Women's Identities in The Color Purple by Alice Walker and Behind a Mask by Louisa May Alcott

Women's Identities in The Color Purple by Alice Walker and Behind a Mask by Louisa May Alcott

Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple has a rich array of female characters to examine when answering the above question. I feel that Louisa May Alcott’s short story, “Behind A Mask” offers an equally rich array of female characters to consider. Through the course of this essay I will show how Walker and Alcott used different narrative techniques and made different use of language and dialogue to create their characters; and how they each respectively created very powerful pieces of work, identifying with their characters and the problems and obstacles faced by them in their everyday lives.

The Color Purple is written in the epistolary style where the main character writes letters to God. These letters are like a diary where Celie tells her story. This diary technique contains Celie’s innermost thoughts and allows the reader to know the true Celie because she is able to completely open up in her writing. Walker writers the whole story thought Celie’s (female) perspective, which is particularly useful when we are given Celie’s impression main female characters in the novel, Sophia and Shug. We get a different view of Nettie because she writes her own letters to Celie.

Certain key events in Celie’s life made her the character she is, for example: her continual rape by her stepfather; the subsequent pregnancies and the loss of her children; the death of her mother; and the loss of her sister, Nettie. However, through the course of the novel, Celie finds that she has managed to form close relations with the female characters of the novel, she finds love and friendship and is finally reunited with her sister and children who were taken from her.

The Color Purple opens, with Celie writing to God, describing herself as “a good girl” (the fact that she addresses her letters to God emphasises this) and how her stepfather’s advances to her mother were rejected, resulting in Celie’s rape. Before chapter one even begins we here a pre-echo of Celie’s stepfather, “You better not never tell nobody but God. It’d kill your mammy.” So Celie learns to keep quiet to survive and this is a habit that is hard for her to break.

Celie is a passive character. She is hardworking and domesticated and this is what allows her to be married off so young. Celie’s father and husba...

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...r true feelings but whilst Celie feels sadness and a desire for love, Jean Muir feels bitter and a need for revenge.

The most marked difference between Celie and Jean Muir is how they use their sexuality (Shug is much more aware of how to use her sexuality effectively than Celie is). Jean Muir uses her sexuality to manipulate the three main male characters of the story, particularly Sir John Coventry who is totally taken in by her act. She wants a title and uses her femininity, flattering the elderly gentleman. Sir John is amazed at such a lovely young woman being interested in him, for although Jean Muir is not described as pretty, her mysterious air provokes interest.

Behind a Mask is a short story compared to The Color Purple and this results in the pace being faster. The two stories have nothing in common but their main female characters do share some characteristics, particularly in the way they have learned to hide behind the façade of how acceptable women in society should be.

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

· Approaching Literature: Literature and Gender (1996) Goodman L (ed), The Open University

· The Color Purple B (1992) Walker Alice, The Women’s Press