Click
on the links below to read information on the following critics:
In order to attain a high grade in the AS Level English Literature
examination candidates must be sensitive to the scope of their and
others’ interpretations. This involves handling a range of different
opinions and exploring other ways of looking at a text aside from your
own. Below is an assortment of opinions from critics who have had opinions on the novel.
Robert Towers [writing
in 1982]
Although
Towers [pictured] praises Walker’s use of Black American Vernacular in the novel
and the way in which Walker captures "the life of the poor, rural
Southern blacks" he does point out certain inaccuracies and
improbabilities. Firstly, he realises that it is unlikely that a person of
Celie’s education would have ever applied the word "amazons"
to a feisty group of sisters. Secondly, he doubts that pants making would
have induced any fulfilment into a woman growing up in the 1930s.
Towers more harshly criticises the feminist train-of-thought running throughout the novel and insists that "Alice Walker still has a lot to learn about plotting and structuring what is clearly intended to be a realistic novel." A white American male Towers also criticises the "authenticity" of Nettie’s travels in Africa, her lack of a "distinctive voice" away from the sort of news-gathering she does in the novel and the irrevocable co-incidences that finally bring Celie’s children back to their mother.
However, despite these minor faults, Celie’s letters convey "a sub-literate dialect into a medium of remarkable expressiveness, colour and poignancy," Towers not being able to envisage Celie without her American dialect.
Gloria Steinem [1982]
Steinem also denounces the notion that just because her novels often portray the life of a poor, black female growing up in America, it does not mean that the novel is inaccessible to other groups. Quoting Susan Kirshner, she writes that in a study of all the reviews of Alice Walker’s 1976 novel Meridian the only assessment of the book’s finer detail was made by Greil Marcus, a white reviewer writing in the New Yorker.
As well as these appraisals, Steinem touts The Color Purple as Walker’s best work. Comparing it with Doctorow’s Ragtime she makes the comparison: "what he did with an episodic style and pace of chapters, Celie can do with the placement of a line, a phrase, a verb." She writes to God and to Nettie in order to "confirm her existence." Steinem stresses that Walker takes "the leap completely" from written Standard English to Black American Vernacular, refusing to label it "dialect," a word she believes has evoked negative associations in the past. Steinem espouses Walker’s literary style; with "no quotation marks" Celie just writes her heart out. "Pretty soon" she comments, you can’t imagine why anyone would bother to write any other way." For her, the color purple symbolises the "miracle of human possibilities."
Thadious Davis [1984]
Writing two years after the novel’s release, Davis puts the
onus on the issue of self-identity in all of Walker’s books. That
said, Davis has many interesting things to say - many of the topics
explored in other books being related to Walker’s epic The Color
Purple.
For Davis, Walker is a literary freedom fighter, attempting to "repair the damage done" by her African brothers and sisters by exposing their faults. Davis acknowledges that in doing this Walker may be "misrepresenting the very people whom she seeks to change" but quotes both Mr. _______ and Grange Copeland from Walker’s first novel as men who have to have weaknesses exposed in order that they may be healed. Mr. _______ from The Color Purple especially is noted as one who has "potential" to improve his way of life. "Despite his contemplative demeanor at the end" Davis writes, "his apparent psychological return to roots . . . is primarily a portent of a healing process."
In concentrating on the area of ‘self-identity’ in the novel Davis holds up Shug Avery as an example of one who is able to show her true self. Later Davis reminds us that in order for Celie to achieve this, she must first come to terms with the "truth of her community, with her historical place among others who have suffered." Suffice to say Celie achieves this with the help of Nettie who writes fervently of her activities in Africa.
Concentrating on that inner-self of Celie, Davis explains: "While social interactions and institutions typically define human reality, these do not ultimately define Celie’s." What Davis means by this is that despite being a family member: wife to Mr. _______, sister to Nettie and stepmother to Harpo, she is undoubtedly ‘on her own.’ What Celie eventually finds out is that "she is neither Shug Avery, the hard living blues singer" nor is she "Nettie, her sister who can experience the wider world." These are two people that she both tried to emulate, in education she wanted Nettie’s ability, in her sexual experiences, she wanted the same pleasures as Shug. Davis affirms that the ethos of all Alice Walker novels is that an individual can struggle out from the "external constrictions" to find one’s self. Who is it that Celie finds by the end of the novel? Herself.
Trudier Harris [1984]
Trudier
Harris [pictured] is arguably, Alice Walker’s severest critic. She protests among
other things "that the portrayal of Celie was unrealistic for the
time in which the novel was set," that Nettie’s letters from
African to America were "really extraneous to the central concerns of
the novel," and Celie and Shug’s sexual interaction represented
"the height of silly romanticism."
Harris' greatest criticism however is not leveled at the book itself but how it "silences by its dominance." In particular, she finds fault with the way in which the novel silences its critics, especially black women who, in Harris’ words believe that "to criticise a novel that had been so universally complimented was somehow a desertion of the race and the black woman writer." What Harris is trying to make clear here is that she believes there are many problems with this novel, though critics are scared to admit them, thinking "to complain about the novel is to commit treason against black women writers."
Having written many critical appraisals on a novel she has read umpteen times Harris asserts that many other capable black critics would never do the same. "One Afro-American woman critic" she writes "told me that she would never write anything on the novel or make a public statement about it." "That" Harris continues "was a statement in itself." In collecting oral opinions and interpretations from other black women writers Harris’ commentaries do not lack the validity that other critics’ opinions have. Harris, in particular launches a personal attack on Gloria Steinem, who is accused of praising Walker just because she is "alive, black and able to write well."
While having many problems with the novel’s form and thematic areas, Harris praises Celie’s voice narrative in The Color Purple finding it "powerful, engaging, subtly humorous and incisively analytic." However, that aside Harris finds fault with many of the novel’s aspects: Celie’s docile manner in the company of Mr. _______ is uncharacteristic even of the slaves, though Walker purports Celie shares a connection with them. Walker's portrayal of black men, the dysfunctional black American family and the immorality of many of the characters mean that to people ignorant of the novel’s author, the whole novel can be viewed as a decent attempt by a Southern white male to "reinforce the traditional sexual and violent stereotypes."
Harris completes her eight-page essay with a critique of the "fairy story" idea that threads through the novel. Harris points out that as Celie has a notion of what constitutes right and wrong – one may read letter seventy-three as confirmation of that – why does she never make an attempt to leave Mr. _______? As Harris rightly points out, she is absolved from having to ‘take care of her children’ – the usual reason why women stay and endure punishment – because she was deemed sterile as early as letter seven. Harris believes that the novel is set out as a fairy tale, with Celie as the passive and docile Snow White or Cinderella figure. Harris has no problem with the format, but asserts that as a fairy tale the story must have moral. For Trudier Harris, the novel expounds "the myth of the American Dream becoming a reality for black Americans, even who are ‘dirt poor’"
The moral of this story is then, that black people have a "minimally existent hope for a piece of that great American pie." So as qualifying as a fable or fairy story, the novel loses its initial and intended message that black people can rise up from those who try to smash them, as illustrated by Shug Avery and Mary Agnes.
Richard Wesley [1986]
As a black African American male, Richard Wesley is a
deeply interesting critic to read, not only because of his work, but
because one might expect Wesley to be one who ‘flies at the face of
Alice Walker’ considering the deeply negative portrayal of black men in The
Color Purple.
Wesley acknowledges the criticisms Walker has received but remarks that "in a strange and wonderful way, these wildly divergent reactions are a testament to the power and talent of Alice Walker." The fact she can create such a furore highlights the power she has. She has, as Wesley writes, exposed a "country’s dark secrets." In general, Wesley found little wrong with the portrayal of black men either in the book or film version of The Color Purple.
Wesley even counters the negative criticism against the novel that no ‘good black men’ exist to counter-act Albert’s hard-heartedness in the novel. The implication being that despite Samuel and Jack both having positive characteristics, Albert himself embodies the whole of the black male population. To this Wesley writes: "she had no need to include those black men who, with the help of the women in their lives, raised large families." To include such characters as Jack to a greater extent would be extraneous. What Walker was presenting was ‘that black man’ who predominates over everybody because no one challenges him, that ‘black man’ who still in many homes dominates today.
Wesley then puts the novel into his own personal context, telling of the black African American men who have "taken it up on themselves to be guardians of the black image." Pulling together as black men they do incorporate their wives, though they are forced to "submit," "remain silent on sensitive issues" and not "speak too loudly about things that matter" to them. What Wesley does here, is to contrast the words of Alice Walker with the silences of all those women, married to husbands in these 'image tribunes,' groups of men hell-bent on preserving African men's good image.
Wesley makes the point that authors such as John A. Williams decried black women for their supposed-role as "castrating shrews," though writers such as Gayl Jones, Audre Lorde and, yes, Alice Walker are hounded from coast to coast for "reminding many men of [their] own failures." He concludes by asserting that no one should have autonomy over what an author can write or what he or she cannot write, but more importantly it should be writers who we rely upon to "speak when others dare not."
* * * *
Footnote: In examining writers’ opinions, it is often interesting to seek out the reasons why they have such opinions. For example, is Richard Wesley representative of the black African American male, or is it because he is writing for the feminist publication, Ms. magazine? Also, why does Gloria Steinem not have one bad word to say about any of Walker’s works? Is it because she is Walker’s daughter’s godmother or is it because she is writing at a time when she feels her friend needs protection from bad press?
Compiled and condensed by Matthew Kane [2001]
Click here to
return 