Womanism In The Color Purple

Alice Walker is an influential black women writer. Greatly influenced by feminism, she regards striving for racial equality and women liberation as her lifelong career. Most of her works are based on her native region-the deep South of Georgia and Mississippi, concerning the black history and the cultural history of blacks in the south of America, showing their love and hatred, and reflecting their struggle for equal rights and complete selfhood.The Color Purple, Alice Walker's representative work, became very popular ever since its publication in 1982, arousing attention in the critical field, and creating a lot of enlightening research of its form, content and theme. This thesis tries to interpret womanism in the novel from four aspects-female consciousness, racial consciousness, root-seeking consciousness and universal consciousness. The thesis consists of three parts: the introduction, the body and the conclusion.The Introduction makes a general survey of the criticism of this novel and points out four characteristics of womanism.The body is composed of four chapters.Chapter One explores the epistolary style and the characterization of a group of black women to analyze female consciousness, so as to discuss womanism in The Color Purple.Chapter Two provides an interpretation of racial consciousness as revealed from contrasting language art in Black English and Standard English so as to analyze womanism in The Color Purple.Chapter Three focuses on root-seeking consciousness in African culture through its juxtaposition with American culture in order to investigate into womanism in The Color Purple.Chapter Four relates womanism to transcen4entalism with theanalysis of the image of God and the meaning of the color purple to ! reveal universal consciousness imbued in the novel.The Conclusion makes a summary of the thesis and restates its main points.