An extract from Intermediate IRP Finalist
HOW DOES ALICE WALKER PRESENT THE IMPRISONING FORCE OF MARRIAGE IN THE COLOR PURPLE? Alice Caiger Lauren Bacchus
In history, we see women oppressed by their husbands and having nothing to do except care for their children. I wanted to see how far this is reflected in literature set in the 19th and 20th century. The Colour Purple shows an abusive marriage set up by the wife’s father and the novel shows us how Celie gains confidence and is able to stand up against her oppressive husband. The Colour Purple by Alice Walker Writing in 1982, Walker looks to the past to explore how both race and marriage imprisoned women in the early 20th century. Marriage is presented as a restrictive force towards women through the abusive nature of the relationship between Celie and her husband. When Harpo asks Albert why he beats Celie, he explains that it is ‘cause she [is] my wife’. This sexist attitude sums up the relationship between Celie and her husband at the beginning of the novel. As a reader in the 21st century, we know that this is an old-fashioned attitude that was common in the early 1900s. However, not all marriages in the early 20th century were like this; in this case, the marriage was abusive because of the leniency in the law. Women were the property of their husbands, and there was not the same social awareness of domestic abuse as today. When we learn that Albert ‘ beat [Celie] when [Shug is] not here’, we realise that Albert loves Shug and becomes gentler when she is around. This suggests Albert resents Celie for their marriage because he cannot marry Shug. We infer that the imprisoning force on Celie may be due to the lack of a connection and relationship. We do not know whether Albert would have had the same violent attitude if married to Shug but we can deduce that their marriage would have been different due to their love and relationship with each other. This is 52
further demonstrated when Celie and Albert begin to get along better, enjoying each other’s company, and Celie admits that he ‘seems to be the only one who understands [her] feelings’ about Shug’s departure, giving them something to connect over. Walker presents marriage restrictively as she showed Celie being unable to discover her sexuality. Her character is oppressed by men for most of her life, which left her with no
