A Black Womanistic Explorer

Alice Walker is one of the most important black woman writers in the contemporary American literature. Black women's issues are always Walker's major subjects in her writings. 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.Walker's representative work The Color Purple depicts the Black women's quest for identity and self-autonomy in the male-dominated patriarchal society. In this novel, Walker pays more attention to sexism than racism; and Walker's portrait of Black males in the novel both lead to the strong disapproval and controversy from some critics. Nevertheless, owing to the unique perspective and neoteric writing techniques, Walker won the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1983 and becomes the first Afro-American woman writer to win this honor in literary history.After its publication in 1982, The Color Purple attracts a great deal of academic interests. Based on the research fruits achieved in critics' studies, this thesis offers a new perspective in the interpretation of The Color purple. It intends to explore the mental development of the protagonist Celie in light of womanism advocated by Walker. Roughly, this thesis includes six parts.Chapter one gives a general introduction to Walker's life experience and her literary achievements.Chapter two is devoted to a theoretical introduction to feminism, black feminism and womanism which are applied in the analysis of the novel.Based on Walker's womanistic views, Chapter three to Chapter five trace Celie's pilgrimage to Black womanhood. She undergoes the process of suffering, awakening and exploration for self-identity as a womanist.Chapter six summarizes the contents mentioned above and concludes that the womanistic view reflected in The Color Purple point out a road to emancipation for the black women Celie, that is, in search for their own culture and tradition and the integrity of self, black women in The Color Purple have finally found their identity, achieved the equality of men and women, and obtained independence and autonomy. More importantly, this view doesn't only points out a bright way for the freedom and liberation of black women, but also for all women in the third world.