The Construction Of Female Subjectivity In The Color Purple

Alice Walker, the first black woman who won a Pulitzer Prize in fiction,considered as one of the most influential writers in the literary world. Her work TheColor Purple is characterized with the unique and distinct epistolary form, and the vividimage of women and touching story. This work receives extensive attention for havinggreat value for research. This thesis aims to explore the construction of black women’ssubjectivity from the perspective of Bakhtin’s Dialogue Theory.Black women are called “the world’s mule”, deeply oppressed by racial and sexualdiscrimination. The Color Purple reveals and subverts the silence imposed on them.They have completed construction of subjectivity and the growth of selfhood throughthe dialogue, and the communication between the groups has also aroused awareness ofthe subject. The heroine indomitable self-search not only breaks the segregationbetween man and man, man and society, but also shows the desire and pursuit to build aharmonious home.This thesis applied Bakhtin’s Dialogue Theory and the view of polyphonic novel toanalyze the major female characters in Walker’s novel in order to witness the process ofconstruction of the black women’s subjectivity from the angle of the changes of threemain heroines’ dialogue. Construction of subjectivity is divided into three phases:1)Monolog-speak to god with no response (silence of female consciousness).2)Polyphonic-the constant dialogue between self and others (subject awareness).3)Speech-establishment of the self and the construction of freedom (the accomplishmentof construction of subjectivity). Subjectivity is constructed in the dynamic process anddialogue is an important way for black women to construct their subjectivity.This thesis is comprised of five parts, Chapter One is the introduction of AliceWalker and her works; Chapter Two is literature review, it introduces the research statusof The Color Purple and the feasibility of interpret this work by employing the dialoguetheory; Chapter Three is the basic theoretical interpretation; Chapter Four is a detailedtext analysis from the perspective of dialogue theory, three heroines complete theirsubjectivity construction through dialogue. The final part is a conclusion of the wholethesis, in which restates the major findings and the limitations.