Politics of Representation of Black Woman: a Post Colonial Feminist Reading of Alice Walker’s the Color Purple

Abstract

Female marginalisation is a major theme in The Color Purple, with Celie’s emancipation from repressive male patriarchy being the culmination of the plot. In The Color Purple there is physical as well as psychological violence and the female characters are struggling with both gender and racial oppression. When discussing the way narrative method and perspective are used within the novel to address these themes, it is useful to make comparisons and contrasts with a different text. Themes like gender relations, gender oppression, colonial subordination and identity seem to be salient in the story. The novel can be seen as feminist as well as postcolonial, and postcolonial feminist criticism. The female protagonist is doubly oppressed, that is, both subordinated as women and as colonial objects. The paper focuses how patriarchal and colonial oppressions are expressed in the novel. The female characters in Alice’s The Color Purple show their destiny in relation to God, the coloured woman’s position in relation to man, society, white people, financial freedom, sexual freedom, and identity. The main theme of the book is triumph of good over evil that is the first indication of oppression followed by liberation