A Black Woman’s Pursuit Of Self-a Lacanian Interpretation Of Celie’s Construction Of Subjectivity In The Color Purple

Alice Walker( 1944—) is an influential and distinguished black authoress in American literature. Among her numerous pieces of works in life, The Color Purple is regarded as the most successful one since it has become the bestseller immediately after its publication, and subsequently, it wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award, which are known as the three highest honors of American literature in the next year. There has always been endless literary criticism on this novel from various perspectives, but few of them ever tried to analyze the protagonist—Celie’s construction of subjectivity with Lacan’s theory. This thesis is meant to probe into the influence of “other”, especially of the black female “other” on the construction of Celie’s subjectivity based on Lacan’s theory of subject.Initially, this thesis starts with a brief introduction to the life of Alice Walker, the novel, Lacan’s theory of subject, and the relevant researches at home and abroad. The second part probes into the cause of the alienation of Celie’s self in the mirror stage. Due to the absence of mother serving as the “other”, Celie is unable to form the basic cognition of her self through the mirror, and meanwhile, the premature intrusion of black males’ destructive forces have directly resulted in the alienation of Celie’s self. The third part analyzes the formation of Celie’s newborn image with her ideal self under the assistance of black female “others”. And the fourth part discusses the achievement of Celie’s subjectivity in the symbolic order. Guided by the big “Other”, Celie gradually realizes the illusoriness of self and gets aware of her own subjectivity, and by virtue of the power of self-awakening, she eventually becomes a civilized black female with authentic independence. The final part is a conclusion which summarizes the advantage of joining the theory with the novel and points out the realistic significance and value of this research.On the one hand, probing into The Color Purple with Lacan’s theory of subject has revealed the hardship of the oppressed black females to construct their subjectivity, and on the other hand, it has also demonstrated the core theme of this novel that female “others” play significant roles in the course of black females’ construction of subjectivity and that only when the black females cooperate with each other will they be able to get rid of the oppressions from the white and the black males and to achieve the ultimate independence and freedom. Exploring The Color Purple based on Lacan’s theory of subject has not only enriched the research angles in analyzing this novel but also offered a promising way towards the construction of subjectivity for the black females.