Purple Redeemed in The Color Purple

• Main Authors: Wu-nan Zhong, 鍾武男
• Other Authors: Chun-chih Lin
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2004
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/70935733766420584999

碩士 === 中國文化大學 === 英國語文學研究所 === 92 === The diversity of Black culture is a motif in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, which portrays Blacks’ evolvement from reproduction of White culture to adaptation of it to African cultural heritage. For the characters in this novel, the richness of culture certainly is more than merely material power. It is authenticity and uniqueness that constructs the cultural landscape out of Blacks’ multiple-layered experience. This cultural landscape creates a space free from Whites’ control, thereby allows Blacks independent cultural forms. By the communal performances and appreciation of their own culture and art forms, which Blacks adopt as cultural resistance to cultural invasion from Whites, Blacks retain their self-respect. Based on the cultural context, this thesis examines the social background and cultural context in early 20th Century, which influences the Black’s life style and its cultural connotation. According to Alice Walker, black experience can be scrutinized through historical and cultural studies, because it has a tie with African heritage, and cultural practices. Furthermore, Black culture is formed through the experience of slavery and violence, in which Blacks negotiate with the power structure to locate their culture. For Walker, Black culture and experience are never as simple and limited as most Whites suppose. Although Blacks finds no political power to support their cultural resistance, they still devise less tangible ways to proclaim the importance of their own culture. Blues, quilting and naming are the most common ones, for all of them demand understanding of Blackness. The cultural resistance in The Color Purple often includes a series of complicated process: appropriation, reproduction and acculturation, which are performed by the characters that tough it out in a hard time.