Comparing the Color Purple with Real Life of Black Woman in the Same Era as the Movie
The long-gone notion and a stereotypic belief about the inferiority of women are portrayed in the film “The Color Purple.” The film portrays women as strongly objected by men in society. In the film, the worth of women is being ruled by talent, beauty, and what they can do. Women were denied chances to get educated so that they could remain submissive to men. The society in the film only granted men the rights to perform their actions without repercussions. In the Color purple movie, the black women suffer not only social ostracism due to skin color but also suffer on the hands of their fellow black men. The sufferings the black women undergo as portrayed in the color purple is replicated in real life situations by various authors to depict the theme of feminine grotesque on the black women.
The most common way of giving up power is by thinking you don’t have the power itself. In the Color Purple, Alice Walker’s view is reflective of the protagonists in her movie. Women in the society in the movie generally viewed themselves as inferior to men regardless of race and skin color. This inferiority complex gave men in the movie the blueprint to oppress their women and to see them as people who are just meant to be submissive to them. Similarly, Hunter (1997) also looks at the life of African American women during the civil war. The period of the civil war was well-known for the slave trade that dominated the Southern areas of America. Accessing this article by Hunter, the oppression of women in society led to the revolutions that paved the way for feminism. One of the revolutions highlighted by Hunter was the Atlanta washerwomen’s strike of 1881.
Additionally, Hine (1997) also portrays the life of African-American women as socially oppressed based on the racial injustices the black woman encountered. Hine argues that the reconstruction of American history does not challenge the assumptions about people, power, race, and politics. According to Hine, black women then would still find the re-construction not the appropriate way of addressing their woes.
The black women in the Color purple suffered infidelity, sexual, physical, and verbal abuses. Astonishingly, such abuses originated from black men. “The Burning House: Jim Crow and the Making of Modern America” by Walker takes the reader through the compositions of the political class in America and further highlights the true meaning of integration in American politics. Walker portrays American society as a burning house with which the African Americans do not want to associate with (Walker, 2018). “There is a high level of racial profiling regarding legal, economic and political policies” (Walker, 2018). However, Walker looks at the larger society of the African Americans, unlike the Color purple, which portrays the black woman as the most disadvantaged by the social oppression. Hine and Hunter borrow the assertions by Walker regarding the oppression of African Americans.
Slavery in the Color purple is an outrageous and reprehensible part of American history. Slavery in this film is portrayed as a practice that allowed black women to be reduced to less than a thing and a system in which the African American women did not have an opportunity for a normal life. They were oppressed as slaves and severely abused by both black and white men. They were victims of abject poverty and recurrent sufferings. Similarly, the work by Hunter also studied the nature of black women on these paradigms. “To’ joy my freedom: Southern black women’s lives and labors after the Civil War” is a novel that analyses the lives of the black women during the civil war through to the black women’s revolutions and struggles.
According to Hunter, “the strategies by women to struggle to achieve self-sufficiency and to counter deleterious effects of subjugation took many forms” (Hunter, 1997). Hunter takes into account the life of Julie Tillory, who was seeking to reunite with her husband with whom they were separated during the civil wars (Hunter, 1997). By seeking help from the Freedmen’s office, Hunter portrays Tillory as a woman who lacks her freedom. When Tillory encounters a missionary woman in the South, Tillory confessed to her that she would move away from the master’s farm in search of her freedom. The women in the Color purple also lacked freedom, as Walekr suggests. Both Hunter and Anders Walker give similar accounts of the black woman undergoing a lot of sufferings in search of freedom.
The Color purple gives an account of the quest for the black women to gain independence. In the movie, African American women suffered a lot of oppression and physical abuses that informed their quest for freedom. Celi says in the movie, “Pa beat me today because he said I winked at a boy in the church.” In a rational society, acts such as winking at someone never attract any form of punishment from anybody. In the movie, the oppressions Celi was subjected to, gave the wakeup call for women’s fight for freedom.
Similarly, Hine also gives an account of the struggles of African American to independence. She admits that the history of black women in slavery was among the most glaring voids in black history. Her works contributed to the “Black Female Slave Resistance: The Economics of Sex” (Hine, 1997). This was another way Hine portrayed that black women were sexually abused in America just as depicted in the Color Purple (Walker, 2018). Hine proposed that black women slaves resisted a peculiar institution in ways consistent with their bodies. Hunter also gives the revolutionary movements for the black women in American history during the civil war.
In conclusion, slavery for black women portrayed in the film of the Color Purple is depicted in real life situations by various authors narrating similar occurrences. Hunter, Hine, and Walker are the authors whose literary works have been used in this essay to ascertain the assertions by Andres Walker in the film. The theme of feminine grotesque anchored on black women. The devaluation of the female gender by the white and black males paved the way for most movements, which brought about freedom for the black women after the civil war. The film initially depicted women as inferior people who always feared to express their authorities. The notion changed towards the end of the civil wars, thus becoming the revolutionary blueprints for freedom for the black woman in America.
References
Hine, D. C. (1997). Hine sight: Black women and the re-construction of American history. Indiana University Press.
Hunter, T. W. (1997). To’joy my freedom: Southern black women’s lives and labors after the Civil War. Harvard University Press.
Walker, A. (2018). The Burning House: Jim Crow and the Making of Modern America. Yale University Press.