Symbolic Sexism in The Color Purple Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Symbolic Sexism in The Color Purple - Essay Example weaving, or Shakespeare’s Desdemona, wandering aimlessly through her palace trying to puzzle out what’s troubling her dear husband, the woman of color was expected to play the woman as well as the servant. Her servant status did not only include the duties of the home, as it did for white women of lower class, but also the duties of the fields and the livestock. She was considered the most versatile workhorse, plaything and servant available. It was a role that only become more complex following the age of American slavery, when the woman of color was not just a servant or a woman, but a sexual tool to be used at will by whichever man has current rights to her. The question of the modern age, then, can be put in terms of who has control of the woman’s sexuality, the woman or the man who ‘owns’ her. This struggle over who has control of the woman’s sexuality is one of the primary themes that runs through Alice Walker’s novel The Color Pu rple. As Celie develops from an oppressed black woman of the South to a liberated woman of the modern age, the elements of symbolic sexism are exposed both within the novel and the film, although this expression is somewhat different in the novel than in the film. Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple (1982), investigates the black American woman’s experience of double oppression, first as a black person and then, more significantly, as a woman, elements that are present to different degrees within the film version (1985). The main character, Celie, is presented as a black woman heavily oppressed, trained early to be subservient and completely conventional in her ideas as a result. Her experience of life has taught her that one is either submissive and accepting of the abuse or one is beaten to death if defiance is shown. Through epistolary segments, the maturation process of Celie is revealed in letters to God until Celie can’t accept Him as a protective figure anymore. This occurs at about the time