awakening-of-female-consciousness-reflected-英美文学.doc

学号：
20087061122

信阳师范学院华锐学院

本科毕业论文（设计）

专 业 英 语
年 级 2008 级
姓 名 刘晓丹
论文（设计）题目 Awakening of Female Consciousness Reflected in The Color Purple
指导教师 郭耀忠 职称 讲 师

2012年 5月 11 日

信阳师范学院华锐学院本科学生毕业论文（设计）开题报告

姓 名
性别
学 号
专 业
班 级
刘晓丹
女
20087061122
英 语
2008级本科3班
题
目
Awakening of Female Consciousness Reflected in The Color Purple
选
题
意
义
The Color Purple gives a critical thinking on black women’s living conditions from woman’s perspective. This article attempts to trace the construction of female consciousness through an analysis of the growing experience of the heroine Celie. From her growing process, we can see that women want to get equality with men’s position; the most important thing is to realize the value of their existence, maintain independent personality, keep the integrity of the spirit world, and seek independent ability for survival.
主
要
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容
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思
路
及
方
法
Alice Walker is a remarkably prolific black woman writer in contemporary American literature. Her masterpiece, The Color Purple tells the process of how a southern black girl Celie’s female consciousness has been gradually awakened and how she pursues independence and obtains liberation. Based on historical evidences and feminism, this essay analyses Celie’s female consciousness awakening in The Color Purple. In this novel, the heroine Celie writes letters to God in which she tells about her life including her roles as a daughter, a wife, a sister and a mother. And she meets some black women who help her find her value and get independence. They are Shug Avery, Nettie and Sophia. In the course of Celie’s female consciousness awakening, there is always a strong belief of optimism in her. With her optimism and her efforts, Celie successfully finishes her female consciousness awakening.
指
导
教
师
意
见

指导教师签名： 年 月 日
系
意
见

签 章
年 月 日

信阳师范学院华锐学院本科学生毕业论文（设计）中期检查表
系别：外语系 专业：英语 班级: 2008级本科3班
题 目
Awakening of Female Consciousness Reflected in The Color Purple
学 号
20087061122
姓名
刘晓丹
指导教师
郭耀忠
职称
讲师
计划完成时间：2011年5月上旬
论文（设计）的进度计划
1.3月7日前,选题,资料收集
2.3月15日前,提交开题报告。
3.4月21日前,完成并提交论文的初稿。
4.4月24日前,完成并提交论文二稿。
5.4月26日前,完成论文的三稿。
6.5月3日前,完成论文的定稿。
已经完成的内容：
1.确定了论文题目，阅读相关的文献并搜集了必备的资料；
2.确定了论文提纲及基本的内容框架结构和论证的细节；
3.论文第一稿基本完成。

指导教师意见：

指导教师签名： 年 月 日
备注：

Contents

Abstract 1
Key Words 1
1. Introduction 2
1.1 About Alice Walker 2
1.2 About The Color Purple 3
2. Cultural and Historical Background 5
2.1 Feminism 5
2.2 Two Oppressions Upon the Black Women 7
3. Female Consciousness Awakening through Suffering 8
3.1 Celie’s Childhood 8
3.2 Celie’s Unhappy Marriage Life 8
3.3 Sophia’s Effect 9
3.4 Shug Avery’s Effect 9
3.5 Nettie’s Letters 10
3.6 Women Themselves, the Only Godness to Save Themselves 13
3.7 The Independence of Celie 13
4. Conclusion 14
Bibliography 17

Awakening of Female Consciousness Reflected in The Color Purple
Name: Liu Xiaodan No.: 20087061122
English Major Foreign Languages Department
Supervisor: Guo Yaozhong Title: Instructor

Abstract: Alice Walker is a remarkably prolific black woman writer in contemporary American literature. Her masterpiece, The Color Purple tells the process of how a southern black girl Celie’s female consciousness has gradually awakened and how she pursues independence and obtains liberation. This essay discusses the course of the heroine in The Color Purple, Celie’s pursuit of her self-consciousness. Even though her life is extremely hard, Celie never gives up looking for her female consciousness awakening and finally she successfully achieves the value of herself. Based on the historical evidences and feminism, this essay analyzes Celie’s female consciousness awakening in The Color Purple. In this novel, the heroine Celie writes letters to God in which she tells about her life including her roles as a daughter, a wife, a sister and a mother. And she meets some black women who help her find her value and get independence. The first woman is Shug Avery, the Blues singer, who is her husband’s lover. She then becomes Celie’s savior. The second one is Nettie, Celie’s sister, who becomes a missionary teacher in Africa. She also becomes Celie’s spiritual dependence after Celie knows that God doesn’t exit in reality. At the same time, she is the guardian of Celie’s two children who symbolize Celie’s hope. The third one is Sophia, the daughter in law of Celie. Celie is inspired by her strength and courage, and gets rid of all troubles. Influenced by these women around her, Celie finally has her own work, realizing her own value as a woman. In the course of Celie’s female Consciousness awakening, there is always a strong belief of optimism in her. With her optimism and her efforts, Celie successfully finish her female consciousness awakening.
Key Words: The Color Purple; Celie; feminism; black women

摘要:艾丽斯·沃克是当代美国文坛著名的黑人女作家。她的著作《紫色》讲述了南方黑人女孩西莉的女性意识如何逐渐觉醒以及她如何追求独立进而获得解放的过程。本论文探讨的是《紫色》这部小说中的女主人公西莉不断的追求女性自我意识并最后实现自我价值的过程。尽管生活充满坎坷，西莉却从没有放弃过她对追求女性意识的觉醒，最终她成功实现了自我价值。本文从历史角度及女性主义入手，分析一个生长在美国南方的黑人妇女西莉，写信给上帝去讲诉她作为女儿、妻子、姐姐、妈妈的角色的一生。同时，介绍了几个影响她一生的黑人妇女。第一个是莎格·埃佛里，一位布鲁斯歌手，同时也是她丈夫的情人，最后成为了她的拯救者；第二个是聂蒂，西莉的妹妹，她是一个非洲的传教士，在西莉认识到上帝不可能真正走入她的生活中后，她不但是西莉的精神寄托，而且还是西莉的希望，因为她是西莉的两个孩子的监护人；第三个是索非亚，她的儿媳，意志坚定，一直激励着她。最后，她终于摆脱了一直困扰她的那些烦恼。通过对生活的不断认识，以及周围的几个女人对她的影响，找到了一个真实的自我，完全拥有了自己的工作。在西莉女性意识觉醒的过程中，她身上有一种乐观主义精神。正是这种乐观精神和努力让西莉成功完成了她女性意识的觉醒。
关键词：觉醒《紫色》；西莉；女性主义；黑人女性

1. Introduction

1.1 About Alice Walker
The Color Purple (1982), written by the famous Afro-American female writer Alice Walker (1944-), won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1983. She is the first Afro-American woman who has won this award. The novel was adopted for film in 1984 by Spielberg and this adaptation brought her a worldwide fame and popularity.
Alice Walker was born in the small rural town of Eatonton, Georgia on February 9, 1944. She was the eighth and last child of Willie Lee Walker and Minnie Tallulah Grant, two sharecroppers. Her parents’ experiences with the oppressive sharecropping system and the racism of the American South had deeply influenced in her life. Violent racism and family poverty had left a permanent impression on her writing.
In 1965, Walker was involved in Civil Rights Movement following her graduation, which influenced her writing of her novels, such as The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970), Meridian (1976) and The Color Purple. She even married a Jewish Civil Rights lawyer, Mel Leventhal. Another movement that influenced her deeply was the Women’s Liberation Movement which she regarded as white women’s movement. She became interested in the conditions of black women who suffered the double oppression--- racism and sexism. The latter came from white men, even from black men. She realized the necessity for them to achieve freedom. So the concern of black women and the impact of racism and sexism on them became the major themes of Walker’s novels. She endeavored to explore an ideal way for black women to fight against racial and sexual discrimination and to establish their identity. As a result, she wrote her famous novel The Color Purple, which exposed black men’s sexual abuse and prejudice against female blacks.

1.2 About The Color Purple
The Color Purple is an epistolary novel. It consists of 90 letters, of which over two thirds (61 in number) Celie wrote to God, 14 to her sister Nettie, and 15 Nettie wrote to Celie. The story centers on Celie’s life, with Nettie’s African adventure. The time frame of the novel covers over thirty years, and Celie is now in middle age, in her mid or late forties or thereabout. It opens with Celie at 14, sexually abused by her “father” (Fonso by name) who threatened to kill her mammy if she told anyone but God. She gave birth to two children who were taken away from her immediately after they were born. Later her “father” “married”——sold——her off to Albert (called Mr.——or a long time in Celie’s letters).The man abused her and had an evil desire to her sister Nettie. So Nettie ran away and found peace working for a missionary family and taking care of their two children, Adam and Olivia. Celie never hears from Nettie for some thirty years. In the meantime Celie takes care of her husband’s children and endures a hard, loveless life. Her husband’s lover Shug Avery, a flashy African American singer, falls ill and is brought over for her to take care of. The two women bond well with one another, and Shug teaches Celie to love and stand up for herself. She teaches her about God. All through her progress toward emotional maturity, Celie regards Shug as her spiritual guide. Invigorated with a new sense of wellbeing, Celie begins to assert herself. She leaves Albert and stays with Shug. Celie’s self-awareness quickly grows. Then she learns that Fonso was her stepfather. Her biological father, a prosperous store owner, was lynched by the white racists who hated him because they thought he had stolen their business. After Fonso dies, Celie comes into the property that is rightfully hers and becomes independent. She achieves rebirth. All the time she prospers, Albert goes down slope. He loses his will to life, becomes an alcoholic, and almost dies. He survives, becomes friends with Celie, and helps her with her sewing. It turns out that he has for yeas kept Nettie’s letters to Celie, and Celie is happy to know that Nettie has been fine all the years, married to the missionary after his wife dies. Celie reads Nettie’s letters and begins writing to her. Then she learns that the missionary’s two children are adopted, and are in fact Celie’s blood and flesh. They come back from Africa and reunite with Celie.
Many people abroad are interested in Alice Walker and her novel The Color Purple. Mel Watkins regards it as “striking and consummately well-written.”(Mel Watkins, 1970:165) Dinitia Smith suggests that the novel marks a major advance for Walker’s art: “because the book is superb, it places her in the company of Faulkner, from whom she appears to have learned a great deal: the use of a shifting first-person narrator, for instance, and the presentation of a complex story from a naïve point of view.” These positive remarks reveal that The Color Purple is probably Walker’s most artistically mature work which transcends the boundaries of the female gender to embrace more universal concerns about individual autonomy and self-reliance.
Similar to the foreign scholars and with the passion for American minority literature, more and more Chinese critics and scholars show great interest in Alice Walker and her works. Liu Yuan asserts in “The Color Purple and Alice Walker’s Womanism” (Liu Yuan, 2006: 243) that the novel gives a full expression of the ideological emotion of feminism and a vivid description of black women’s struggle for liberation and equality. In “The Pattern of Chang in Alice Walker(Liu Yuan, 2006: 223)” , Liu Ying argues that the pattern change in Alice Walker’s heroines shows her understanding of the process that black women must undergo to achieve their vision.

2. Cultural and Historical Background

2.1 Feminism
Feminism is a discourse which involves various movements, theories, and philosophies which are concerned with the issue of gender difference. It advocates equality for women and campaigns for women’s rights and interests. Apart from the criticism of social relationship, many feminists also emphasize the analysis of the inequality between men and women and the promotion of women’s benefits. Feminist theory aims at knowing the essence of inequality and stressing on gender politics and sexuality. The exploring theme of feminism includes discrimination, stereotyped image, and materialization of sex, housework distribution, oppression and paternity.
Feminism originated in the West. It was regarded as a theoretical and political movement which took women’s experience as its source and motivation. The word feminism first appeared in France and meant women’s liberation. Then it spread to Britain and America and gradually became popular. At the beginning, the movement pursued the equality between men and women. The right to vote was the first and foremost. During 1920s and 1930s, the majority of the women in western countries gained equal political rights. However, in social life and people’s sense, women were still in an inferior position. So the feminist began to realize that there lay a problem of gender relations and power. Therefore, feminism movement turned into the analysis of power structure and the origin of inequality between men and women. Feminism is the combination of theory and practice. It’s a kind of belief and ideology aiming at eliminating all inequality including sexual discrimination.
The movement of feminism is divided into three phases. The first generation started in 1850s and continued to the beginning of 20th century. The second phase which was called Modern Feminism lasted till 1960s. Post Modern Feminism has been developing up to now. The first generation of feminism derived from the French Revolution and the Enlightenment. The representative figure was Harriet Tyler Mill from England. The primary appeal of the movement was women’s equal rights in education, legislation and economy. The feminists mainly called for women’s liberation from economic aspect. Their achievements had a great influence on later feminism, especially the Marxist or Socialist Feminism. Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Kalielinna was the representative literature of that time. The International Women’s Day also came into being in that period. But during this period feminism hasn’t risen up to the theoritical altitude and remained at experimental stage. From the beginning of the 20th century to 1960s, the world had experienced two world wars. With colonialism collapsing and different kinds of contradictions emerging, feminism has grasped the opportunity of a prosperous development. The breaking up of feminism into three branches was the most distinguishing feature. They are Radical Feminism, Socialist Feminism and Liberation Feminism. Socialist Feminism mainly concerned women’s equal rights in economic life and class struggle, while Radical Feminism and Liberation Feminism called for women’s freedom in sex. They challenged the whole male-dominated society and the sex class system. Post-Modern Feminism originated between 1960s and 1980s. Two major elements contributed to its booming. First, sexual liberation led to many problems of broken families, single mothers and the spread of AIDS. These problems have drawn people to think abo