摘 要

女性主义是研究人类社会发展的一个重要方面。在如今这个提倡男女平等的新世纪，女性拥有了更多的自由。她们有自己的理想，并为之不懈奋斗；她们可以养活自己，实现了经济独立；她们注重精神层面的享受，使生活变得丰富多彩。然而，黑人女性主义作家爱丽丝·沃克笔下的女性却过着一种截然不同的生活。她们被当作男性的附属品，饱受压迫，像牲口一样被卖来卖去。爱丽丝在自己的作品中表达了她对黑人女性的同情，同时号召女性奋起反抗，争做自己命运的主宰。《紫颜色》是她的杰作之一，这部作品以黑人女性为写作主体，生动形象地讲述了19世纪中期黑人女性所遭受的苦难，展现了黑人女性在性别歧视和种族歧视的双重压迫下实现自我觉醒的历程。本文结合女性主义运动与爱丽丝·沃克的创作背景，论述了《紫颜色》中黑人女性从屈服于命运到觉醒继而重生的经过，同时也揭露了白人对黑人的压迫。文中所体现的团结互助、反对歧视、争取男女平等的思想，在改变当今社会尚存的歧视女性以及提升女性地位、消除种族歧视等方面有着积极的影响。

关键词：爱丽丝·沃克；《紫颜色》；女性主义；意识觉醒

Abstract

Feminism is a vital part of studying the development of human society. During the new 21st century, people make active efforts to promote gender equality and women have more freedom to make their own decisions. They have dreams, and struggle untiringly to achieve those dreams. Women make a living by having jobs, and they win economic independence. They live wonderful lives, and place great emphasis on spiritual enjoyment. However, the lifestyle of black females in Alice Walker’s works is totally different. In the description of Alice Walker, females are suffering the double oppression coming from the white people and the black males. Women can’t speak for themselves, and they could even be sold just like animals. Alice Walker expresses her great sympathy for black females and calls on women to rebel and be the masters of their lives. The Color Purple is one of the representative works of Alice Walker, which greatly exposes the sufferings the black females, in the mid-19th century, bear and the awakening of their feminist consciousness. Combined feminist movement with the background of Alice Walker, this paper discusses the process of black women from resigning to fate to awakening and then fighting. At the same time, it also reveals the dark side of racial discrimination. The ideas of unity and mutual help, anti-discrimination and promoting gender equality have a positive impact on eliminating the discrimination against females and improving female position.

Key Words: Alice Walker; The Color Purple; feminism; the awakening of feminist consciousness

Contents

摘要 I

Abstract II

1 Introduction 1

2 Literature Review 3

2.1 Feminist consciousness 3

2.1.1 Feminism 3

2.1.2 Development of feminist consciousness 4

2.2 Previous Study on Alice Walker and her works 5

3 The Awakening of Feminist Consciousness in The Color Purple 7

3.1 The Awakening of Sofia 7

3.1.1 Self-determination in Marriage 7

3.1.2 Conflict with Racial Discrimination 8

3.2 The Awakening of Celie 9

3.2.1 Self-independence in Marriage 9

3.2.2 Self-independence in Economy 10

3.3 The Awakening of All the Other Women 11

3.3.1 Unity and Mutual Help 11

3.3.2 Educational Freedom of Black Women 12

4 Rebirth of Black Women 14

5 Conclusion 16

References 17

Acknowledgements 18

Study on the Awakening of Feminist Consciousness in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple

1 Introduction

With the development of the society, people pay more and more attention to human rights. Everyone is created equally. No matter what color and gender people are, they should all be treated equally. Racial discrimination and gender discrimination are the most basic denials of equal chances, and many people become the victims of those unjust phenomena. People all over the world are trying to deal with those hot potatoes.

Alice Walker is an excellent black woman writer, and she tries to use her works to help women. In the United States, people regard Alice Walker as the spokesperson of black women. Alice Walker always sides with black women. She thinks about the road for black women to be their own masters. If something doing harm to black women’s rights happens, she would point out that and protect those women. The major purpose of her writing is to struggle for females’ emancipation. The reason why Alice Walker cares so much about the rights, belonging to black women, is that she has experience about gender discrimination. She knows how the society treats women unjustly.

Alice Walker came from a tenant family. Her father was the pillar in the family. Although the father loved Alice very much, he made a difference between his daughter and sons. Alice was asked to be silent and help her mother do housework, while her brothers were encouraged to pursue their dreams and do whatever they like. Besides, the father implanted male chauvinism in his sons. In this family, male was the king. Alice was so dissatisfied with the father’s unfair educational mode that her relationship with the father was just so-so. The brothers always bullied her, especially at her age of eight. When playing a game named “Indian”, Alice’s eye got hurt by her brothers’ toy gun. Without timely treatment, an obvious scar was left. Since then, Alice became self-contempt and solitary, and she enclosed herself in a small world. In Alice Walker’s works, there were some traditional and conservative black male images with a deep-seated sexism. Those characteristics had something to do with Alice’s impression of her father and brothers. On the other hand, Alice Walker had a deep feeling of her mother. Her mother was a good wife and devoted woman. She not only made a living as a maid, but also looked after the whole family. The mother was very industrious and optimistic. She tried her best to care for Alice, and encouraged the little girl to have a positive attitude to life. The mother had great influence on Alice, and Alice created many black female images who were confident, positive and versatile, just like her great mother.

Alice Walker was a prolific writer. She wrote lots of novels and short stories, such as The Third Life of Grange Copeland and By The Light of My Father's Smile. Her works were mainly about discrimination and human rights, especially about sexism and racism. In 1983, Alice received three prizes representing the top honor in American literature because of The Color Purple. These prizes were the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Awards and the Pulitzer Prize. Besides, You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down and In Search of Our Mothers’ Garden: Womanist Prose were Alice’s another two masterpieces giving praise to black women. Alice used her pen to encourage females to seek their identities and achieve independence.

Among her works, The Color Purple is the perfect one to show the subject of feminist consciousness’ awakening. Through studying The Color Purple, the paper illustrates how black women, in that period, get rid of the double oppression--racial discrimination and sexual discrimination--and achieve their self-worth, and how they complete themselves and awaken their feminist consciousness. This paper has three parts, including introduction, main body and conclusion. The introduction part includes the first two chapters, which briefly tells feminist consciousness, the author Alice Walker and her works. Then is the main body part, the awakening of feminist consciousness and rebirth of black women, which conveys self-independence and mutual help of black women. The final part comes to the conclusion of this paper.

2 Literature Review

This part is intended to give a presentation of feminist consciousness and previous study on Alice Walker and her works. It begins with the definition and significance of feminist consciousness. Besides, it also tells how feminist consciousness develops. Then, previous research about Alice Walker and her works is shown.

2.1 Feminist consciousness

At first, people didn’t give women the rights they deserved. Women’s labor was seen valueless, and they had a hard life for a long time. With the development of society and the educational system, people began to value and respect women.

2.1.1 Feminism

Feminism is a doctrine that advocates the equal rights for women. It is the product of the feminist movement. Gender discrimination, oppression and paternity are the major themes of feminism. Feminists want to end sexism, sexual exploitation, and bring sexual oppression to a close. They put emphasis on analyzing gender inequality and pushing the development of females’ rights. As far as feminists are concerned, the current society is based on the male-dominate patriarchal system. Many women become the victims of this unfair system, especially black women. Feminism helps people to learn this injustice, and lets people reconsider sexual politics, right relationship and gender awareness. The movements of feminism challenge many hot issues, including the right of bearing children, family violence, and the right of receiving education.

Feminist movement is a social movement, which goes beyond classes and races. Feminist movement under each culture has its uniqueness. With different cultural background, each region has different issues aiming at females. Take the genital mutilation for example. Female genital mutilation, which could date back to the time of Pharahon in ancient Egypt, is a kind of ceremony which takes place at girls’ age of four to eight. This ceremony cuts some part of sexual organ in order to remove females’ sexual pleasure. The purpose of female genital mutilation is to make sure women’s virginity before marriage. Even now, it is still popular in many African countries, such as Sudan. No men will marry girls who don’t have this operation. Therefore, females have to receive this ceremony, even knowing that genital mutilation does great harm to their health. Besides, women are still regarded as bearing tools. Although women’s social status has been improved and they get some rights, women are in a class being oppressed and discriminated. All in all, to achieve gender equality, women still have a long way to go.

2.1.2 Development of feminist consciousness

Female has been the Cinderella of the whole society for far too long. Females are the underdogs in many fields, such as politics and economy. Even in their families, such a private sphere, female has to bow down to male. Traditional patriarchy thinks that the sex order, men is superior to women, is uncontroversial and will never be changed. But for feminists, this order is shaped by people rather than nature. In different cultures and times, males also get oppressed. But this oppression is not because they are males but because they are members of some class or group. However, females are being oppressed just because of their female sex. This horrible society system that has worked for so long makes women hard to live, so they begin to fight.