Discuss the title of the novel The Color Purple

The “color purple” is mentioned to show that Celie is queen over herself.

Quilting literally means stitching together pieces of cloth. The concept of the quilt gained significance in American academia with the resurgence of the feminist I movement in the sixties. Nineteenth century writers like Louisa May Alcott and Harriet Beecher Stowe had incorporated the metaphor of the quilt into their tests (in Aunt Jo ‘s Scrapbag and “The Minister’s Wooing” respectively) and this tradition continues today with Alice Walker and other twentieth century writers like Gloria Naylor and Toni Morrison. Elaine Showalter stated in 1986 “the strongly marked I American women’s tradition to piecing, patchwork, and quilting has consequences I for the structures, genres, themes, and meanings of American women’s writing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.” Today the metaphor of the quilt is used to express women’s writings in which personal stories that throw light on social and cultural histories are quilted into the text. The personal and the public aspects that I I are woven into the literary quilt makes it “double-voiced.” The making of a quilt involves a process of piecing together of discontinuities The letter writing or epistolary mode that Walker has used in The Color Purple reflects this. For several women this was the only form of writing available. Most women were constantly denied any quality time by their family and children. Whatever creative work they Letters undertook was disrupted by duties within home.

Letter writing, is like quilting, in that you write a bit and then if you are disrupted from it, you get back to it later.. The reversal of roles necessary for a Womanist text is also shown by Walker through the metaphor of the quilt. Shug, Mr.-and Celie sit and quilt together. For the world to be a happy place, men and women have to work together. Quilting as a metaphor also shows that for Walker, one genre is not adequate to express her varied experiences. She uses slave narrative, spiritual autobiography, personal letters etc. to express herself.

Discuss the title of the novel The Color Purple

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