The Quest For Individual Wholeness

Alice Walker is one of the most important black woman writers in the contemporary American literature. Greatly influenced by feminism, she regards striving for racial equality and women liberation as her lifelong career. In her writings, black women's issues are always Walker's major subjects. 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 black women's love and hatred, and reflecting their struggle for equal rights and individual wholeness.The Color Purple, as one of the most representative works of Walker, probes into the problems about Afro-American women with a new visual angle and special writing skill, and reveals the real life of modern Afro-American women. In this novel, Walker portrays a womanist image---Celie who quests for individual wholeness in the male-dominated patriarchal society. Celie's persistent self-exploration and eventual transformation from an oppressed silent woman to an independent new woman cast light on Walker's womanistic view about black women. That is to say, black women should strive for self-recognition, self-autonomy and self-liberation by themselves, setting foot on black cultural tradition and gaining strength and support from black sisterhood, so as to achieve individual wholeness.By linking with the historical, social and cultural background of the novel, this thesis systematically analyzes the womanist image's quest for individual wholeness from the aspects of spirit, culture, economy and so on with the help of sisterhood among black female. It mainly falls into three parts: the first part explores Celie's quest for self-recognition as a human being with self-awareness, self-confidence and self-respect, which is the precondition of her realization of individual wholeness. This part mainly analyzes Celie's quest for self-recognition from two parts: self-recognition by the power of words and self-recognition by sisterhood. The second part analyzes the black woman's quest for identity from two respects: female identity and cultural identity. The exploration of female identity mainly refers to rediscovering black female's beauty so as to regain self-confidence and dignity as a female, and the exploration of cultural identity means that by discovering and preserving black cultural tradition, the black woman gains self-confidence and sense of pride as a black. Her exploration of identity is an important part of her quest for individual wholeness. The last part explores the black woman's quest for self-autonomy by the exploration of the economic independence and spiritual liberation, which is a most crucial step for the womanist explorer's achievement of individual wholeness. The black woman's exploration of economic independence refers to her quest for self-realization from black feminine household activities, and her exploration of spiritual liberation indicates her getting rid of patriarchal oppression and traditional religious bondage, and questing for a new spiritual support---the immanent God.Through the portrayal of the protagonist Celie's quest for individual wholeness, Alice Walker points out a bright way for all the oppressed silent black women to actualize self-liberation and achieve individual wholeness.