The Color Purple

“You bet never tell nobody but God. It’d kill your mammy.”

Celie takes this injunction from Alphonso literally. Her acceptance of his demand shows that as a child and a girl, she sees men and patriarchal figures as absolute authorities who are not to be questioned. Celie’s decision to write to God rather than to speak in prayer also shows the depth of her shame and trauma over her sexual violation as well as the importance of her writing as a means of documenting her life. However, God never responds to Celie, an indication of how remote a figure God is for Celie as a girl. Celie’s faith in this moment is one that provides little help to her, in other words.

“Shug Avery was a woman. The most beautiful woman I ever saw. She more pretty then my mama. She bout ten thousand times more prettier then me. I see her there in furs. Her face rouge. Her hair like somethin tail. She grinning with her foot up on somebody motocar. Her eyes serious tho. Sad some. I ast her to give me the picture. An all night long I stare at it. An now when I dream, I dream of Shug Avery. She be dress to kill, whirling and laughing.” 

Celie describes her reaction to a photo of Shug that her stepmother secures after she hears about Albert’s infatuation with Shug. Celie is quite young when she sees this photo, so the idea of a woman different from the upright Christian women to which she is accustomed has a noticeable impact on her understanding of gender norms. Although Celie conforms to gender norms as closely as she can, she has an early sense that these norms can be violated. Many of the women Celie knows are sober and deeply oppressed, so one of the significant impacts of having a figure like Shug as a contrast is that Celie sees that there is a form of femininity that centers joy and self-adornment.