The Color Purple

“Shug Avery was a woman. The most beautiful woman I ever saw. She more pretty then my mama. She bout ten thousand times more prettier then me. I see her there in furs. Her face rouge. Her hair like somethin tail. She grinning with her foot up on somebody motocar. Her eyes serious tho. Sad some. I ast her to give me the picture. An all night long I stare at it. An now when I dream, I dream of Shug Avery. She be dress to kill, whirling and laughing.” 

Celie describes her reaction to a photo of Shug that her stepmother secures after she hears about Albert’s infatuation with Shug. Celie is quite young when she sees this photo, so the idea of a woman different from the upright Christian women to which she is accustomed has a noticeable impact on her understanding of gender norms. Although Celie conforms to gender norms as closely as she can, she has an early sense that these norms can be violated. Many of the women Celie knows are sober and deeply oppressed, so one of the significant impacts of having a figure like Shug as a contrast is that Celie sees that there is a form of femininity that centers joy and self-adornment.

“I don’t fight, I stay where I’m told. But I’m alive.” 

Celie’s early experiences with violence and trauma have completely crushed her ability to express herself or do anything other than conform to the expectations of the authority figures in her life. Her pronouncement here, made after Albert’s sister chides her for failing to stand up for herself, shows that her decision to conform is a conscious choice to prioritize survival over quality of life. The constant advice from others to stand up for herself shows the degree to which people not bound by cycles of violence can fail to understand the psychology of people who are trapped in violent situations. This gap in common understanding is one of the reasons Celie is so alienated from other women during this time in her life. 

“Everybody say how good I is to Mr. _____ children. I be good to them. But I don’t feel nothing for them. Patting Harpo back not even like patting a dog. It more like patting another piece of wood. Not a living tree, but a table, a chifferobe. Anyhow, they don’t love me neither, no matter how good I is.”

To all external appearances, Celie is performing the role of dutiful Christian wife and stepmother to perfection. Celie’s self-aware observation in this passage shows that she knows there is a gap between the appearance of goodness and actual goodness. Celie is also coming to understand that conforming to these gender norms does nothing to enhance the quality of her life. This realization is an important first step in Celie’s eventual decision to reject these norms.

“Well how you spect to make her mind? Wives is like children. You have to let ’em know who got the upper hand. Nothing can do that better than a good sound beating.” 

Albert is here teaching his son Harpo about his role as a man in relationship with a woman. The advice is overtly misogynistic and also shows his contempt for children. For Albert, his identity as a man is defined by his ability to dominate people who are not adult men and to do so with violence. His patriarchal notion of women and children does deep damage to the life of his son, who loses the love of his wife when he follows it. 

“All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had to fight my brothers. I had to fight my cousins and my uncles. A girl child ain’t safe in a family of men. But I never thought I’d have to fight in my own house. She let out her breath. I loves Harpo, she say. God knows I do. But I’ll kill him dead before I let him beat me. Now if you want a dead son-in-law you just keep on advising him like you doing. She put her hand on her hip. I used to hunt game with a bow and arrow, she say.” 

Celie also gives Harpo the same advice to beat Sofia, and Sofia here makes a defiant and emotional defense of herself to Celie after discovering this betrayal on Celie’s part. Celie learns much from this encounter: she comes to believe that women are capable of fighting back. In addition, she finally comes to understand that she has a responsibility to other women, not just the men in her life.

“I think. I can’t even remember the last time I felt mad, I say. I used to git mad at my mammy cause she put a lot of work on me. Then I see how sick she is. Couldn’t stay mad at her. Couldn’t be mad at my daddy cause he my daddy. Bible say, Honor father and mother no matter what. Then after while every time I got mad, or start to feel mad, I got sick. Felt like throwing up. Terrible feeling. Then I start to feel nothing at all.” 

An important part of Celie’s identity formation as a woman is coming to understand the impact of her trauma on her life and a willingness to engage honestly with her own emotions. Sofia plays a key role in this development because she prompts Celie to think about what she does with her anger. Celie explains to her that stuffing her anger down is a gender norm she learned from her Christian upbringing. The numbness she experiences shows the damaging impact of these conservative gender norms, however.

“Me and Sofia work on the quilt. Got it frame up on the porch. Shug Avery donate her old yellow dress for scrap, and I work in a piece every chance I get. It a nice pattern call Sister’s Choice. If the quilt turn out perfect, maybe I give it to her, if it not perfect, maybe I keep. I want it for myself, just for the little yellow pieces, look like stars, but not.” 

Celie makes peace with Sofia and connects with Shug by engaging in a creative act. The quilt-making is a communal act that allows her to form and reinforce connections with other women. In addition, Celie is engaging in an aesthetic, creative practice that is a form of self-expression and self-care since she can imagine keeping the quilt for herself. Celie’s ability to form connections and express desires via the act of quilting shows the slow evolution of her character as a result of her creativity.

“Mr. _____ marry me to take care of his children. I marry him cause my daddy made me. I don’t love Mr. _____ and he don’t love me. But you his wife, he say, just like Sofia mine. The wife spose to mind. Do Shug Avery mind Mr. ____? I ast. She the woman he wanted to marry. She call him Albert, tell him his drawers stink in a minute. Little as he is, when she git her weight back she can sit on him if he try to bother her.” 

As Celie spends more years with Albert and observes the different ways that women like Sofia and Shug choose to approach their relationships and performance of their gender, Celie finally learns that the gender norms she was taught as a girl can and should be violated for the wellbeing of both men and women. Her conversation here with Harpo shows that she is actively intervening in Harpo’s life with this newfound knowledge, a move that contrasts sharply with her earlier advice to Harpo to behave like Albert by beating his wife. Celie is becoming a woman who understands that she must support other women and stand up against oppressive gender norms. Notable as well is that she has not yet gone so far as to ask and fight for this same consideration for herself. 

“I lie back on the bed and haul up my dress. Yank down my bloomers. Stick the looking glass tween my legs. Ugh. All that hair. Then my pussy lips be black. Then inside look like a wet rose. It a lot prettier than you thought, ain’t it? she say from the door. It mine, I say.” 

Shug serves an important female mentor figure who helps Celie overcome the alienation from her body that she experiences because of her Christian upbringing and traumatic sexual experiences. Note the shift here from seeing her vagina as something ugly to something beautiful. With the support of Shug, Celie comes to see that there is nothing aberrant about her body or the pleasure it can provide. Celie’s recognition of her body and her sex as her own is also an important step to healing from her sexual trauma.

“That when I notice how Shug talk and act sometimes like a man. Men say stuff like that to women, Girl, you look like a good time. Women always talk bout hair and health. How many babies living or dead, or got teef. Not bout how some woman they hugging on look like a good time. All the men got they eyes glued to Shug’s bosom. I got my eyes glued there too. I feel my nipples harden under my dress. My little button sort of perk up too. Shug, I say to her in my mind, Girl, you looks like a real good time, the Good Lord knows you do.” 

Shug makes no distinction between men and women when it comes to how she selects her objects of desire. Celie finds this approach to sexual identity puzzling and arousing, as shown by this passage. Again, Shug’s example of an alternative way to express one’s gender and desire allows Celie the psychological space to break away from the heterosexual gender norms she has been taught since childhood.

“When I see Sofia I don’t know why she still alive. They crack her skull, they crack her ribs. They tear her nose loose on one side. They blind her in one eye. She swole from head to foot. Her tongue the size of my arm, it stick out tween her teef like a piece of rubber. She can’t talk. And she just about the color of a eggplant.” 

Celie’s description makes it clear that Sofia survived near death by lynching after she defied the mayor and Millie. The extent of her injuries is emblematic of the direct action of white supremacist society on Black women, especially those who defy the expectation that they will meekly accept a subordinate position in this racial and gender order. 

“She say, I love you, Miss Celie. And then she haul off and kiss me on the mouth. Um, she say, like she surprise. I kiss her back, say, um, too. Us kiss and kiss till us can’t hardly kiss no more. Then us touch each other. I don’t know nothing bout it, I say to Shug. I don’t know much, she say. Then I feels something real soft and wet on my breast, feel like one of my little lost babies mouth. Way after while, I act like a little lost baby too.” 

With Shug as her friend and lover, Celie at last manages to experience sexual pleasure, something she has never had because her sexual experiences have all been nonconsensual ones. The references to herself as a baby show that this moment of sexual pleasure constitutes the birth of Celie as a body and person who desires, showing that this is an important moment in Celie’s character development.

“I remember one time you said your life made you feel so ashamed you couldn’t even talk about it to God, you had to write it, bad as you thought your writing was. Well, now I know what you meant. And whether God will read letters or no, I know you will go on writing them; which is guidance enough for me. Anyway, when I don’t write to you I feel as bad as I do when I don’t pray, locked up in myself and choking on my own heart. I am so lonely, Celie.” 

This reported conversation between Celie and Nettie and Nettie’s decision to write even if her sister may not receive the letters show the importance of writing as a necessary tool for self-reflection and self-expression for the women in the novel. For both Nettie and Celie, writing serves as the primary means of dealing with their sense of alienation from others. 

“Over the pulpit there is a saying: Ethiopia Shall Stretch Forth Her Hands to God. Think what it means that Ethiopia is Africa! All the Ethiopians in the bible were colored. It had never occurred to me, though when you read the bible it is perfectly plain if you pay attention only to the words. It is the pictures in the bible that fool you. The pictures that illustrate the words. All of the people are white and so you just think all the people from the bible were white too. But really white white people lived somewhere else during those times. That’s why the bible says that Jesus Christ had hair like lamb’s wool. Lamb’s wool is not straight, Celie. It isn’t even curly.”

Nettie references the Ethiopian prophecy, which served as an important element of Black Christian efforts to counter Eurocentric, racist notions of Black people and as a basis for Black Americans desire to return to Africa in order to reconnect with their African roots. Nettie’s discovery of an African presence in the Bible reassures her that her desire to minister to Africans as a missionary is a calling that is sanctioned by God. The prophecy also serves to give Nettie a sense of pride that her history as a Southern Black woman has heretofore not afforded her due to white supremacy in America. Nettie’s discovery of Africa in the Bible serves as the first step in her move away from institutional American Christianity, albeit a small one.

“‘Hard times’ is a phrase the English love to use, when speaking of Africa. And it is easy to forget that Africa’s ‘hard times’ were made harder by them. Millions and millions of Africans were captured and sold into slavery—you and me, Celie! And whole cities were destroyed by slave catching wars. Today the people of Africa—having murdered or sold into slavery their strongest folks—are riddled by disease and sunk in spiritual and physical confusion. They believe in the devil and worship the dead. Nor can they read or write. Why did they sell us? How could they have done it? And why do we still love them? These were the thoughts I had as we tramped through the chilly streets of London.” 

As Nettie engages in more reading of scholarship on Africa and journeys to England, she arrives at a critique of British imperialism that casts the British missionaries she encounters in a poor light due to their hypocrisy. Nettie also has a moment of crisis in her newfound appreciation for Africa because what she knows of it is still filtered through the imperialist and colonialist lens of her missionary society and her own discomfort over the history that must have led to her ancestors being enslaved. When confronted with the reality of Africa and the British, Nettie is unable to hold on to romanticized ideas about her faith and Africa. 

“A needle and not a razor in my hand, I think.”

On Shug’s advice, Celie begins sewing pants to avoid violence against Albert after she learns he has been intercepting Nettie’s letters for years. This letter is remarkable because it shows that Celie is no longer numb: She feels her anger enough that Shug intervenes. Celie’s ownership of her anger is frightening to her, but it also shows that she is at last claiming a more authentic identity as a woman. Given the depth of Celie’s anger, the substitution of needle for knife also shows that Celie’s creative acts are powerfully therapeutic. 

“But the worst was yet to be told. Since the Olinka no longer own their village, they must pay rent for it, and in order to use the water, which also no longer belongs to them, they must pay a water tax.”

On the ground with the Olinka, Nettie at last sees the direct result of western capitalism on traditional African cultures like the Olinka. Ancestral lands become to property that the Olinka must now find a way to pay for. With the stroke of a pen on the coast, the Olinka are destroyed. The process of their destruction and the inability to do anything about it or inspire the church to help shake Nettie’s belief in her mission and faith to the core.

“Dear Nettie, I don’t write to God no more. I write to you.”

Having mastered her anger and learned more from Shug about alternate ways of relating to God and the world, Celie finds that God loses his place as Celie’s repository for all the experiences that have shaped her. The shift from addressing God to addressing Nettie signals that Celie is ready to leave behind much of what institutional religion taught her about life and her gender and to instead embrace her connections with others, especially women, as the focus of her spiritual life.

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.” 

Celie’s movement from traditional Christian faith to less dogmatic spiritual experience of the world is inspired by Shug’s explicit discussion of the sacred as a pathway to experience that can be accessed outside of the institution of the church. Shug’s reference to the color purple here is one that highlights nature and the senses as pathways to get this experience. Walker chose this passage as the title of her novel, highlighting that this shift from religion to spirituality is central to her notion of what Black women like Celie and Shug need to thrive in a world dominated by sexism and racism. 

“I’m pore, I’m black, I may be ugly and can’t cook, a voice say to everything listening. But I’m here.”

Before Celie at last escapes life with Albert, he curses her and insults her by naming her as poor, black, ugly, and failing to fulfill his notion that women are in part for doing domestic labor. For the first time, Celie explicitly stands up for herself by explaining that his naming of her lacks power over her. She is claiming an identity in defiance of people like Albert, in other words. Celie’s description of what is listening shows that this is a moment during which she taps into the sacred that Shug taught her about and derives great personal power by doing so. Celie’s “here” is one in which she has a voice and control over her own life, and it is in contrast to her identity at the start of the novel, when not fighting and silently enduring were enough because doing so allowed her simply to survive.

“Nettie, I am making some pants for you to beat the heat in Africa. Soft, white, thin. Drawstring waist. You won’t ever have to feel too hot and overdress again. I plan to make them by hand. Every stitch I sew will be a kiss.

Amen,

Your Sister, Celie

Folkspants, Unlimited.

Sugar Avery Drive

Memphis, Tennessee.”

Celie generally signs her letter with an “Amen” or “Your sister,” but in this instance, she chooses to identify herself as a business owner, a creative, and a person who has established a household with Shug. This signature shows the evolution of Celie’s identity as a result of her relationship with Shug and her claiming of her ability to be a person who engages in creative self-expression for a living.

“God is different to us now, after all these years in Africa. More spirit than ever before, and more internal. Most people think he has to look like something or someone—a roofleaf or Christ—but we don’t. And not being tied to what God looks like, frees us.”

The end result of Nettie’s time in Africa is that she has also rejected the Eurocentric notion of God that she learned in institutional Christianity. Nettie has also become less religious and more spiritual as a result of her immersion in a culture outside of the United States.

“If she come, I be happy. If she don’t, I be content. And then I figure this the lesson I was suppose to learn.” 

Although Celie has depended on her connection to Shug in order to establish an identity as a Black woman who exercises control over her life and body, she evolves beyond that reliance on this relationship after Shug leaves. Celie has learned that relationships with others are important, but relationship with self is paramount.