A Research Of The Awareness Of Black Women’s Womanism In The Color Purple

Alice Walker is a famous Afro-American female writer who has highly impacted onAmerican literature in twentieth century. Walker is the first Afro-American female who wins aPulitzer Prize by virtue of her epistolary novel, The Color Purple. Accordingly, Walker andher works are paid high attention by critics of western literature.Alice Walker has showed her womanism in The Color Purple perfectly. This noveldepicts many characters of the black women who are represented by the heroine–Celie,describing that they are considerate with each other and have the common pursuit of freedom,independence, equality and harmonious life in the process of fighting against sexism, racismand classism. Meanwhile, it also describes the process of black men changing and liberatingtheir conventional ideology. This novel is ended by reuniting and constructing an ideal societywhich achieves the equality both in gender and race.The core ideology of Walker’s womanism is a kind of ideal society status–the perfectthe coexistence and wholeness of all human beings, including the men and the women. Theblack women need to break their conventional spiritual shackle, to liberate their ideology, torealize their own value and strive for their equal and independent rights by means of mutualstrength. Furthermore, womanism does not exclude the male and homosexual, it pays moreattention to the common progress and development of all human beings. The uniqueness ofthis thesis is to study the wholeness of the black women in The Color Purple, rather than tojust study individual character. It will focuses on the black women’s gradual growingawareness of the womanism and discusses their expectations of happy and harmonious lifestate. And then it will explain the positive effects of Walker’s womanism awareness betweenthen and nowadays at American society, meanwhile to cognize the essence of womanism.This thesis is composed of six chapters. The first chapter briefly introduces AliceWalker’s experiences of growing-up and literary creations, the main content of The ColorPurple, the research significance and creativity of this thesis. The second chapter reviews thecriticisms and researches about this novel from domestic and overseas scholars. The thirdchapter summarizes the theoretical framework of this thesis, pointing out the relations anddifferences between womanism and feminism. The fourth chapter and the fifth chapter arecore parts of this thesis. The fourth chapter starts by speaking of the black women, who live inthe patriarchy family at the bottom of American society and suffer from multiple oppressions,discusses their awareness changing process from awakening, rebelling to questing forindependence and equality by way of analyses their miserable living situation, showing their sisterhood constructing as well as their dream of pursuing women’s liberation. On that basis,this chapter discusses the difficult process for establishing the womanism awareness to theblack women. The fifth chapter starts by speaking of the black women desire for harmoniouscoexistence living state between the men and the women, the white and the black, discussestheir pursuit of self-identity and spiritual liberation. On that basis, this chapter discusses aboutthe happiness and harmonious life state of the black women’s expectations. The sixth chapteris the conclusion which further illustrates the awareness of black women’s womanism in TheColor Purple, and profoundly interprets veritable spirits of Walker’s womanism, furthermoreelaborates the womanism’s far-reaching impacts on American society between then andnowadays.