Celie's Awakening Of Black Female Consciousness In The Color Purple

Alice Walker is a remarkably prolific black woman writer in contemporary American literature. She is versatile with her works covering novels, short stories, poems, and essays. The Color Purple, as Walker's masterpiece has received the three major awards regarded the highest honor of American literature:the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award and the Association of American Book Review Award, which makes Walker the first honored black woman writer and consolidates Walker's status in the history of American literature.The Color Purple tells the process of how a southern black girl Celie's female consciousness has gradually awakened and how she pursues independence and obtains liberation. This novel demonstrates Walker's theory of womanism. Walker brings in the term "womanist" to feminist theory, in order to describe the particularity of black feminism and distinguishes it from white feminism. White feminism, in which the prejudice from racial discrimination still exists, shows contempt for black women, while womanism is against sexism as well as racism. Womanism has a broader range, compared with white feminism. Walker gives an appropriate metaphor:"womanist is to feminist as purple to lavender."As an outstanding representative of black women, Walker has always been concerned about black women's current existence and their process of growth. Black women's awakening of female consciousness is the premise of their liberation. She believes that the liberation of black women lies in resistance against the multiple oppression, self-recognition of their values, pursuit for self-respect, seeking for the roots of national culture, striving for independence, and establishing a harmonious bisexual relationship between black men and black women as well as a racial relationship between the whites and the blacks.This thesis tries to explore the protagonist in The Color Purple---Celie's awakening of black female consciousness from the perspective of womanism, holding that Celie's black female consciousness mainly includes consciousness of searching for self-recognition and seeking for root as well as independence. The thesis consists of three chapters. Chapter 1 focuses on Celie's searching for self-recognition. Celie's self-recognition contains recognition and appreciation of her black female qualities and values and self-respect as a human being with equal rights with black men and the whites. Chapter 2 illuminates Celie's root-seeking consciousness. Celie pursues black cultural heritage mainly through the symbols of black cultural tradition: quilting and blues-singing. Quilting is an activity for black women to create beauty; blues-singing is also an activity of black people's self-acclamation, expressing their yearning for freedom. Chapter 3 mainly discusses Celie's seeking for independence. Through the sisterhood and self-creativity, Celie has gradually realized her existential condition of being oppressed and begun to rebel against the double oppression for political and economic independence.As a womanist, Celie is a representative of the oppressed black women. Walker believes that womanists should not only work for women's liberation from patriarchy, but devote to the survival and wholeness of the human race after the emancipation of women so that a harmonious relationship could be established between black men and black women so that a universal love between the blacks and the whites could also be achieved. Walker by her The Color Purple expresses her wish that all kinds of oppression in the world will come to an end.