fact that gender oppression pervades the entire world of black men and women. Afro-Americans as well as Africans confine women to the care of children, and among the Olinka, the husband has death power over the wife. If he accuses his wife of witchcraft or infidelity, she can be killed (TCP172). The epistolary form used in The Color Purple is suggestive of lesbian sexuality within the framework of lesbian feminism where the letter means the female body, and correspondence between two women is suggestive of lesbianism. With reference to Nettie's letters, Wendy Wall observes that Albert intercepts them because he fails to seduce her, and that he rapes her language because he fails to rape her body (264). According to Terry Eagleton the letters come to signify female sexuality that folded secret place which is always open to violent intrusion (54). Linda Abbandonato describes the novel as a womanist text and states: By adopting the crazy quilt, the craft of her forefathers, as the structuring principle of her fiction, Alice Walker places herself within a tradition of a black creativity (300). Thus these novels are exquisite examples of her womanist consciousness that enabled her to chronicle black women's journey to self-recognition. REFERENCES- 1. Abbandonato, Linda. 'A View from Elsewhere : Subversive Sexuality and the Rewriting of the Heroine's Story in The Color Purple, PMLA, Vol.106 (1991), pp Digby, Joan. From Walker to Spielberg: Transformations of The Color Purple, Novel Images: Literature in Performance, Ed. Peter Reynolds, London: Routledge, 1993, pp Mainino, Wirba Ibrahim. The Problem of Language in Modern Feminist Fiction by Black Women: Alice Walker and Calixthe Beyala, New Literature Review, Vol. 37 (2000), pp Feminist Readings / Feminists Reading, 2nd ed., London: Prentice Hall, Mills, Sara. Authentic Realism, Mills and Pearce, pp Showalter, Elaine. Sister's Choice: Tradition and Change in American Women's Writing, Oxford: Clarendon, Warhol, Robyn R. How Narration Produces Gender: Femininity as Affect and Effect in Alice Walker's The Color Purple, Narrative, Vol.9, No.2 (2001), pp Waugh, Patricia, Practising Postmodernism Reading Modernism, London: Edward Arnold, Winchell, Donna Haisty, Alice Walker, New York: Twayne, Research Directions Volume 1 Issue 10 April

8 Publish Research Article International Level Multidisciplinary Research Journal For All Subjects Dear Sir/Mam, We invite unpublished Research Paper,Summary of Research Project,Theses,Books and Books Review for publication,you will be pleased to know that our journals are Associated and Indexed PDOAJ Directory of Research Journals Researchbib SocioSite Tjdb Frequency: Monthly International Research Directions Journal Review & Advisory Board : Research Directions Journal is seeking scholars. Those who are interested in our serving as our volunteer Editorial Review Board, Editorial Board and Advisory Board. Call for editorial board: All of faculties, experts and researchers are invited to join us as member of editorial board. For applying, send your CV at researchdirection2013@gmail.com / researchdirection@yahoo.com. We welcome you in research documentation. researchdirection2013@gmail.com / researchdirection@yahoo.com Research Direction Journal Editor-in-Chief: Prof. Santosh P. Rajguru Address for Correspondence 56,'PARASHURAM' Ayodhya Nagari,Near Reliance Office, Hydrabad Road,Dahitane, Solapur (Maharashtra) researchdirection2013@gmail.com cell: