The Black Women’s Love In The Color Purple: The Way For Self-Emancipation

Alice Walker is one of the most influential writers in the American contemporary literary circles. She is universally recognized as the spokeswoman of the American black women and devotes to helping the miserable black women who have been ignored and marginalized by the mainstream culture to get the right to make voices through many amazing black female images in her works. Walker uses works to awaken the self-consciousness of the black women in order to defend them against the sexual and racial oppression. Her representative work The Color Purple is called the eternal classic and one of the most popular works in the world. It narrates a story about the black women who suffer the racial and sexual oppression and finally find the way for emancipation through the help of love.Alice Walker suggests in the novel that the black women should construct self-identity, construct their ethnic identity and reconstruct their social identity so as to obtain the real independence and liberation. The sisterly love among the black women helps them to construct self-identity successfully and to get the physical and mental emancipation; the love for the black culture helps them with the construction of their ethnic identity and with the obtainment of self-esteem and confidence; generous love for the black male allows the black women to win black men’s respect and true love, to gain equal status and to reconstruct their social status.This thesis will explain love from three aspects and discuss how they aid the black females to realize the construction of self-identity, ethnic identity and the reconstruction of social identity. sisterly love is the huge support for the black women’s construction of self-identity. They achieve the self-awakening and become brave to revolt against the dual oppression through the sisterly love. The construction of ethnic identity is fulfilled by the love for the black culture:the love for the Blues arouses the black women’s self-esteem, letting them obtain respect and appreciation of the black men and even the white people; the love for and inheritance of the black women’s sewing skill assist them with the realization of self-worth. The forgiveness and sacrifice for the black males make the black males gradually learn to respect and love the black females. And there also appears a picture of the harmonious relationship between men and women in the ending part of the novel, which means that the black women’s social status has been reconstructed. The black women separately construct their self-identity, ethnic identity and reconstruct their social identity through sisterly love, the love for the black culture and the generous love for the black males, eventually achieving success on the way for emancipation.