On Alice Walker's The Color Purple From The Perspective Of Ecofeminism

In the rise of African American literature during the 1950s and 1960s, Alice Walker is considered as one of the leading voices. As a black feminist writer, her works focus on Southern Negroes'lives, especially concerning about the black women's state of survival and their sufferings and struggles. In allusion to the double oppression—racism and sexism—the black women have suffered, Walker continues to explore the "Survival Whole" form of society and put forward the ingenious "Womanism" theory, trying to create black women's experience under the double oppression and their approach to find a new way of life, to achieve, including men and women, human and nature, a harmonious survival of the whole mankind.Walker's masterpiece, The Color Purple is a novel characterized in the description of the women image; black women found themselves in a variety of adversities, after experiencing a series of changes, they broke the numb and submissive women image in the traditional social gender pattern, gradually developed into a female with unique spiritual self. At the same time, the author also expressed in the novel her compassion and concern on nature and even the earth which are humiliated by human beings. This paper tries to interpret Walker's The Color Purple from the perspective of ecofeminism, which reveals throughout the novel, and preliminarily analyzes the author's attempt to break the traditional power structure and political order under male domination, and her ideal to create a human society based on equality and harmony. It consists of six parts:Chapter one gives a brief introduction of Alice Walker's major works and her masterpiece The Color Purple, expatiates the critics'major evaluation at home and broad about this work from different perspectives, and then advances the feasibility of analyzing the novel from the perspective of ecofeminism and the significance of this thesis study.Chapter two provides a theoretical basis to this thesis study:ecofeminism. One important aspect of ecofeminism is to return or build human's respect for the ecological system, men's respect for women, and the harmony between women and nature, thus to build an equal and harmonious human society and realize the sustainable development of human society. Chapter three mainly discusses Walker's Womanism. Through the retrospective of Walker's life experience and literary ideal, the cause and connotation of Walker's Womanism and the same nature between her Womanism and ecofeminism are discussed in this chapter.Chapter four probes into the harmonious world Walker expresses in The Color Purple. It will be divided into two parts:the first part mainly discusses that in the novel both women and nature are the victims of the patriarchal system, and they both have a close connection. The second part, through the analysis of the following four aspects: harmony between the same sex, harmony between the opposite sex, harmony between races and harmony between human and nature, will reveal Walker's ideal harmonious world she expresses in The Color Purple from the perspective of ecofeminism. The achievement of a harmonious world is also an important theme in ecofeminism. This chapter is the focus of this thesis.Chapter five is about black women's approach to a harmonious world. In the novel, the black women deal with approaches or ways of women's liberation and the harmonious survival of the whole humankind:quilting, pants-making and Africa traveling. Through these efforts, black women in The Color Purple find their identity, obtain independence both in body and mind, gain quality with men, and ultimately achieve the harmonious survival with men and nature.Through the above analysis, Alice Walker's intention to create this work and its goals are to be summarized. Through this work, Walker conveyed the wish to establish a harmonious community committed to the whole humanity, in which men and women, human and nature can survive and coexist in integrity with each other. Walker's The Color Purple provides us a new perspective to understand the black women under double oppression, meanwhile, indicates a new direction for women's liberation and the survival and integrity of the whole mankind.