Alice Walker's Feminine Power In The Color Purple

Alice Walker (1944- ), the African American women writer, is most famous for her critically-acclaimed novel The Color Purple (1982), the story of a black woman fighting for her way through not only racist white culture but patriarchal black culture. The book won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize (1983). This thesis is intended to discuss, in terms of the psychoanalytical feminist theories of Cixous, Kristeva and Pratt, how Walker manages to build the female characters in the story a powerful utopian place and provide them with the transformational power for rejuvenation and rebirth.The thesis is composed of four parts. Chapter one briefly introduces Walker's life and her works, main literary criticisms on the novel, the psychoanalytical feminist theories of Cixous, Kristeva and Pratt and the structure of the thesis. Chapter two discusses how Walker constructs a utopian place in The Color Purple by means of the maternal voice, the semiotic chora, writing the censored body, getting rid of the concept of gendered differences and bisexuality. Chapter three deals with the transformational power Walker offers female characters in The Color Purple through Pratt's theory, i.e., the personality rejuvenation of males and females, and the rebirth of raped females and a harmonious family. The last chapter concludes that by building a utopian place and by the transformational force, women characters in The Color Purple gain access to the feminine power.