B.A. Thesis Introduction
Introduction
Throughout the ages, women have always been part of literature. They have inspired many writers, whether dramatists, novelists, poets or essayists. Unfortunately most works often depicted women as the inferior gender, a passive object that could not survive on its own and that could do nothing for itself. Women, in literature, could only exist through the eyes, minds and lives of men but never for themselves.
Many of Walker?s works are inseparable from her life experience. She is very proud of her origins and she believes that the grace with which we embrace life, in spite of pain, the sorrow, is always measure of what has gone before. She was born in Eatonton, Georgia on February 9, 1944. Her father was a sharecropper and she is the youngest of the eight children in her family. At the age of eight, Walker was accidentally injured by a BB gun shot to her eye by her brother. Then she set out to learn to write poetry in order to ease the loneliness.
Alice Walker?s epistolary novel, The Color Purple, is one of the best literary works that vividly depict the sufferings of African-American women from patriarchy sexism and racism. The Color Purple does not only describe but goes beyond that purpose. In fact, Alice Walker?s true intention from writing this novel is not only to give voice to black women
1
B.A. Thesis Introduction
but also to provide them with a path to follow in order to emancipate themselves and get their freedom. Walker shows us the evolution of her major character, Celie, from being a sexually abused child to a passive wife and fin