The Color Purple
Alice Walker
#1

          The novel, The Color Purple, focuses on a child wife in the South and her relationships with her family members, two children, and husband. Her name is Celie and she is immediately oppressed, from the moment her mother became too sick to continue her 'responsibilities' within the household. This not only included feeding the younger children, working in the fields, but also providing sex for her mother's husband- or her father. Along with an incestuous relationship with her father, he also beat her and worked her to the point of insomnia. Celie had been attempting to learn basic skills such as reading and writing with her sister, Nettie, but she was soon married to another man in the town and developed a very similar relationship with him as her father. Nettie was his original goal for a wife, but she soon left the town for other opportunities- a rough parting for the siblings' relationship. Celie only found any relief from beatings and uncomfortable sexual encounters when her husband, who is never named- something I’ll address later, when he took in Shug Avery, the local slut and performer. She had always loved him, and he her, so when she came down with a “nasty woman disease” he took her into the house. Celie helped her recover, and as she became stronger, he focused on his supposed love- Celie slept peacefully once again.

            Now that you’re caught up on how she was forced to live her life, it will be interesting to inform you, and attempt to gain some understanding about her outlooks on the male population in her town. Throughout at least the first third of the story, Celie refers to almost ALL of the men as “Mr. _________.” There is nothing to distinguish between her father, her husband, and any other man, like some she meets in church. From the very beginning Celie refused to name them or acknowledge them as separate people. The only male figure she ever names is Harpo, her husband’s son who is, at this point in the book, newly married to a strong woman named Sophia. They recently separated.

            It seems to me like the author’s choice to purposely omit a name’s distinguishing quality was to create the idea that to Celie, all these men served the same purpose and did the same things. Celie views all of these men as miles above her and as people who are in the right when they beat her, give her orders, and rape her. She thinks it is normal and just “what goes on.” Leaving out their names separates them from the reader and makes their relationship with the reader impersonal. I think that Harpo is an exception from this rule because he, at least at first and without influence from his father, is truly in love with his wife and refuses to beat her. Showing an exception from the “Mr. _______” rule highlights the fact that she is purposely grouping the self-righteous and misogynistic type of male figure in her head, not simply all of the men in the book.