Exploration Of Self-identity Through Suffering

Alice Walker is one of the most influential American black women writers. Her novel The Color Purple published in 1982 aroused great reverberation.Alice Walker's The Color Purple brings forth new ideas on the content. The novel is different from the works of the black male writers, and that of the white female writers. The black male writers only emphasize the racial discrimination, regardless of the sexual discrimination; while the white female writers limit the struggle for women's equal rights into the white race. Aimed at this, Alice Walker proposed womanism, which emphasizes both the racial discrimination and the sexual discrimination, and expands the struggle for the black women's equal rights. The thesis will analyze how the black women quest for self-identity under the two oppressions from the angle of womanism.Part One introduces Alice Walker's life story and her novel The Color Purple, and the cultural and historical background, including womanism and historical events when the novel takes place.Part Two mainly focuses on the analysis of the theme of the novel from womanism, which is illustrated in two points. The first point is an examination of black women's two oppressions of racial and sexual discrimination; the second point focuses on black women's quest for self-identity, which is subdivided into two aspects: black women's quest for black culture (because possessing black people's own culture is a powerful resistance to racial discrimination), and their quest for woman selfhood (this exploration is a powerful resistance to sexual discrimination, which undergoes the zigzag way from the exploration of self-recognition, and spiritual liberation, to that of independence.)Part Three analyzed the personalities of the female characters, including Celie, Shug, Nettie, and Sofia. From the analysis we can see that in the process of self-identity, each of these characters has their own characteristics.Part Four by summarizing the contents mentioned above, the thesis concludes that Alice Walker's The Color Purple is a novel of innovation in the content. It is the representative of the black literary works. Through endless struggle and exploration of self-identity, the black women under the two oppressions in The Color Purple have finally found their identity, achieved the equality of men and women, and obtained independence and autonomy. Meanwhile, the thesis illustrates that Alice Walker's true intention of writing this novel is to point out a bright way for the freedom and liberation of black women as well as women all over the world.