Ayalew 1Ruth AyalewCrawfordHonors American Literature30 March 2018Ain’t I a Woman?Sex abuse, domestic violence, systematic brain draining, and oppression; these are allobstacles that plagued the African American community post-emancipation. Black women, inparticular, carried a larger sum of this burden. After the civil war, freed slaves had nowhere to goin the South. Unemployment is rampant, former slaves were poverty-stricken and most werehomeless. Black women today face the aftermath from these problems, as well as sexism and sexcrimes. This, combined with lack of education, lack of access to jobs and financial instability,left American black women behind. It is no secret that black women are at the very bottom of thesocial hierarchy as a …show more content…
Sharon Smith, a researcher andactivist, elaborates when she writes, “ Black women are discriminated against in ways that oftendo not fit neatly within the legal categories of either “racism” or “sexism”—but as a combinationof both racism and sexism” (International Socialist Review). Celie, The Color Purple’sprotagonist, is no exception. Due to lack of education and traditional gender roles many blackwomen, including Celie, are subject to domestic issues such as sex abuse and establishedmarriage in the post-confederate South. Celie is a woman living in the early 20th century inGeorgia. She has been molested by her father for the better part of her childhood and bore two ofhis children, as a result, she has to discontinue her education. Celie is then forced to marry a …show more content…
Charles Joseph, a journalist, supports this claim in writing:“From the very beginning of the movement, black women organized demonstrations atthe risk of being killed and taught illiterate people how to read and write so they couldstruggle for liberation and freedom... They were actively involved in differentorganizations such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Congress of RacialEquality and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and worked to improve thesituation of black Americans.” (Los Angeles Times)Black women were the undercover operators of the civil rights movement while black menbecame the face of it. Through life’s many hurdles, however, It is clear that black women areable to silently thrive in their own communities.Due to the contribution of black women who have paved the way, African Americans aremuch closer to breaking the glass ceiling towards freedom of social and systematic oppression.Mary Mcleod Bethune was a member of the NAACP and helped represent the group at the 1945conference on the founding of the United Nations along with W.E.B. DuBois. (biography.com)Mary Mcleod Bethune was one of many black women who decided to educate the black girlswho would grow to be lawyers, doctors, and advocators of civil rights. Similarly, the
Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune was an intelligent woman who fought for women’s rights and equality in education. Bethune grew up in poverty, as one of 17 children born to former slaves. In the 1800’s-1900’s African-American’s were not given many opportunities, but it became a different story with Bethune.
In section three of The Color Purple, the main character is Celie. In this section she gains a little more control over her life, begins to express herself through creativity and also becomes more free and independent. Her decision to leave with Shug to go to Tennessee and begin her own pants business is good examples of these things. This section shows how much progress she has made in herself. We learn about Celie through different situations and dialogues she has throughout this section.
Within The Color Purple by Alice Walker, women are treated as inferior to men therefore they must obey them. Through the strength and wisdoms Celie gains from other women, she learns to overcome her oppression and realize her self worth as a woman. The women she has met throughout her life, and the woman she protected since young, are the people that helped her become a strong independent woman. Sofia and Shug were there for Celie when she needed someone to look up to and depend on. Nettie was able to push Celie to become a more educated, independent person. The main source of conflict in this book is Celie’s struggle with becoming an independent woman who needs not to rely on a man. Throughout the book we see her grow as a person and become independent in many ways through her experiences with the powerful women in her life.
Although none of the novels were wrote in conjunction, each has a link towards the other regarding abuse, both sexual and spousal, as well as class oppression and the manual labor that was a necessity for survival among black women. By examining present society, one can observe the systems of oppressions that have changed for the better as well as those that continue to devastate the lives of many women today.
Women have gone through so many problems and hardships throughout their history. Black women in particular have had to face many more challenges throughout their history. Not to take away from the white women and the hardships they faced, black women have dealt with the same and more issues due to their race. Throughout the history of women, they have not gotten paid as much as men, were targeted more for sexual violence, were not treated with equal respect, and were not treated fairly at all. Black women, on top of all of those hardships, had to deal with their race and the issues that their race brought upon them. Black women during the Black arts movement, faced even more hardships. They were held back, used by their body image to be disrespected, were
Celie's mother, in the beginning of the novel The Color Purple, is a very small but effective setting character. Her character flaw was irresponsible parenting because she did not protect her daughter. With this lack of protection, Celie did not have any female role models when she was growing up. Therefore, Celie was not able to become knowledgeable about life and have good female company. Another effect this flaw had on the protagonist was that she had no one to teach her how to understand herself. Celie was unable to realize all of the wonderful qualities of being and becoming a woman. Because she could not appreciate being a woman, she was unable to appreciate herself, and therefore had a lack of self confidence.
Who? During this time period, Mary McLeod Bethune was a well respect civil rights activists and democratic advisor. By lending her expertise to several presidents, she became popular in American government. She became a leader in the effort to build coalition among African American women fighting for equal rights, better education, jobs, and political power. She led many local and national women’s clubs. She founded the National Council of Negro Women, which opened the doors to her relationship with President Roosevelt. President Franklin D. Roosevelt named her direct of the Office of Minority Affairs in the National Youth Administration.
“Every time they ast me to do something, Miss Celie, I act like I’m you. I jump right up and do just what they say” (88). This line conveys how obedient Celie is towards others, which she learns from her own people. The black community degrades black women to make it difficult for them to become independent (Tanritanir and Aydemir 438). Alice Walker experiences this and understands the need to express the struggle of the black woman to the world. She, along with other black female writers, coins the term womanism to explain the idea of prevailing over this struggle. By having Celie overcome the oppression she faces, Alice Walker illustrates the theme of womanism in her novel The Color Purple.
...ce of social gender departure releases her from oppression that came with emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. The significant change from her passive self to a feminine assertiveness develops out of her encounter with the people and events that goes against traditional views of social acceptance as it breaks common views on behavior and attributes. The development allows Celie to identify the people around her as the people she loves and care for, essentially becoming her people. The Color Purple becomes a contemporary text that becomes relatable to issues of identity and acceptance as well as addresses the existence of the continuing problem. Just as Celie says at the end of the novel when she narrates the conservation she shared with Mr. ____, the ability to “live her life and be herself no matter what” becomes a capability to her and the other characters.
Eventually she turns into a lesbian. In the book, The Color Purple, "dear God, Nettie, dear stars and trees" are the only people she communicates with. All the letters show that Celie is a very insecure person, and that reflects to her teenage years. All the abusing caused her a scar in her heart, which would stay there and wouldn't go away. Every time she thought about the abusement she felt like she was experiencing it all over again. In The Color Purple, there are many conflicts, which arise from the theme. First of all, Celie is against Pa and Mr._____, that shows the conflict of man Vs man, and unfortunately, Celie doesn't have the power to fight back physically. Secondly, Celie and herself that show the conflict of man Vs him/herself. She can't win over herself and that is why she doesn't have enough courage to stand up and be in command for her own life. Thirdly, the tradition of men had high social status then women. That shows the conflict of man Vs society. At the end of the book Celie eventually fight over the tradition. Men are no longer in charge for her life.
Since the time women were eligible to be an employee of a workplace, they have become victims of discrimination. Discrimination is the practice of treating a person or group of people differently from other people (Webster, 2013). Thousands of women have suffered from discrimination in workplaces because they are pregnant, disabled, or of the opposite sex. It is crazy to think that someone would fire a woman because she became pregnant and needed to have some work adjustments ("Pregnancy and parenting,"). A woman goes through a lot to give birth to children, and men will never understand the complications a mother encounters during the pregnancy. Sadly, males think that pregnant women don’t make a working hand, which is totally wrong.
The Color Purple revolves around the life of Celie, a young black woman growing up in the poverty-ridden South. In order to find herself and gain independence, Celie must deal with all manner of abuse, including misogyny, racism and poverty. When she is a young girl of just 14, Celie is sexually assaulted by a man she believes is her father. She has two children by her rapist, both of who he takes to a Reverend. When her mother dies, this man known as "Pa" marries Celie to a man she will only refer to as "Mr. ___."
Alice Walker’s The Color Purple takes place in Georgia from 1910 to 1940. During this time racism was easily visible and apparent in society. Black people were seen as lesser beings in contrast to their white counterparts. However, not only are all of the colored characters within The Color Purple forced, by means of oppression, into their social positions because they are not white, but also because some of them are women, lesbian, and lower class. As Crenshaw explains, “[b]ecause of their intersectional identity as both women and of color within discourses that are shaped to respond to one or the other, women of color are marginalized within both” (Crenshaw 5). Celie, the main character in the novel, is given enormous adult responsibility from a young age. After the death of her mother, she is pulled out of school in order to...
Although some of the worst employment discrimination was eliminated by the Civil Rights Act in 1964, many women continue to undergo unfair and unlawful discrimination in the workplace. Even though women have come a long way, they are still being discriminated against in certain fields of work. High-end jobs, most commonly large companies and medical fields, continue to discriminate against women even though they have the same job qualifications as men.
Alice Walker's use of characterization in her novel The Color Purple depicts her main theme of female empowerment and the importance of maintaining an assertive voice. The tyrannical male characters, the victimized female characters, and the development of the protagonist, Celie, express Walker's firm views of female independence in a male dominated society. Her feminist views have been influenced by her experiences with discrimination as an African-American woman as well as her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. These experiences serve as an inspiration for developing the character Celie, a young black woman discovering her own sense of self while battling a male dependent environment. The progression of civil rights for black women that existed throughout the twentieth century mirrors the development Celie makes from a verbally debilitated girl to an adamant young woman. The expression of racism and sexism that evidenced itself during the postmodern era presented Walker with an opportunity to compose a novel that reveals her strong animosity toward discrimination. Without these outlets, Walker would not have had the ability to create a novel with such in-depth insights into the lifestyle of an immensely oppressed woman.