Alice Walker's Ecofeminist Consciousness In The Color Purple

Alice Walker (1944—) is one of the most remarkable contemporary African-American writers in American literature. As a black woman, Walker pays more concerns on such issues as the plight of blacks, the muted group of black women, nature, and other social problems in American. Ecofeminists aim to construct a new harmonious order that the currently oppressed groups such as nature, colored people, and women are not taken as the inferior by criticizing the patriarchal domination.In the novel, Walker depicts the oppression upon black women and the exploitation of nature in the patriarchal society and their searching for self identity as well. This thesis illustrates homogeneity of twin domination upon the black women and nature, and puts forward ways for harmonious survival of human and nature by close examination of gender oppression, racial discrimination and ecological crisis in The Color Purple. My thesis will be divided into four main parts. In the first chapter, I will make a brief introduction to literary review on Alice Walker's The Color Purple and introduces ecofeminism and its effects on Alice Walker's works. In the second chapter, specific analysis will be given to reveal the dominance over nature and women, and to illustrate the same cause for it:patriarchal domination. In the third chapter, it illustrates the voices of rebellion from black women and nature:women' s unity and alliance and the nature's pre-warning upon human beings. In the last chapter, based on the fictional details, it presents an analysis of transformation of the black men and the white; thus gives us a hopeful possibility for co-existence of human beings and nature. From the ecofeminist approach, it is expected to shed fresh light on the research of the novel and Walker's spirits and evoke more attention to ecological balance.