The Color Purple

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This article is about the novel. For the color itself, see purple. For information about the 1985 film, see The Color Purple (film).

For information about the broadway musical, see The Color Purple (musical).

Image:Color purple.jpg The Color Purple is a 1982 novel by Alice Walker which received the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The Color Purple is an epistolary novel: that is, the book is written in the form of letters. The central character is Celie, a young woman who is sexually abused by her father (who, she later discovers, is her stepfather) and is forced to marry a widower with several children, who is physically abusive towards her.

Then her husband's mistress, singer "Shug" Avery, comes into the scene. Initially, Celie feels threatened by this effervescent, liberated version of feminity - a form that has previously been alien to her.

Like "Mr. blank;", Celie's husband (Albert), Shug has little respect for Celie and the life she lives at first and continues in her lover's footsteps, abusing Celie and adding to her humiliation.

In time, however, the two women bond, and Celie gradually learns what it means to become an empowered woman in her own right, through both sexual and financial emancipation and she finds the strength to leave her tyrannical husband.

This book is often argued to address many issues which are important to understanding African-American life during the early-mid 20th century. Its main theme is the position of the black woman in society, as the lowest of the low, put upon both because of her gender and her color. The book also deals with the idea of how Celie finds true emotional and physical love with Avery.

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Adaptations

The book was adapted into a film in 1985, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Whoopi Goldberg as the central character, Celie. Though nominated for 11 Academy Awards, it did not win any. There was some controversy over this, because many critics considered it the best picture that year.

Many people were upset by the depiction of the black male as being abusive, uncaring, and disloyal.

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