The Color Purple

This was a really good book, and I liked that Celie finds happiness after all the abuse she suffered by the men in her life. She’s such a sad, frightened girl, and evolves into a more confident woman, but still doesn’t think she is good enough for someone to love her. When Shug takes off with Germaine, Celie is depressed, but then just accepts it. She doesn’t seem to think anyone could love her, “Sometimes I think Shug never love me. What would she love? Nothing special here for nobody to love.” (pg. 259) Celie has been through so much abuse in her life, both emotional and physical, she really doesn’t believe she deserves to be happy. “Celie, I say, happiness is just a trick in your case. Just cause you never had any before Shug, you thought it was time to have some, and that it was gon last.”(pg. 259)

I think Alice Walker is showing us in the book that when women suffer such terrible abuse in their lives, it leaves lasting emotional scars and damage which they may never completely recover from. Celie wants nothing to do with men, and who can blame her? I think at that point, even in her relationship with Shug, deep down she doesn’t truly believe she deserves to be loved by anyone or be happy. When Shug writes to Celie to tell her she’s coming home, Celie realizes she can live without Shug if she has to and still have a good life, “If she come home, I be happy. If she don’t, I be content. And then I figure this is the lesson I was supposed to learn.” (pg. 283) It seems like Celie has learned she can rely on herself and have her friends and be happy.

                                                     Kindred

After reading Kindred by Octavia Butler, I was very moved about the abuse and sexual assault the women slaves had to endure. They had absolutely no power, and were victims of rape by the white slave owners, and then the hired help, when the master no longer had any use for them. They were considered possessions, without any feelings at all, and that is difficult to absorb. One example is when Jake Edwards had told Dana she was going to be doing the wash, and that Tess was going to the fields. “Poor Tess. Weylin had tired of her as a bed mate, and passed her casually to Edwards. She had been afraid Edwards would send her to the fields where he could keep an eye on her.” And Tess crying with fear, “You do everything they tell you, and they still treat you like an old dog. Go here, open your legs; go there, bust your back. What they care! I ain’t s’pose to have no feelin’s!” (pg. 181) Tess is powerless to change her situation.

Dana is very vulnerable being thrown back into 1815, and as a woman is very much at risk for the very same thing- the possibility of sexual assault, and it’s something women face in our times, also. Becoming a victim of sexual assault is an issue women have always had to deal with, and in Kindred, there was no legal system to protect a woman of color, as they weren’t even considered human beings, and as slaves, had no rights. And I should add, the legal system today, does not always protect a women when she is the victim of sexual assault. In the patriarchal society in Kindred, the white women had very few rights, either, and were merely appendages of their husbands and fathers. However, it was no comparison to what the black women suffered as slaves. I think Octavia Butler was able to truly convey in this book, the horrible injustices the women slaves were subjected to by their masters, and society as a whole in those times.