英文论文范例

Introduction
A fourteen-year-old black girl Celie is repeatedly raped by her stepfather and her two children were taken away by her stepfather. Her sick mother who does not know the truth at all gets extremely angry with her and dies finally. After her mother’s death, Celie is forced by her stepfather to marry a widower, Mr. who has three children. To Mr., the fact that he marries Celie isn't because he loves her but because he needs someone to look after his three children. So, Celie becomes Mr.’s servant and an occasional sexual convenience. For a time, Celie endures Mr.’s abuse and domination silently. Mr. has a mistress, her name is Shug, Shug’s arrival has a great impact upon Celie’s gloomy life. Celie gives Shug a good attendance while Shug is seriously ill, Shug is quite moved by what Celie has done for her and decides to do something for Celie to help her to get out of the oppression and win the independence. Under the influence of Shug, Celie leaves Mr. and goes with Shug to Memphis and starts a business of making pants eventually. Thus, Celie becomes independent physically and spiritually. Generally speaking, Celie’s growth in her self-awareness and her fighting against racism and sexism represents the road to self-liberation of many black women.
The Color Purple is a novel that reflects the protagonist Celie’s growth from the oppressed to the liberated physically and spiritually. Clearly, there are several stages in Celie’s psychological development through the novel. What stimulates Celie to stand up to fight for independence and freedom? This is her fate and it is determined by many factors: Mr.’s oppression to her, Nettie’s sisterhood, Shug’s help, and Sofia’s courage, etc. On the one hand, Celie’s road is from oppression to liberation roots in her identification with herself and with her own personality development. One the other hand, the tough road to liberation is also induced by her time. It will be discussed in detail about the processes of Celie’s psychological
changes.
1. The Background of the Novel
1.1 The Brief Introduction of the Author
The Color Purple is written by American author Alice Walker. She is one of the most important and prominent contemporary black American woman writers. She is a novelist, a critic, and a poet at once. Her novel The Color Purple causes the critics’ attentions due to her new conception and unique techniques. After its publication in 1982, the novel immediately became the best seller in the United States. In 1983, it won both the Plitzer and the American Book Award. In 1984, it was adapted into film by Steven Spielberg. Alice Walker became the first Plitzer winner among the American black woman writers. She rose in the stage of the American literature like a brilliant star and became known to every family in America.
1.2 The Plot of the Color Purple
Celie, the protagonist and narrator, is a poor, uneducated, fourteen-year-old black girl living in rural Georgia. Celie starts writing letters to God because her father, Alphonso, beats and rapes her. Alphonso has already impregnated Celie once. Celie gave birth to a girl, whom her father presumably killed in the woods. Celie has a second child, a boy, whom her father also abducts. Celie’s mother becomes ill and dies. Alphonso brings home a new wife, and continues to abuse Celie.
Celie and her bright, pretty younger sister, Nettie, learn that a man known only as Mr. wants to marry Nettie. Mr. has a mistress named Shug Avery, a sultry lounge singer whose photograph fascinates Celie. Alphonso refuses to let Nettie marry, and instead offers Mr. Johnson the “ugly women”Celie as a bride. Mr. eventually
accepts the offer, forcing Celie into a difficult and joyless married life. Nettie runs away from Alphonso and takes refuge at Celie’s house. Mr. still desires Nettie, and when he advances on her, she flees. Never hearing from Nettie again, Celie assumes her death.
Mr.'s sister Kate feels sorry for Celie, and tells her to fight back against Mr. rather than submit to his abuses. Harpo, Mr.'s son, falls in love with a large, spunky girl named Sofia. Shug Avery comes to town to sing at a local bar, but Celie is not allowed to go to see her. Sofia gets pregnant and marries Harpo. Celie is amazed by Sofia’s defiance in the face of Harpo’s and Mr.’s attempts to treat Sofia as an inferior. Harpo, kinder and gentler than his father, still assumes this means that he is doing something wrong and under the advice of Mr. and a momentarily jealous Celie, attempts to beat Sofia into submission. However, he consistently fails, as Sofia is at least as strong and a more experienced brawler.
Shug falls ill and Mr. takes her into his house. Shug is initially rude to Celie, but the two women become friends as Celie takes charge of nursing Shug. Celie finds herself infatuated with Shug and attracted to her sexually.
Frustrated by Harpo’s consistent attempts to subordinate her, Sofia moves out, taking her children with her. Several months later, Harpo opens a juke joint where Shug sings nightly. Celie grows confused over her feelings toward Shug.
Shug decides to stay when she learns that Mr. beats Celie when Shug is away. Shug and Celie’s relationship grows intimate, and Shug begins to ask Celie questions about sex. Sofia returns for a visit and promptly gets in a fight with Harpo’s new girlfriend, Squeak. In town one day, the mayor’s wife, Miss Millie, asks Sofia to work as her maid. Sofia replies with a sassy "Hell no!" When the mayor slaps Sofia for her "insubordination", Sofia returns the blow, knocking the mayor down, for which she is sent to jail. Squeak’s attempts to get Sofia released are futile. Sofia is sentenced to work for 12 years as the mayor’s maid during which
she is eventually released six months earlier.
Despite her new marriage, Shug instigates a sexual relationship with Celie, and the two frequently share the same bed. One night Shug asks Celie about her sister and Celie tells her she assumes Nettie is dead because she'd promised to write Celie but never did. Shug helps Celie recover letters from Nettie that Mr. Johnson has been hiding from her for decades. Overcome with emotion, Celie reads the letters in order, wondering how to keep herself from killing Mr. Johnson.
The letters indicate that Nettie befriended a missionary couple, Samuel and Corrine, and accompanied them to Africa to do ministry work. Samuel and Corrine have two adopted children, Olivia and Adam. Nettie and Corrine have become close friends, but Corrine, noticing that her adopted children resemble Nettie, wonders if Nettie and Samuel have a secret past. Increasingly suspicious, Corrine tries to limit Nettie’s role within her family.
Nettie becomes disillusioned with her missionary experience, as she finds the Africans self-centered and obstinate. Corrine becomes ill with a fever. Nettie asks Samuel to tell her how he adop ted Olivia and Adam. Based on Samuel’s story, Nettie realizes that the two children are actually Celie’s biological children (whom Alphonso -her father- abducted), alive after all. Nettie also learns that Alphonso is actually only Nettie and Celie’s stepfa ther, not their biological father, who was a storeowner whom the white men lynched because they resented his success. Alphonso told Celie and Nettie he was their real father because he wanted to inherit the house and property that was once their mother’s.
Nettie confesses to Samuel and Corrine that she is in fact their children’s biological aunt. The gravely ill Corrine refuses to believe Nettie. Corrine dies, having accepted Nettie’s story and reconciled there to just before her death. Meanwhile, Celie vis its Alphonso, who confirms Nettie’s story, admitting that he is only the sisters' stepfather. Celie begins to lose some of her faith in God, but Shug
tries to get her to reimagine God in her own way, rather than in the traditional image of the old, bearded white man.
Celie moves to Tennessee and designs and sews tailored pants, turning her hobby into a business. She returns to Georgia to learn that Mr. has resorted back to his old ways and that Alphonso has died. Celie inherited that land and moved back into the house.
Meanwhile, Nettie and Samuel marry and prepare to return to America. Before they leave, Samuel’s son, Adam, marries Tashi, an African girl. Following African tradition, Tashi undergoes the painful rituals of female circumcision and facial scarring. In solidarity, Adam undergoes the same facial scarring ritual.
Celie and Mr. reconcile, and begin to genuinely enjoy each other’s company. Now independent financially, spiritually, and emotionally, Celie is no longer disturbed by Shug’s passing fling s with younger men. Sofia remarries Harpo and now works in Celie’s clothing store. Nettie finally returns to America with Samuel and the children. Emotionally drained but exhilarated by the reunion with her sister, Celie notes that though she and Nettie are now old, she has never in her life felt younger.
1.3 Historical and Cultural Background
Walker's works are all inseparable from her deep understanding of the history and culture of the South which provides her with a way of seeing the contemporary world and a field of expressing the true meaning of life for the black people, especially black women. Walker sensed the misery of black people, especially women, many of whom have lived the most miserable life at the bottom of American society for long. Black people suffered from inhumane slavery, plunder and oppression. And today, they still live in a dreadful plight under racial discrimination and segregation, which has been difficult to ravel out since the black stepped on the land. The history of black people itself has been imbued with
humiliation. The division of lines of color was, and is still rigidly in place, though the civil rights movement constantly claims credit for desegregation in schools, housing and public transportation.
In the state Georgia where Walker grew up, it was illegal for a black person to enter a public restaurant, library or swimming pool. Her marriage to a white man was also illegal in the state of Mississippi. It is thus clear that, black females, together with black males have undergone great hardships from racial prejudice, yet they have also been fretted by sexual discrimination inside. Black men frequently vent depression, frustration and indignation on their long-suffering wives, who can find nowhere to take it out. Suffering from racial and sexual oppression, black women have to endure more than black men and white women. They even live beyond the margin where black men and white women are respectively kept, in the white patriarchal society. Miserable life experiences stimulated black women to write for themselves. However, it had been excluded out of the “mainstream” of American literature for a long time.
2. Literature View
2.1 The Relationship Between Mr. and Celie
2.1.1 The Brief Introduction of Celie
Celie is the main character, who has been oppressed by men in her whole life. As an adolescent she is raped by her stepfather and soon thereafter gives birth. Her children are taken away. Her stepfather gives her away to be married to Albert. She becomes friends with Shug, which leads to a sexual relationship between the two. Celie learns many things about herself and her body due to Shug. She models herself after Shug and becomes more independent the more she listens to Shug's views and opinions. Shug influences not only the way that Celie allows Albert to treat her, but also her religious views. In showing Celie that it is all right to commit
sin but still believe in and live for God, she broadens Celie's view on religion. It is also Shug who frees Celie from Albert's bondage, first by loving her, then by helping her to start a custom sewing business. From Shug, Celie learns that Albert has been hiding letters written to her from Africa by her sister Nettie, a missionary. These letters, full of educated, firsthand observation of African life, form a moving counterpoint to Celie's life. They reveal that in Africa, just as in America, women are persistently oppressed by men.
2.1.2 Who is Mr.
Mr. has his own name-- Albert, but in order to show her respect and fear, Celie calls him “Mr.”. Albert is the man to whom Celie is married. Albert was married previously, but his wife was murdered by a lover. Originally, he seeks a relationship with Nettie, but settles for Celie. Albert mistreats Celie just as her father had, and she allows it, not understanding that she doesn't have to. Albert uses Celie to help raise his children, who gives her a hard time for not being their real mother. When Albert's mistress Shug Avery comes to town, he falls all over her as he normally does. Shug begins to take an interest in Celie, and leads Albert to start treating her better. In the end, Albert realizes that he has mistreated Celie and seeks a friendship with her.
2.1.3 Their First Meet
Their first meet happens in her father`s wedding in a church. There is a man looking at her little sister---Nettie, and that man is Mr. After meeting in church, Mr. comes to see Nettie on every Sunday evening.
2.1.4 After Their Marriage
One day, Mr. comes with a horse, and seriously says to her father “I want to marry you, Nettie”. But Alphonso refuses to let Nettie marry, and instead offers Mr. the “ugly women" Celie as a bride. After seeing Celie, Mr. eventually accepts the offer, forcing Celie into a difficult and joyless married life. Thus, when Celie is 22,
she is discarded by her stepfather like discarding an old thing and marries Mr. who has three children. Mr. does not love her at all, and he marries her just for the sake of the children, the household chores and his farm. He beats Celie arbitrarily. At this time Celie has become accustomed to suffering already. It represents Celie's emotion from pain and suffering to numbness. Celie finds that she has just moved to another place, and also has no status. Her husband treats her as a worker. All the work in the house and farm need her to do. And her husband doesn`t love her. She also feels alone.
2.2 Nettie and Celie
2.2.1 Who is Nettie
The sisterhood plays an important role in Celie`s growth. Nettie is Celie's younger sister, whom Celie saves from living the tragic life that she had to endure. Due to the fact that Nettie is prettier than Celie, who has been dubbed ugly, "Mr." is originally interested in Nettie as a wife, but settles for Celie. When Nettie finds life at home unbearable, she runs away to stay with Celie. When "Mr." forces Nettie to leave, she promises to write to Celie and that only God can keep them apart. Nettie is eventually taken in by Samuel and Corrine, a missionary couple. She travels to Africa with them as a missionary. In Africa, she writes Celie a series of letters which depict the life that she is living. Nettie finds that while there isn't a racial disparity there, a gender disparity exists. The women of the tribe aren't treated as equals, and aren't permitted to attend school. When Corrine, the mother, dies, Nettie fills her role and marries her husband. In the end, Nettie travels back to America, and brings Celie's children with her. By telling Celie the things she has seen and done, she helps Celie become more enthusiastic about how the world can be.
2.2.2 The Sisterhood’s Effect on Celie
Although the story is full of sorrow, grief and gloom, it seems to me that it is a story filled with warmth and love. At the beginning of the film, the heroine Celie and her sister Nettie were singing a children`s song and playing pat-a-cake in the field. They loved each other always and forever. When Celie suffered the pain of childbirth, Nettie was worried and panic. What she could do was to kiss Celie and gave her courage. When Celie was in pain, Nettie was always around her. They were young girls. Maybe accompanying is the best love for them two. Nettie can`t bear her father, and turned to Celie for help. Because of their low position and gender, Celie and Nettie were forced and doomed to separate. When Mr. carried weak Nettie to the outdoor and drived her away, I am moved and full of tears. Celie and Nettie were crying and screaming at the top of their voice. They didn`t want to separate any more and hugged tightly with each other like conjoined infants seemed they can`t be separated by anyone. The touching and sincere sister-love was exposed. At this moment a cast occurred to me that Nettie was teaching Celie new words in the kitchen. Nettie tagged a note to each obstacle in order to teach Celie. They interacted happily. Maybe the good times of studying became their best memory and the most carefree and sweet time of their whole life. When Nettie ran out of the yard and shouted out, “Why? Why?”. Mr. raised his fist to her. Actually Nettie was scared. She ran farther and shouted out “Nothing but death can make us apart.”Mr. was conquered by this powerful sentence to some extent, as he put down his fist. Nettie song the children`s song again”You and me are never apart......”.This song kept their contacted. And it is the symbol of their happy times. After that, Nettie seems to disappear, and Celie didn`t receive any letters.
2.3 Shug and Celie
2.3.1 Who is Shug
Shug is a very extroverted and transcendental character. She is Albert's mistress, the one who always got away. When she comes back to visit Albert, she shakes up not only his feelings, but also those of Celie. Celie harbors an admiration for Shug and the life that she has lived. Shug enters and exits Celie's life, normally making it for the better. She influences Albert to the point that he ends up treating Celie better than he ever had. Eventually, Shug herself develops a physical relationship with Celie. By showing Celie the wonders of life and her body, she helps Celie develop herself emotionally and spiritually. Shug also helps Celie discover the long lost letters that her sister Nettie had written to her. In allowing Celie to view these letters, Shug is supplying her with even more hope and inspiration, letting Celie see that in the end, everything works out for the best.
2.3.2 Shug’s Love to Celie
Later, under the influence of Mr.’s mistress Shug, Celie's character has undergone great changes. At the beginning of the story, Shug seems to be a showy and florid blues singer, a selfish and arrogant lady. But she has the quality that Celie doesn`t have. She is confident and beautiful sexy, and most of all, she is independent. Shug and Celie are both black women, but their difference is that Shug refuses to obey the fate, to bow to the bad luck, and refuses to be slaves of men. Celie`s character begins to change a lot since Shug came to her home. Shug is ill seriously when Mr. brings her back home. Celie and Mr. try their best to help her to recover. This is the very first time that Celie can collaborate with Mr..Shug`s existence changes Celie`s life. She also appreciates the joy to her for her help, she begins to care about her and love her, this is the beginning of Celie’s personality changes.
Shug helps Celie to explore her own body, especially her own generative organ.
Shug finds it surprising that Celie doesn`t know her own body, and she defines that Celie is a virgin. In addition, she helps Celie to attract other`s attentions. Shug writes a song in the name of Celie. It is Miss Celie. This song plays an important role in the process of Celie’s self-understanding. In a letter she wrote: "This is the first time someone writes things with my name." Later, with Shug`s help, Celie finds the letters that Nettie wrote to her. These letters are hidden by her husband for nearly 30 years. The discovery of these letters has a great influence on the development of character and her religious faith. She hates the mean man and even wants to kill him. Shug stop Mr. beating Celie, at the same time, she helped her get rid of religion faith crisis, and also help her to rebuild a new god in mind. Shug tells Celie: "god is in your heart and people around you in the heart of god. You come down to the company of this world, but only those who search for god's talents in vest to find god. And sometimes even if you don't find him he would also automatically visions, or don't know what you are looking for." Celie began to understand the important thing in life is more than love, she learned to appreciate the beauty in the life. This is good for her to get rid of male pressure in the mental preparation. Shug brings strong power to Celie. And then Celie controls her anger, and starts to go on the road of the financial independence. Celie makes a decision to leave Mr., and together to Memphis for development with Shug. She wants to depend on her own strength to make a living. She learns to make trousers, and soon makes a success. She finds herself a very capable woman. She wins the economic independence, and get more social knowledge. Her character has changed tremendously. She won the dignity of herself and also won the respect of her husband.
2.4 Sofia and Celie
2.4.1 Who is Sofia
Sofia is the wife of Harpo, the Daughter of Mr. Johnson. She loves Harpo well, but she insists "she killed dead before he hits her." She is a strong, independent, and feisty character who takes pride in what she does, and cannot be controlled by men, no matter who they are. She is humbled -- and perhaps even broken -- when she is beaten by the white people for hitting the mayor, and then forced to work for his wife.
2.4.2 Sofia’s Affection
After Celie gets married to Mr., the only person she can tell private things directly is Sofia. Sofia, Harpo’s wife, is the only woman in the novel who never stops fighting against men. She grows up in a family of men, so she learns that only by fighting can she survive. Both Harpo and Celie are confounded by Sofia’s strong will. Because Sofia is so strong-willed and Harpo is in shock, they often fight. Sophia’s coming shows the influence of woman's rights on Celie. Celie’s stepson Harpo falls in love with Sophia. But both of their fathers oppose their marriage. Sophia is one of the representative womanists in the novel. She has strong resistant spirit since her childhood. She will not allow others to order her as they do to Celie. She runs away with Harpo and gets married. Harpo wants his wife to be like his servant, but Sophia has her own personality and dignities and never lowers the head towards men, she says, “all my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had to fight my cousins and my uncles.”Now she has to fight against her husband. Celie envies Sophia’s spirit of fighting. She is aware of her benumbed female consciousness. Sophia educates Celie with action. She lets her know that women also have their own consciousness and can protect themselves. Sophia refuses to be the maidservant of the mayor and strikes back, so she is sentenced to prison for twelve years. She suffers a lot in the jail and her life is close to death.
3. The Impacts of Celie’s Psychological Process
3.1 Womanism and The Civil Rights Movement
Alice Walker was born in a time when black people’s movement fighting for racial equality was on the climax, and she had an active participation in the movement. She sympathized with the black people in America, and called for equality between the black and the white and the harmony between the black men and black women. Alice Walker created the term “womanism”, which did not only point out a right path for the black women who were in plight but also provide a perfect living model for all the human beings. Actually, Walker’s womanism is developed upon the feminism; she related the sexual problems with the racial problems and contributed the misfortune of the black women to the racism and sexism which distinguished her perspective from the white woman’s feminism.
The womanism began in 1970s, it was greatly influenced by the Civil Rights Movement and Women’s Liberation Movement in America and it was also th e development of the two movements. Civil Rights Movement focused on the equality between the white and the black men but not the equality between the black men and the black women. The two movements all ignored the sexual discrimination among the black people themselves, restricting the development of black women and looking down upon their force in the movement. In a word, the Civil Rights Movements didn’t represent completely the black women’s rights. At the same time, the black women were not treated a s members in the Women’s Liberation Movement in 1960s~1970s. The deeply-rooted racial discrimination in America caused the white women never see the black women as equal sisters in society, and the feminist organization couldn’t represent and struggle for the interests of the black women as well. Therefore, the feminism doesn’t adapt to the black women for it ignores the racial issues in America. The aim of feminism is to
eliminate the sexism while the target of womanism is to overthrow both the sexism and the racism, which is much more complicated.
Under the influence of the Women’s Liberation Movement and the womanism, and through the works of some Afro-American female writers’, the black women’s misery caused by sexism was first taken seriously by the whole society, the growing feminist consciousness of the black women was hard to resist. As members of a race which had been oppressed and despised for a long time in history, black women did not only confront the sexual problem but also the racism, political and economical exploitation, which they should face with the black men together. All the things manifested that both the feminism and The Civil Rights Movement could not become the guiding ideology of the black women’s liberation movement, the black women’s miserable lives and their traditional culture determined that their situation was different from the black men as well as the white women.
3.2 The Characteristics of Womanism
In Alice Walker’s book In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, she mentioned that she had double miseries in her life: being a black person and being a woman. And it was the double miseries made Alice Walker created in the term womanism which reflected her attempt to combine the feminism and the Civil Rights Movement, to establish an ide ology which was appropriate for the black women’s liberation. Alice Walker also emphasized the four characteristics of the womanism, namely: Anti-sexism, Anti-racism, Afracentrism and Humanism. The term “womanism” derives from the black folk expression of mothers to female children, “You act womanish.”Here womanish means outrageous, adventurous, courageous and uninhibited behaviors. This also means that the black women should grow to a rational, responsible and serious person in the future.
Firstly, a woma nist should be “a woman who loves other woman, sexually and/or nonsexually. Sometimes loves individual men sexually and/or nonsexually” and the womanist should be “committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female. Not a separatist, exc ept periodically, for health”. A womanist can be called a Universalist from the traditional perspective. In The Color Purple, Alice Walker expresses her womanist ideas through Shug to teach Celie to become a womanist gradually. Shug is an ideal womanist in Walker’s eyes. She is independent, passionate and caring. Shug helps Celie to escape from the miserable life and come to independence. Before meeting Shug, Celie thinks nobody cares her and nobody loves her. But one day, she sees a picture of Shug, she is amazed at Shug’s beauty at the first sight.
While taking care of sick Shug, Celie gazes at Shug’s naked body and thinks that washing her body is something holy. Then Shug asks Celie to have a look at her own body in a mirror. It is the first time that Celie discovers her own beauty. Thus, Shug uses her sexual attraction to awake Celie both physically and spiritually. Celie begins to fall in love with Shug as well as with herself. Actually, the love between Celie and Shug cannot be called lesbianism, because Celie thinks it is just like her mother’s love. In a word, the relationship between Celie and Shug is a reflection of Alice Walker’s womanist idea that a woman who loves other woma n, sexually and/or nonsexually.
Secondly, a womanist “appreciates and prefers women’s culture, women’s emotional flexibility, and women’s strength. She loves music, loves dance, loves the moon, loves the spirit, loves love and food and roundness, loves struggle, loves the folk, loves herself, regardless.”
In The Color Purple, Shug is a singer who loves music, dance. She is always passionate, happy and lives in her own way no matter what the other people think of her. At the same time, she also loves the nature. Shug tells Celie that if she。