Creation Of New Black Women Images In The Color Purple

Alice Walker is one of the most important American female writers. She is greatly influenced by feminism, so she regards striving for racial equality and women liberation as her lifelong career. The Color Purple, as one of her representative works for womanism, attracted great attention since it was published. As a leading person of the black female writers, she creates a series of new black female images in The Color Purple and makes a great contribution to reversing the dumb and stereotyped black female images of the previous works.The author analyzes the creation of new black women images in The Color Purple based on the theory of womanism. The thesis consists of five chapters. In the first chapter, the author introduces the life experience of Alice Walker and the synopsis of The Color Purple. In the second chapter, the author reviews the previous research on Alice Walker and The Color Purple both at home and abroad. In the third chapter, the author introduces feminism, black feminism and womanism, and emphasizes the differences between womanism and the other two theories, and employs womanism as the theoretical basis to analyze the black women images in The Color Purple. In the fourth chapter, the author analyzes the creation of new black women images from the point of view of womanism. Firstly, the author discusses Celie and other women’s creative activities in their daily life. They gain subjectivity and personality independence because of their creative activities. The deep sister bonding plays an important role in their self-liberation. Women also have spiritual liberation by the way of getting rid of the oppression of patriarchy and traditional religion in The .Color Purple. Then, the author describes Nettie’s travel of seeking root in Africa, which expresses Walker’s pursuit and inheritance of black cultural traditions. Besides, the author describes men in The Color Purple, which indirectly expresses women’s hope to get along with men. The last chapter is conclusion. Walker hopes to encourage the black women, even all the women in the world to get rid of shackles and liberate themselves through the creation of new black women images.