Chapter III

Discourse of Womanism in The Color

Purple and The Temple of My Familiar
 Chapter III
Discourse of Womanism in
The Color Purple and The Temple of My Familiar
3.0. Introduction
3.1. Discourse of Womanism in The Color Purple and The Temple of
My Familiar
3.1.1. Social Contexts
3.1.2. Cultural Aspects
3.1.3 Character Analysis and Discourse of Womanism
3.1.4 Language and Behaviour
3.1.5. Racism and Sexism
3.1.6. Lesbian Relationship
3.1.7. Struggle for Self
3.1.8. Black Artist
3.1.9. Survival and Wholeness
3.1.10. Motherhood and Womanist Maternity
3.2. Summary
Works Cited
 Chapter III
Discourse of Womanism in The Color Purple and
The Temple of My Familiar

3.0. Introduction

Alice Walker has started her career as a writer in the late 1960s. She has
discussed a variety of issues in her literary works. All those issues are related to
survival of her community. In this relation she has stated,

I am preoccupied with the spiritual survival. Whole of my people, I am

committed to exploring the oppressions, the insanities, the loyalties and
the triumphs of black women.” (Alice Walker, 1983: 250)
Though she states her cause of her writing, her consideration goes beyond her own
community. She has discussed the issues of the Civil Rights, segregation and social
oppression in her early novels. These issues are not limited to her own community
only, but it considers the issue of the planet and its people. While presenting the
survival wholeness, she has put the woman at the centre. Due to this, she is widely
recognised for her concept of womanism. Walker finds no way out for the
presentation of black women’s miseries with the help of feminism, therefore she
proposed her ideology of womanism. It helps Walker to report her experiences. The
poverty and sufferings, she experienced in her childhood in rural Georgia, provided
setting for her early novels The Third Life of Grange Copeland and Meridian. These
novels are related to the theme of destructive relationships between broken men and
loyal women. Through many painful experiences the women and men, in her novels,
try to survive with wholeness and gain the sense of self. In these two novels Walker
values the bonds between women, their culture, their emotional flexibility and their
strength. After these novels Alice Walker has publishes her Pulitzer Prize Winning
novel The Color Purple (1982) and The Temple of My Familiar (1989).

This chapter deals with the discourse of womanism in Alice Walker’s novels,
The Color Purple and The Temple of My Familiar. In the present chapter these novels
are discussed in the light of Walker’s ideology of womanism. It is a study of social
contexts, cultural aspects of black community and womanist characters in the novels.
The issues of sexism, racism and struggle for the self are the subjects of discussion of
the novels. It also will take into account the use of language, womanistic behaviour of
the character and lesbian relationships of some of the characters in the novels. It is
also a study of womanist elements, such as sympathy, forgiveness, motherhood and
womanistic maternity of the characters presented in the novels. It also throws light on
the concept of survival wholeness and search for self in relation to womanist
characters. There are some black artist characters in the novels, those are discussed in
the light of womanism. This study of discourse of womanism in the novels under
study also deals with the presentation of Alice Walker as a womanist writer.

3.1. Discourse of Womanism in The Color Purple and The Temple of My Familiar

Alice Walker publishes her third novel, The Color Purple in 1982. It is an
epistolary novel that won her the 1983 Pulitzer Prize and the 1983 American Book
Award. Walker is the first African-American woman author who won the Pulitzer
Prize for the novel. This novel deals with the issues of dehumanisation, woman abuse,
lesbian relationship, incest and subjugation of woman. All these issues are explored
by the writer in the form of letters. The protagonist of the novel, Celie, writes to God
and her sister Nettie and Nettie writes to her sister Celie. Walker reveals the injustice
and ill-treatments received by women from the men. Alice Walker has presented
these issues in the form of letters. Celie writes to God after she is raped and beaten
repeatedly by her stepfather, Alphonso. She gives birth to a girl and a boy, named as
Olivia and Adam, from her stepfather. Both of the children are presumed to be stolen
and killed by her father. After being exploited for a long time he makes her marry to
a widower farmer, Albert, who takes her to his house. After their marriage Nettie,
sister of Celie escapes from the tortures of her stepfather and lives with Celie and
Albert. Albert shows much interest in Nettie but she rejects his affection and runs
from the house.

Albert, one day, brings his part-time beloved, Shug Avery, to his home
because of her illness. Celie nurses her back to health. When Shug comes to know
that Albert abuses Celie physically, she stays at their house for a long time. Shug and
Celie become close friends to each other and develop a close sexual bond between
them. One day Shug and Celie find some letters sent by Nettie in the trunk of Albert.
They come to know about the missionary life of Nettie and Celie’s children, Olivia
and Adam, who are supposed to be dead. Celie also comes to know about Alphonso
that he is her stepfather. In the end Celie, with the help of Shug, emerges from years
of tortures and oppression a whole human.

The Temple of My Familiar, published in 1989, is a next novel by Alice

Walker. It includes around hundred stories covering a 500,000 years’ period moving
from America, Europe, Africa and primal worlds. The novel deals with the theories of
racism, sexism and oppression with the help of three pairs of lovers. The central
character of the novel, Miss Lissie Lyles, reveals that she has lived in different
incarnations since the beginning of the time. She, with her husband Harold Jenkins or
Mr. Hal, visits Suwelo or Louis Jr. who travels from California to Baltimore for the
funeral of his Uncle, Rafe. He wants to place his uncle’s house on the real estate
market. He has been divorced by his wife, Fanny, because she wants freedom from
the limitations of marriage. This is a womanist view of Fanny that she does not want
to be married any longer. The Third couple, in the novel, Musician Arveyda and his
Latin American refugee wife, Carlotta, has marital problem of suspicion. Arveyda has
an affair with Carlotta’s mother, Zede. These three couples discuss among themselves
the problems and issues and reconnect the pieces of the past. They also throw light on
racism, sexism, oppression, violence, nature, time and search for self. These themes
relate to the oppression inflicted upon the African Americans residing in the South.
They also deal with the subjugation of women by all men.

3.1.1. Social Contexts

African Americans are taking efforts to gain economic stability in the late 18th
and early 19th century. They are suffering of second class citizenship that handicaps
them in their efforts to fulfil their primary demands. They have to work as tenant
farmers, farm labourers and sharecroppers. African Americans own their own lands,
yet they had to suffer of poor harvests and declining of prices. These families have to
revolve around the farm life only. Women have to work in the farms for their
survival. There is much discontent among the farmers in the post-civil war period in
America. The white farmers have formed their own co-operative unions. These
unions have excluded African American farmers. To be an independent farmer it is
the only way to seek economic security. For this purpose it is necessary to own the
land. African Americans have acquired very little land in America. Some African
Americans are fortunate to operate their small businesses and others have to farm
only that made them live in poverty.

Alice Walker has presented a poor farmer and his community in her novel The
Color Purple. While putting her ideas and views through the novel, Walker has
picturised the American African society of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Albert, a
major character in the novel, is referred to as Mr.— by Celie, receives a farm from a
white slave owner. He hopes to pass it down to his oldest son Harpo. On the other
hand Celie’s step father, Alphonso, gets her father’s goods store. This agricultural
hierarchal system is used by Walker as setting for her story. Unlike The Third Life of
Grange Copeland, Walker presents the poor landowners rather than sharecroppers in
The Color Purple. The novel deals with the themes of poverty, sexism, sexual abuse,
gender bias and oppression. Alphonso and Mr.— sexually abuse Celie and other
women characters, such as Shug Avery and Nettie. Celie’s stepfather impregnates her
twice and sells her children. This behaviour recalls the behaviour of pre-civil war
slave-owners. Albert examines Celie for two times, before he takes her to his farm as
his wife, sex partner and home maker, as if she is a product for auction. Walker links
slave history to the behaviour of these two men without any transformation.

Africans worship their ancestors as they believe in such a practice for well
being of the human race. They worship their tribal and familiar members. This
practice is prevalent in African American tribes also. They respect their culture and
have a great tradition of story-telling. The tales and myths are different from each
other. Entertaining tales have a purpose of teaching lessons of social, moral and
personal behaviour Along with this they love their land with respect. They have a
primary spiritual relationship with nature and the earth. Walker, as born and brought
up in rural Georgia on a farm, respects the African American culture of her
community and the farm. She has a great knowledge of these practices.

Alice Walker uses her knowledge of ancient spiritual practices existed in

African American community residing the American South, in her novel The Temple
of My Familiar. This novel is an attempt to reproduce the history of the world Alice
Walker lives in. Carmen Gillespie has said about the novel as,

The novel features an enormous array of characters whose lives

intersect and overlap as the plot explores the intricacies of racism,
 nationalism, sexism, heterosexism, environmental desecration,
economic exploitation and a myriad of other concerns.
(Carmen Gillespie, 2011: 15)

While dealing with these social issues, it focuses on the story telling energy of
Carlotta, Fanny, Suwelo, Arveyda and Miss Lissie. The art of story-telling of these
characters leads to the exploration of relationship between inner and outer self, spirit
and body-the familiar and the temple. The remains a journey for personal self
discovery. Walker makes the readers experience a cosmic journey of man, myth and
magic. In this novel she also presents the interconnectedness of pre-colonial, colonial
and postcolonial constructs of race, class and gender oppression in America, Africa,
Europe and primal world. The novel follows the story-telling tradition of African
Americans, where the humans and animals communicate with each other. It evolves
the natural activism process that is the need of time to eradicate racial and social
oppression and join collectively against all injustice.

The novel is a mixture of fantasy and reality that throws light on the
relationship between animals and humans. It explains that the use of language by
human beings is the single difference between men and animals. It is a narrative of
ideas and social commentary regarding the society’s responsibility to the
environment, ancient issues and animals. All these concerns are presented by Alice
Walker with the help of conversation, lengthy narrations and dialogues between and
among African American women and men. In this way the novels The Color Purple
and The Temple of my Familiar deal with the African tradition of story-telling. The
story-tellers put forth the current social issues such as racism, sexism, oppression and
the subjugation of women.

3.1.2. Cultural Aspects

Culture is a characteristic of a human community that covers a range of social

behaviour pattern, art forms, beliefs and all other creations or human works and
thoughts. The culture and literature are intermingled and have influenced each other
mutually. To transmit and to display a culture of a certain community, literature is a
powerful medium. With the help of literature a culture is transmitted to the next
generation very easily.
 Alice Walker, in The Color Purple, presents the African American tradition
and culture. She explores the connection of black community with African heritage
and roots. The blacks celebrate their primitive heritage of arts, style of dressing and
hair. They wear blue, purple and crimson yarns and fine linen dresses and gold. In the
novel the protagonist, Celie, wishes to make herself a purple dress as it is the colour
of the royal persons, like Kings. She paints the interior of the house with purple and
red colours. Many black women used to create quilts with different pieces of
materials. Celie and Sofia are highly skilled in creating quilts. The quilting is a part of
the African Americans as old as the American history. Walker identifies in quilt
making, “the secret of what has fed that muzzled and often mutilated, but vibrant,
creative spirit that the black woman has inherited.” (Alice Walker, 1983: 239) Along
with quilting, ‘shell’ collecting is supposed to be a symbol of the female imagery in
Western culture. In this culture the shells are compared to female wombs. In the
novel, The Color Purple, Mr.— collects shells to win Celie back, when she leaves his
house and starts her own company of pants. This cultural aspect has found place in
The Color Purple. The religion practiced by African Americans is also presented in
the book as a whole. The sanctified churches are also presented in the novel. These
churches are different from the mainstream black churches. These churches have
developed dramatic services with expressive gospel music, dancing and clapping. All
these religious and cultural aspects are presented by Alice Walker in The Color
Purple. Alice has used an old tradition of letter writing for this purpose of
presentation of these issues. She has used African American vernacular English that
Celie uses for letter writing. This language remains a part of African American
history and culture. This presentation of African American life in a language widely
taken to be inferior to others. But it helps to present low and rustic life of African
American community and their culture. Celie’s letters present a black way of life into
a Western epistolary tradition. In the black community blues tradition or blues culture
is related to black women. Shug Avery is one of the professional female blues singers
of the time. Celie also accompanies Shug in the theatre performances in her attempt
to get rid of poverty and hardship of black life in the rural South. This makes it clear
that the culture of the American South is full of creativity, art, songs, music and
gardening. Alice has incorporated all these cultural aspects of African American in
her The Color Purple.
 Various social groups contribute their different cultural aspects to
multicultural American society. African American community is one of them. This
culture is rooted in Africa and it is greatly affected by the history of slavery. African
American writers include their distinct culture in their writings. In this relation Sheeja
S. Angelin rightly writes,

African American writers find consolation in including their distinct

culture within their stream writing. They deal not only with the
psychological change of the people, but also with the cause for such
changes and its ailments. Women writers like Toni Morrison, Gloria
Naylor, Maya Angelou and Alice Walker find place in literature for
their valid contribution for cultural, racial and sexual issue.
(Sheeja S. Angelin, 2013: 10)

These writers present their culture through their writings because they want to
maintain their own traditions. African American culture has become an important part
of American main stream culture. African American society and their religious,
familiar political and economic behaviours are shaped by African culture, slavery,
slave rebellions and the Civil Rights Movement. All these aspects have found place in
the literary works of African American women writers like Alice Walker.

Alice Walker has demonstrated a glorified stature of ancestral figure in an

ambivalent way. The novel, The Temple of My Familiar is deeply rooted within the
conventional strands of African-American culture. The distinguished presence of the
powerful elements of ancestral culture is nicely implied through high admiration of
them by the present living characters. While giving a very personal account of her
exciting view of ancestral presence, Walker depicts,

I gathered up the historical and psychological threads of the life my

ancestors lived, and in the writing of it I felt joy and strength and my
own continuity...that wonderful feeling writers get sometimes, not very
often, of being with a great many people, ancient spirits, all very happy
to see me consulting and acknowledging them and eager to let me
know, through the joy of their presence, that indeed, I am not alone.
(Alice Walker, 2010: 453)

The elevated status of Miss Lissie, a transcendent female figure in The Temple of My
Familiar symbolises a high opinion and exciting notion for ancestral presence.
Walker dedicates the novel “... to the spirit/ without whose existence/ neither this
book / nor I / would have been / written.” (Alice Walker, 2010: ii) Ancestry, as
represented through Miss Lissie in the novel, symbolises cultural, historical and even
mythical existence of human race. She is a source of the knowledge of past and
through her experiences of slave trading, she observes herself as a “traveler following
the ancient and even pre-ancient paths.” (Alice Walker, 2010: 366) She is truly an
eternal figure and connects all the three tracks of past, present and the future. She also
shifts beyond the boundaries of time of ancestral eternity and space. She remembers
everything and incorporating past experiences of her deceased parents and slave
trading, she becomes a symbol of race memory.

The Temple of My Familiar has played a great role in portraying the unique
African American culture. In the novel Walker has presented art as a significant part
of African American culture. The development of the characters is based on the status
of being an artist. The characters, Fanny, Miss Lissie and Carlotta narrate their past
and present with the help of tales. The story telling is an important aspect of African
American culture. Lissie narrates her past experiences to Suwelo that acquaints him
with his native culture. His wife, Fanny, also gets reinforcement when she is
accustomed with her real culture. Another couple, Arveyda and Carlotta, comes to
know the music of their homeland and find solace in their own culture. Hal is an artist
and story teller, who gives Suwelo the peace of mind when he narrates his
experiences of the past. All these characters tell the stories of their people and they try
to search for their real spirits and personal self.

Each of the characters in the novel is presented as an artist or it becomes one

in the process of spiritual development. The elder Zede is a ‘bell chimist’ and tailor.
Carlotta’s mother, Zede, is a tailor and her husband, Arveyda, is a musician. Hal and
Miss Lissie, Another couple, are story-tellers and painters; Suwelo is a carpenter and
Fanny is a masseuse. All these characters have at least one art to present. They are
also participants of certain cultural activities. All these cultural activities are
presented in the novel by Alice Walker. The characters in the novel respond to the
words coming from their inner selves and develop themselves. Carlotta’s
grandmother, Zede, the elder, is “a sewing magician… she was the creator of
clothing, especially capes, made of feathers. These capes were worn by dancers and
musicians and priests at traditional village festivals and had been worn for countless
generations.” (Alice Walker, 2010: 3) Zede, Carlotta’s mother, makes capes and
clothes of feathers for Arveyda as he is a musician. He is presented as a singer who
makes people see the innate strength of their culture. Walker has presented Miss
Lissie with the knowledge of the past incarnations. The ancient African culture
celebrates women as goddesses. It is so because they face the challenges of life and
overcome them. While making it clear Miss Lissie expresses Hal’s love for her. She
says, “…even when our passion for each other was at its height, Hal loved me like
sister/mystic/warrior/woman/mother…. knowing me to contain everybody and
everything, loved me whole heartedly as a goddess which I was.” (Alice Walker,
2010: 371) Lissie explains that the ancient African culture celebrates women as
goddess. Walker presents her women characters with the power to face the challenges
of life like goddesses. They have their own arts to develop themselves in the way they
wish. They have a power to co-exist with other sexes. The characters in the novel,
The Temple of My Familiar, represent individual and group beliefs, reality and values
of African American culture. They have their ways of communication as dialogues,
letters, tape recordings, diary, paintings, music and stories. All these means of
communication are the aspects of their native culture.

Alice Walker, as an African American womanist writer, presents African

American women with historical perspective. Throughout the course of the novel she
highlights cultural issues. In this relation Ranveer Kashinath rightly says,

Walker creates such a world of black men and women based on

equality and mutual understanding and peaceful co-existence which is
full of happiness and prosperity.
(Ranveer Kashinath, 1994: 134)
She gives prominence to ancient African culture that gives strength to African
American community. African American culture believes in love, freedom and life
that help the African American for their survival.

3.1.3. Character Analysis: Discourse of Womanism

In the novels Meridian and The Third Life of Grange Copeland the characters
have the womanist traits to some extent. This conceptualisation reaches to a
maximum maturation in the novel The Color Purple in the characterisation of Celie.
In this novel Walker has presented Celie, Shug, Sofia and Nettie as major woman
characters. Through these women characters Walker suggests that the Black women
can get upper hand at some points. They can challenge the authority of their husbands
and dare to overcome their odds. They have great love for their people and culture of
their community. They love men and women sexually or non sexually. In the search
of their ‘self’ and for the survival these women become audacious, outrageous, and
courageous and show wilful behaviour. While dealing with the womanist nature of
these women characters, Walker focuses on the abuse of women by their husbands
and lovers. In the same way she presents the characters, such as Fanny, Carlotta and
Lissie in her novel The Temple of My Familiar, who have the womanist views. All
the characters look back to their past in order to progress. This has made possible by
Walker through the cultural medium of story-telling. The novel presents universalism,
race issue, the gender issue, the black artist and womanist motherhood which are
womanist aspects.

Alice Walker, in her In the Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist

prose, proposes her fourfold definition of ‘Womanist.’ According to this definition
Celie, the protagonist of The Color Purple, is an outrageous, audacious and
courageous woman who freely engages in ‘wilful behaviour.’ She is a victim of incest
as her stepfather, Alphonso, forces her to do what her mother wouldn’t. She believes
that her mother knows what her stepfather is doing, but she is too sick and powerless
to do anything about it. From this forced union, babies are born and are killed or sold
by her step father. He further forces Celie to get married to an unknown person,
Albert or Mr.—. After marriage she finds that Albert is not different than her
stepfather. She has to fulfil Albert’s sexual needs and take care of his house and
children from his first wife. Celie expresses her sufferings as,

He beat me like he beat the children, but he doesn’t never hardly beat
them. He says, Celie, Get the belt. The children be outside the room
peeking through the cracks. It all I can do not to cry. I make myself
wood. I say to myself, Celie, you a tree. That how I know trees fear
man.
(Alice Walker, 2004: 23)
She is a victim of sexism, yet she accepts the treatment as a way of life. She does not
oppose any action taken against her by her husband. She allows herself to be used by
men only because she feels helpless and hopeless. While adopting this situation, Celie
comes in contact with Sofia and Shug Avery. She once tells Sofia that she does not
enjoy the intimate moments with Albert or Mr.— and prefers women to men. This
shows that Celie loves woman sexually or non -sexually. Walker says that a womanist
may love men and women. Celie loves Shug sexually and she tells it to Sofia. This act
is a shameless and fearless that stands for courageous behaviour on the part of Celie.
When she sees Shug necked for the first time, she says, “First time I got full sight of
Shug Avery long black body with it black plum nipples, look like I thought I had
turned into a man.” (Alice Walker, 2004: 51) Celie develops a good relationship with
Shug. This relationship is considered to be lesbian relationship. With the help of
Shug, finally, Celie takes charge of her life and becomes an independent woman.
When Shug tells Albert that Celie is coming to Memphis with her to start her
business. Albert rejects the idea, but Celie opposes him and decides to accompany
Shug to Memphis. She starts her own business and completes her search for self.

Sofia and Shug Avery are also considered to be womanist characters in the
novel. Sofia Butler marries Albert’s son Harpo. She challenges Harpo’s notion of
gender roles. She engages in physical disputes with Harpo and leaves Harpo. This
behaviour of Sofia is audacious and courageous as a womanist character. She loves
her children as she takes them with her when she leaves Harpo. One more incident
proves that Sofia is courageous. She hits a mayor and is sent to jail for twelve years.
Like many other African American freedom fighters, Sofia pays for her refusal to
work as a maid. After her punishment she reunites with Harpo. As compared to Sofia,
Shug Avery is much important character in the novel, as she changes the course of the
novel. She comes to live with Albert as his keep and develops good relations with
Celie. She supports Celie and her family and keeps sexual relations with Celie. As a
blues singer she paves a way for the upliftment of Celie. Carmen Gillespie writes
about the womanist views of Shug as,

Shug’s occupation as a blues singer foregrounds the ways in which she

fulfills this role in Celie’s life. She provides Celie the means, the
vocabulary and the methodology with which to find and sing her own
song – her truth, her self-worth and her desires.
(Carmen Gillespie, 2011: 63)

Shug keeps sexual relations with Mr.— and begets three children but refuses the
responsibility of the children. She changes the ways of Celie’s life and helps her in
the search of her self-worth.

Alice Walker’s next novel, The Temple of My Familiar, revolves around three
couples. They become acquainted with each other and find that their situations are
similar in several aspects. The characters, Arveyda, Carlotta, Suwelo, Fanny and Hal
are fragmented because of some conflicts in their lives. They strive for the values of
oneness, wholeness and unity. For this purpose all the characters have to reconnect
with their past.

The Temple of My Familiar generally focuses on the development of the four

characters Carlotta, Suwelo, Fanny and Arveyda. These individuals are spiritually
fragmented at the beginning of the novel, but by shedding the destructives aspects of
the lives, they achieve balance and peach by the novel’s end. Walker begins this
novel in almost typical fashion, showing the oppression of women. Zede is a young
woman caught in the political problems of her country. The college at which she
hopes to get her educational degree is closed by the government. Soon thereafter, she
is arrested for being a Communist. While in prison, she becomes pregnant and bears a
daughter, Carlotta. Zede and Carlotta escape the slave conditions of the prison and
start working under slavery as domestic servants in a school for troubled rich
children. They also flee from this school with the assistance of a white American girl
named Mary Ann. Mary helps them because they have helped her at an earlier time.
They live in San Francisco in the poverty, until Carlotta meets and falls in love with a
famous musician, Arveyda.

Suwelo is a young black professional who has come to Baltimore to put his
deceased great uncle, Rafe's affairs in order. Suwelo has just finalised his divorce
from his wife Fanny Nzingha, who still loves him and waits for him in San Francisco,
but does not want to be married to him anymore. While he is waiting for his uncle's
house to be sold, he begins looking into his uncle's past and into the history of two of
his uncle's friends, Miss Lissie and Mr. Hal. They are an elderly couple originally
from an island off the coast of one of the Southern states. They begin telling Suwelo
their story that complements and supports all other stories told by different characters.
Most interesting part of the story is told by Miss Lissie, whose name means "the one
who remembers everything." (Alice Walker, 2010: 52) She claims to have lived many
times before and has been a witness to the worst of humanity as well as the loss of
humanity's sense of self.

Fanny Nzingha is an ex-wife of Suwelo, a colleague of Carlotta, and most

interestingly granddaughter of Celie, a character from The Color Purple. The reader
learns from The Color Purple more of what happens to Fanny's mother Olivia, Miss
Celie, Shug, and even Miss Celie's husband, Albert. In The Temple of My Familiar,
Fanny is able to see and converse with spirits from the past. She travels to Africa to
meet her father, Ola. He is a successful revolutionary, no longer wanted by the
government that he helped to put into power. She meets her sister, Nzingha Anne, as
well as her father's present wife, Mary Ann, a woman who helped Zede and Carlotta
many years before, She gets married to Ola because she wants to remain in the
country and run the art school she had opened. Fanny tries to reconnect to herself, her
humanity and her familiar.

Arveyda is a famous musician whose music is praised for having spiritual

power of healing. Because of this power of his music, Carlotta falls in love with and
gets married to him. Unfortunately, Arveyda feels love for Carlotta’s mother, Zede
and she also loves him. When Carlotta comes to know about the love affair of her
mother Zede and her husband Arveyda, she becomes restless and starts hating men.
She also starts her affair with Suwelo, Fanny’s husband. But when Fanny returns
from Africa, Suwelo drops Carlotta. She is much disturbed by this situation. She says,
“He was an episode in my life. But it is true, when he dropped me–and he did drop
me–I was so destroyed, I was angry enough to kill.” (Alice Walker, 2010: 376) She
starts to heal and finds happiness when she learns about the past of her mother, Zede,
Carlotta and Arveyda start living together again. When Fanny comes to know about
the affair of her husband, Suwelo, with Carlotta, she develops relationship with
Arveyda. They make love to each other. Suwelo and Fanny, though they are a couple,
cannot understand each–other’s viewpoints. Fanny has been in Africa for six months.
In this period Suwelo enjoys pornography also. But finally Lissie and Hal help them
to solve their problems by bringing them together and they ask each other for
forgiveness. In this union Miss Lissie and Hal have a great role. They are not a couple
in a traditional sense. Yet they live together as a couple. They are much fond of each
other. Lissie is capable of remembering her many past lives from pre-history to recent
time. She tells the stories of her different incarnations with racial and sexual problems
and oppressions.

The novel, The Temple of Familiar, presents most important features of

Walker’s womanism. Walker has indicated in her definition of the concept, a
womanist struggles for the survival and wholeness of entire people. She also tries to
put a universalist attitude among the races as,

Mama, why are we brown, pink and yellow, and our cousins are white,
beige and black? Ans: Well, you know the colored race is just like a
flower garden, with every color flower represented.
(Alice Walker, 1983: xi)

The same messages are communicated by Walker in her The Temple of My Familiar.
The novel focuses on the connectedness between people of different races, sexes and
between people and Fauna and Flora. In this relation, Lissie says that people and
animals share the same neighbourhood and use same water and foods. This means
that all the races should be universalist in their views. She presents three male and
three female characters in the novel to put forth the views of universalism. All these
characters are committed to survival of entire people. The novel also tackles the issue
of oppression to come to the conclusion that universalism is the only way to become a
whole person.

Walker has focused on the relationships of people within the black community
in the novel. She presents several problems that lead the readers to the racism in the
community. The novel presents certain instances of racism. Lissie remembers a life
time in which she is sold by her own uncle into slavery. There is another instance of
racism as well that Hal’s father is not allowed into the house of his friend, in the past,
because he is a black. Suwelo and his uncle, Rafe also confront a race issue when
they are forced to war. Mr. Hal explains the issue of racism to Suwelo as “so the
white folks wanted all us boys, your Uncle Rafe, too, for the army, to fight in the
Great War, or so they said. The truth was they wanted to be servants for the white
men who fought.” (Alice Walker, 2010: 97) This is the experience of Mr. Hal dealing
with racial segregation. Along with racism, the gender issue is also discussed by
Alice Walker in the novel. The women characters in the novel are presented to be at a
leading position in the development for wholeness. The novel presents a form of
social organisations that have women at centre and have power. It speaks about the
mother and motherly figures. It also suggests the importance of the mother-child
relationship in several ways. The most obvious example of the mother-child
relationship in the novel is the relationship between Carlotta and Zede. Thus along
with other issues, gender issue is also a powerful subject of the novel.
3.1.4. Language and Behaviour

Alice Walker starts her literary career in late 1960s embracing a variety of
issues, such as survival and wholeness of black people, particularly black women. In
the course of writing, she transforms her concerns of the survival of community as
whole through her novel. For this purpose of dealing with a unifying theme she uses
the language of the people those she is writing about. It gives a natural touch and
authenticity to her creation. In some of her novels she has tried the standard language.
While using the language of common people as well as the language of people of
mainstream culture, she presents the personal as well as social behaviour of her
characters. This use of language and social or familiar behaviour of her characters
contributes to her success as a writer.

The Color Purple, an epistolary novel by Alice Walker, deals with the self
discovery of Celie. She is an uneducated, poor and often raped by her stepfather and
an oppressed black girl. The novel is considered to be a womanist manifest of Alice
Walker as it deals with the depiction of women’s plight and their search for self. The
protagonist of the novel, Celie, writes letters to the God and to her sister Nettie and
Nettie also writes to Celie. Celie uses Black English or African American English to
write her letters. This language is a quite different dialect. Walker tries to highlight
black voice by using the language used by her community in the rural South of
America. Celie starts to write her letter in a regional dialect and with the progress of
the plot of the novel her letters get more sophisticated in vocabulary, subject matter
and sentence structures. When Celie starts her own business, she is suggested to use
and speak standard language. She has to struggle to speak Standard English and she
expresses, “My Mind run up on a thought, git confuse, run back and sort of lay
down.” (Alice Walker, 2004: 194) She does not want to adopt the linguistic system
of white people because she wants to keep her own autonomy. She writes as she
speaks. This language has its own rules and Celie uses ‘rule governed language.’ She
doesn’t follow the proper verb-forms and spellings of the words. In her first letter she
writes about the discussion of her mother and father as, “She say it too soon, Fonso, I
ain’t well. Finally he leaves her alone. A week goes by, he pulling on her arm again.
She say naw I ain’t gonna.” (Alice Walker, 2004: 3) In this letter Celie uses the
language that she speaks in her daily life.
 Unlike Celie, her sister Nettie has a good command of Standard English. She
addresses issues like slavery, women’s place in society, colonialism and
environmentalism. Her language is didactic and educational. Through these letters,
though Celie and Nettie write differently, they establish a connection between them.
Celie tells stories by recording faithfully the dialogues between the characters. In this
relation Lizbeth Goodman explains, “The telling of stories is a way of presenting self
opposition to a language which is not your own, not part of your people’s tradition.”
(Lizbeth Goodman, 1996: 157) Celie opposes the language of mainstream and uses
her own dialect. Her words represent the political and economic plight of the society
that deprives black women of education and power. Celie writes fifty five letters to
God without any signature. In her last letter to God she describes her bitter
disappointment: “My daddy lynch. My Mama crazy. All my little half-brothers and
sister no kin to me. My children not my sister and brother. Pa not Pa. You must be
sleep.” (Alice Walker, 2004: 160) She is disappointed by everyone and every
happening. After that she is helped by Shug and she starts her own business and
writes a letter to her sister with complete assurance. This is her first letter with the
complementary close,
Amen,
Your sister, Celie
Folks pants, Unlimited.
Sugar Avery Drive
Memphis, Tennessee.
(AliceWalker, 2004: 193)

It is suggestive of the personal identity, financial security and social participation of

Celie. These letters record the journey of Celie from silence to articulation. In the
beginning her behaviour is silent, receiving every treatment without opposing.
Though she is raped by her step father she doesn’t revolt against this ill treatment.
Her husband, Mr.— exploits her sexually and physically, yet, she remains silent. This
behaviour of Celie is indicative of her reason for survival. In contrast to Celie, Nettie,
Celie’s sister, revolts against the system. She rejects ‘Mr.—’s urge for sexual
relations and runs away from his house. She is supposed to be dead for a long time.
She runs to Africa and lives with a missionary couple, Samuel and Corrine.
Meanwhile Shug Avery comes to live in Celie’s family. She also speaks the same
language that Celie speaks. But her behaviour is more womanist than that of Celie.
Shug loves both, Mr.— and Celie, but develops more love for Celie than for Mr. —.
Celie and Shug develop a lesbian relationship with each other. This love is indicative
of real womanist behaviour as Alice Walker says, womanist “loves woman sexually
and/or non-sexually.” (Alice Walker, 1983: xi) Finally, Celie emerges, from years of
oppression, as a whole human being.

The Temple of My Familiar by Alice Walker is a broad canvas of African and

African American life from the beginning to the present. The novel starts with the
introduction of South American Zede, the elder, as an artist, who creates traditional
capes from peacock, parrot and cuckoo feathers those are worn by priests, dancers
and musicians at local village festivals. Her daughter, junior Zede, inherits her
mother’s creative gift by which she establishes the feminine artistic tradition. She
uses English language with a heavy Spanish accent. Other characters use the
mainstream Standard English language to narrate their stories. Zede junior speaks
Spanish also. Alice Walker has put Spanish into the mouth of Zede to show
universality of the characters in the novel. While dealing with the theme of race,
oppression, Walker has covered all the territories, such as America, Europe and
Africa. She wants to make it clear that the racism and women oppression are present
in every community and in every country. By the use of Spanish language, on the part
of Zede junior, Walker describes Zede’s immigrant life. She has travelled many
countries and has been in jail for a long period.

Miss Lissie is presented as a haughty artist, labels herself a “witch doctor” and
a “sorceress.” (Alice Walker, 2010: 98) She puts female creativity outside of
traditional discourse and in the realm of magic and miracles. Miss Lissie presents her
stories and describes many women, men and animals, she has seen in her different
lives spanning thousands of years. But she follows the African American tradition of
being and speaking. Her husband, Mr. Hal Jenkins, also speaks the same language as
Miss Lissie. Though they are much familiar with different cultures and traditions they
follow their own present tradition. With the help of these characters Walker creates
the visual and verbal text of womanism. Lissie presents ancestor’s voice and memory
extended to a distant past, where humans and animals live together as familiars. Other
women characters are Carlotta and Fanny. They present their own communities as
Carlotta belongs to African American community following the mainstream tradition
and Fanny is totally African rooted character. Carlotta’s marriage to Arveyda results
unsatisfactory as he develops sexual relations with Carlotta’s mother, Zede, junior. In
turn, Carlotta also keeps her relations with Suwelo. The behaviours of these women
and men characters are indicative of womanist view. Fanny’s life is presented as an
alienated one due to her anger for her husband, Suwelo. She also develops sexual
relationship with Arveyda. Finally, when she meets her father, Ola and sister Anne
Nzingha, she gets better understanding of the African part of her identity. All these
characters, in the novel, make a personal effort to recapture their pasts in the quest of
their identities. Walker has developed her novel in an inclusive story that presents
spiritual growth of its main characters. She tries to construct a reality by which her
characters can live as whole human beings.

3.1.5. Racism and Sexism

Black women’s history is a history of self empowerment by fighting against

external forces those try to silence their voice. This struggle of women is against the
racism and sexism. The racism has denied black women their identity and self. They
were considered to be mere objects during and after the era of slavery. The white
women liberation movement has excluded black women. Therefore “….their main
struggle has been to seek for a definition of themselves according to positive
characteristics and not according to what they lack.” (Shilpa Shukla, Niroj Banerji,
2012: 725) In this situation, literary production becomes a powerful alternative for
African American women to build up their own identity. Alice Walker has
contributed to the foundation of women’s rights and equality. She discusses a
woman’s culture, family and spirituality in The Color Purple.

In The Color Purple the sense of racism runs throughout the novel along with
the issue of sexism. Celie, the protagonist of the novel, is a daughter of a Negro store
owner. All the members of Celie’s family are poor and exploited black of the
American South. Celie and Nettie go to school but the schools of African American
community are in a bad plight due to racial discrimination. They are lacking school
funding from the mainstream rulers in the South of America. Celie and Nettie have to
stop education after Celie is forced to marry Mr.—. Most of the characters live in
sub-standard housing that is segregated from the white society. They have their own
cemetery, church, school and have to wait in the stores until whites are served. They
are treated by the whites as they are not human beings.

In The Color Purple, the story of Celie’s real father is representative of race
and Class. His store works well as two of his brothers help him run it, and as the
months go by, they do better and better. The white merchants begin to get together
and complain that this store is taking all the black business away from them. His
successful store makes him the victim of racial violence. This class relations motivate
the lynching. This lynching of Celie’s biological father ruins the social status of her
family. However, Celie learns through this story that her birth father is not abusive
since her rapes and the stealing of her children are committed by her step-father, a
father substitute. Rape by her step-father reinforces Celie’s inferiority as a woman.
She has no one to protect her from the abuses that she suffers of. For the black
community, rape is a strong example of oppression that emphasizes racial and gender
bias. In the same novel, Sofia bridges a class and racial gap between the mayor, his
wife, Miss Millie, and their daughter, Eleanor Jane, who desires Sofia’s approval for
her actions, her marriage and her own children. Walker’s world seeks a peaceful
existence with a settling of differences. Gender and sexism are present in Walker’s
own life. Walker discusses sexism In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens. She writes
about her father “expected all of his sons to have sex with women.” (Alice Walker,
1983: 328) Walker’s father was a product of his own environment and she says that
“my father failed because he copied the hypocrisy and my brothers—except for one—
never understood they must represent half the world to me, as I must represent the
other half to them.” (Alice Walker, 1983: 331) Many of Walker’s male characters
depict this inequality between the sexes and the lack of respect for women. In the
patriarchal white world of Alice Walker, gender is evident since the black women are
frequently victims of both white and black men. Walker’s womanist theory originates
from a resistance to patriarchal control and gender oppression in The Color Purple.
Celie is a victim of gender oppression. Her stepfather threatens her mother’s life if
she tells about the rapes. She has to be “…shut up and git used to it.” (Alice Walker,
2004: 1) The step-father’s control over the family gives him the right to violate his
women. This indicates that the men in black community use their families as a
substitute for aggression against the white men who are considered to be the cause of
their problems. The retaliation against the men by black women is not accepted by
their society. Therefore, the women in The Color Purple form a caring, nurturing
community almost exclusively of women who have shared same experiences and
same hurts. Celie decides to become an exception to it. She loves Shug sexually and
non-sexually. In Celie’s sexual encounter with Shug there is the beginning of her
coming to power and resisting male domination. Celie finally learns that she can be
liked as an individual, not merely for the various female services that she renders. In
this novel Walker depicts the consequences of a double standard between male and
female. Celie’s stepfather rapes her, gives her children away, and breaks society’s
taboo of rape of a daughter. One double standard that daughters experience is the idea
of incest and rape. The culture and society make rules that distinguish men’s
biological existence and social existence. These rules have prohibited the marriages
with mothers, sisters, or daughters. A person cannot have sexual relationship with
these relations also. But in The Color Purple the stepfather sexually abuses a daughter
is an issue of racism and gender oppression.

Among all these characters the story of Sofia is a main episode that illustrates
the hazards of being black in rural Georgia. When Sofia encounters the Mayor and his
wife in the town, Mayor’s wife is impressed by the cleanliness of her children. She
asks Sofia to be her maid, but Sofia rejects it by saying “Hell no.” (Alice Walker,
2004: 81) Mayor slaps her and in turn Sofia also knocks him down. Because of this
event she is arrested by the police and sent to jail. She is beaten by the whites very
badly. Celie explains it in her letter,

When I see Sofia I don’t know why she still alive. They crack her
skull, they crack her ribs. They tear her nose loose on one side. They
blind her in one eye. She swole from head to foot. Her tongue the size
of my arm, it stick out tween her teef like a piece of rubber.”
(Alice Walker, 2004: 82)
Celie’s letter explains the inhuman treatment given to Sofia by the whites. She is
beaten as an animal because she is black and Mayor’s family is white. The white
ruling class shows no mercy to black women or men. This is how Walker has
presented the issue of racial segregation in America.

The issue of sexism with The Color Purple is brought into greater focus by
Alice Walker. Celie suffers only on the basis of her sex. She is raped by her
stepfather, Alphonso and is impregnated twice. She gives birth to two children, who
are supposed to be killed by her stepfather. Celie is treated as an sex object by her
stepfather. Mr.— or Albert asks for Nettie’s hand in marriage but Pa, Alphonso,
wants her for his own purposes, therefore he forces Celie to marry him. Albert has
children from his first wife, who is dead, therefore he marries Celie. He has an affair
with Shug Avery, a blues singer, before his marriage. While introducing Celie to
Albert, Alphonso says, “She ought to marry first. She ain’t fresh tho, but I specs you
know that. She spoiled. Twice. But don’t need a fresh woman no how.” (Alice
Walker, 2004: 9) This view of Celie’s stepfather indicates that the women are
supposed to be the objects put in the market for auction. They are not treated as
human beings. This is an issue of sexism presented by Alice Walker. In the novel,
story develops by showing the inner workings of the protagonist, Celie, revealing
how she endures chaos and abuse in her early life. When Celie goes to Albert’s house
to look after his children and family affairs, she is accompanied by Nettie, Celie’s
younger sister. Albert wants to have sexual relation with her, therefore she runs from
his house and goes to Africa with Samuel and Corrine. She leaves her home town due
to poverty, tortures received from her stepfather and because of the reasons of
livelihood. On the basis of education Nettie enters a new world that she likes. Almost
all the women characters, in the novel, are exploited and tortured by the racism and
sexism. Everyone has to meet the misfortune but finally the courage and support of
each other bring the change in their plight. Maria Lauret writes, “ … the change in
Celie’s fortune comes when she and Shug make common cause with each other
against the exploitation – sexual and otherwise – of women by men, and fall in love.”
(Maria Lauret, 2011: 95) Celie becomes successful in her quest of self needed for the
survival and wholeness. Finally, all the major characters celebrate family reunion
with each other’s help.

In the novel, The Temple of My Familiar, Walker has discussed the issue of
racism, oppression and sexism. While tracing the origins of African American
culture, Walker has used the structure of story-telling. With the help of this structure
of the novel she tells the unrecorded history of the black female. In this novel she
touches on the race and sex issues. Walker presents several problems to understand
that the racism is an age old issue and it exists among all sorts of communities. To
explain the existence of racism in different communities Walker relates to it during
different periods. A major character, Miss Lissie, remembers her past life time in
which she is sold by her own uncle into slavery. She puts, “The White Men, who
looked and smelled like nothing we had ever imagined, as if their sweat were vinegar,
paid the men who’d brought us …… .” (Alice Walker, 2010: 63) She remembers the
death of her mother who dies of vomiting and dysentery. Her mother, who is in the
habit of wearing spotless clothes and keeping herself clean, finds the filthy
surrounding very repulsive. Lissie recalls her mother’s suffering: “Her deeper
sickness was over her shame at being filthy and exposed to strangers, in the
embarrassed and helpless presence of her children. . . .She could not accept so much
filth on and about her person.” (Alice Walker, 2010: 65) Lissie also remembers the
history how the slave owners examine them before sending them to the different slave
markets. She tells,

My uncle had these cloths removed from us, for they were woven in
the distinctive style of our tribe–our colors were yellow, red and
white–and gave us plain unbleached cotton ones instead. ……. Two
white men came eventually to inspect us. They looked at our ears, our
genitals- you would not believe the thoroughness, or the pitiful
strength in protestations of the women-our teeth, our eyes. They made
us hop up and down to test the strength of our legs. Our feet were
bleeding.
(Alice Walker, 2010: 62-63)
She remembers quite vividly how the thick curls of hair are brutally cut off and the
slaves are branded with hot metal. The men press the metal to the skin of buttocks or
upper arm which causes severe pain. The swelling and burning continue for days.
Lissie's account reveals the horror and pity evoked by these experiences. This shows
that the racism has its own roots in the history. In the present century in America,
racism is prevalent in certain regions. Suwelo and Fanny also are discriminated by
some people. Suwelo tells Miss Lissie, “We lived, if you can believe it, in a little
middle class enclave called Forest Hills. The houses were nice, and there were trees
and broad lawns, but everybody was always trying to make things look older–the
houses, the trees. Sometimes I had the feeling that at night our neighbors went
outdoors and beat on the walls of the house with sticks …… .” (Alice Walker, 2010:
239) It is indicative of racism, as neighbours want to chess the blacks away from the
locality.

Africa is the homeland of black people, therefore it belongs to them. But

when white people come there and discriminate the blacks, it becomes an unfair racial
act. Fanny’s father, Ola, tells about the racism in Africa as, “…. the whites had done
terrible things to us,….. But beyond what they were doing to us, as adults, they were
destroying our children. Who were standing to death – their bodies, their minds, and
their dreams – right before our eyes?” (Alice Walker, 2010: 305) This was the
situation of racism in Africa in the post-medieval period. The most racial issue,
explained by Ola, is the law of African Government forbidding inter racial marriage.
This provides that the Africans has much pride as the whites. Along with the racism,
the novel throws light on the issue of sexism also. The black community has learned
domination and racism from the painful experiences of slavery. Fanny gives her
father, Ola’s insights into the oppression of women, especially of black women by
black men. Black people are guilty of sexism and every other face of oppression. This
is because they, like the whites, misuse the power. Ola expresses his grief that black
men act like the white men causing sexism. Walker illustrates how racism works in
different ways by giving examples of Mr. Hal and Fanny. Mr. Hal really fears the
white man. This fear is nothing but his hatred for the white men because of racism
and oppression he experienced in the past. Fanny strongly hates white people. Her
thoughts about white people are indicative of the intensity of racism in American
South. She expresses,

I grew up believing that white people, collectively speaking, cannot

bear to witness wholeness and health in others, just they can’t bear to
have people different from themselves live among them. It seemed to
me that nothing, no other people certainly, could live and be healthy in
their midst. They seemed to need to have other people look bad–poor,
ragged, dirty, illiterate.
(Alice Walker, 2010: 298-99)
These thoughts of Fanny and other characters convey that the non-separatist attitude
is healthy and needed for survival of whole human community.

The Temple of My Familiar deals with the issue of sexism in several ways. All
the woman characters in the novel have been victims of sexism. Carlotta is a most
obvious example of the victim of racism. She says, “I was a female impersonator.”
(Alice Walker, 2010: 384) When she comes to know about the affair of her husband,
Arveyda and mother, Zede, she turns her anger inward and becomes self destructive.
Carmen writes about her action as, “She begins to act in ways that causes her pain
both physically and mentally. Some of her destructive actions include having an affair
with a married man she neither loves nor respects.” (Carmen Gillespie, 2011: 172)
This married man is Suwelo. When he finds her afflicted with a loss and some
sorrow, gets her involved in a sexual affair. This physical use of Carlotta by Suwelo
is a sort of sexism. Woman for physical enjoyment is a discrimination of woman by
the man is indicative of sexism. Like Carlotta, Fanny is also a victim of sexism. She
is also entrapped in the sexual affair by Arveyda. Though they were not husband and
wife, they think about their bodies and get involved with each other sexually. Suwelo
is much involved in pornography, after being married to Fanny is an offense of
sexism. Walker presents a shocking plight of prisoners in relation to Zede, Carlotta's
mother. Zede is arrested for being a communist. She tells Arveyda, the rock singer,
how much she has suffered in her captivity in an Indian village. The Indians have
been removed from the village and their rich land is planted with papaya. The
prisoners are brought there to plant, care for, and exploit the trees for an export
market. In the prison the women are forced to mate with the guards against their will.
In this captivity Zede is subjected to gang rape because of which she is utterly broken.
She is bowed down by the stress of oppression, dispossession and sexism.

3.1.6. Lesbian Relationship

Alice Walker defines her term womanist as, “A woman who loves other
woman, sexually and/or non- sexually.” (Alice Walker, 1983: xi) This definition
indicates that womanists may be a lesbian or bi-sexual. She writes that the womanists
are black women who prefer woman’s culture. It is just a natural phenomenon that
women like to do things that are common to women. They are inclined to prefer
women’s kind of things and women’s strength. A woman who loves other woman
sexually may be called a bi-sexual or lesbian. Such type of women characters are
proposed by Walker herself in her novel The Color Purple. Celie, Shug, Sofia and
Nettie are considered to be womanist, depending upon their acts. The major
characters, Celie and Shug are women characters who love each other sexually as
well as non-sexually.

Celie, the protagonist of the novel, is forced to marry Albert, a widower and
has children from his first wife. Celie calls him Mr.—, an unfamiliar person. She
receives an ill-treatment from her husband and from his children. If she offends him,
he beats her. Before her marriage she is sexually abused by her stepfather, Alphonso.
This results in the birth of two children, who are supposed to be killed or sold by
Alphonso. In this sexist situation Celie remains calm and quiet for the purpose of
survival. By the time Shug Avery comes to Celie’s home because of some illness,
Celie nurses her in a well manner and she is influenced by Shug very much. Celie
writes, “Shug Avery was a woman. The most beautiful woman I ever saw…. She
bout ten thousand times prettier than me.” (Alice Walker, 2004: 8) She cares for
Shug and accepts her at her house as her husband’s mistress. Celie falls in love with
Shug. She reveals that she does not enjoy the intimate moments with her husband
and she prefers women to men. She says to Sofia, “Mr.— clam on top of me, do his
business, in ten minutes us both sleep. Only time I feel something stirring down there
is when I think bout Shug.” (Alice Walker, 2004: 63) Celie thinks of Shug sexually.
The feelings of Celie for Shug are normal for a man. Celie and Shug share the views
of each other. When Shug asks Celie if she minds her sleeping with Albert, Celie
reveals her wish if Shug is interested in her as she is in Albert. A triangular affair
between Albert, Shug and Celie develops into more than relationship between Celie
and Shug. Celie becomes bolder with the support of Shug than before and one day she
decides to leave Albert and follow Shug to Memphis. She renounces her husband and
the God also. About the change in the character of Celie, Gladys Willis writes,

By having Celie’s character make these changes, Alice Walker

liberates Celie to engage in a lesbian relationship as a satisfactory
alternative to the heterosexual relationship with an abusive man.
(Gladys Willis, 2006: 32)
Celie’s earlier relationship with abusive men is followed by Celie’s love that she feels
for Shug and receives from Shug. With this change, Celie can be considered to a
complete version of Walker’s term of womanist.

3.1.7. Struggle for Self

The Color Purple deals with the issues of racism and sexism. It pulls together
the author’s main ideas about women’s life and culture. It also introduces some
experiments in the black vernacular idioms. As far as Walker’s term womanist is
concerned, the novel remains a complete womanist text. Walker presents a socio-
historical picture of the rural South of twentieth century America with the help of
womanist characters. It is a story of struggle of a barely educated black woman,
Celie. She is raped by her stepfather, Alphonso, and told not to tell about the rape to
anyone but God. Therefore she starts writing letters to God. She begets two children
after she is raped by her stepfather. They are taken away from her and are supposed to
be killed or sold by her stepfather. She is mistreated and beaten by him also. Her
mother is sick and totally powerless woman to do something in this matter. Celie has
to look after her sister, Nettie and Alphonso’s children also. These children also
mistreat her like their father. She has to stop her education because her stepfather
wants her to marry off. She is forced to marry a married person, Albert, whose wife is
dead. He has his four children from his deceased wife. Celie is silenced in the family
of Albert with no other way to express herself than writing letter to God and sister,
Nettie. Eventually, she develops a community, an extended family, including Shug,
her husband’s mistress and others.

Celie’s journey and search for her self-identity is a long one. Her knowledge
of self-identity and self-worth grows with her understanding of her body, past and
truth about her life. She learns many things with age and experience. She gets support
from her fellow women like Nettie, Sofia and Shug. These women provide mental,
moral, spiritual, material and financial support to Celie. Her marriage gives her
exposure of the other world. She understands the difference between the people
around her and herself. She comes to know about the reality and truth of her life with
the help of Shug. It helps Celie to listen to herself to fight for herself. She becomes
aware of her individuality and personality with the help of other fellow women. She
learns to fight for herself and gets a skill to listen her inner voice, “A little voice says
something you done wrong. Somebody spirit you sing against.” (Alice Walker, 2004:
39) Nettie remains the first person to instil a degree of self confidence in Celie. She
makes Celie know much about their homeland, Africa, with the help of her letters.
Like Nettie, Shug Avery also helps Celie to come out of the torturous life of her
family. Celie is saved from Albert’s brutal oppression by a relationship with Shug
Avery. She teaches Celie to believe in herself, which is very important for the
psychological freedom from Albert’s colonisation of her mind and body. Celie sees in
a poster advertisement how Shug wears and looks. She observes,

Shug Avery standing upside a piano, elbow crook, hand on her hip.
She is wearing a hat like Indian Chief. Her mouth open showing all
her teeth and don’t nothing seem to be troubling her mind. Come one,
come all, it say ‘The Queen Honeybee is back in town.’
(Alice Walker, 2004: 25-26)
Celie is totally impressed by Shug’s personality. Shug has a control over her destiny.
This characteristic of Shug is a typical one within the African American racial
societies. Celie gets greater understanding of her individual worth from Shug’s
character. The love that Shug expresses for Celie empowers Celie for her struggle.
She says, “Nobody ever love me, I say. She say, I love you, Miss Celie and then she
haul off and kiss me on the mouth.” (Alice Walker, 2004: 103) Celie draws power
from Shug and forms an alliance against subjugation. This power makes Celie
express herself against her husband, Albert. She also gets power to stand by the side
of Sofia, Harpo’s wife, against the male oppression. When Sofia asks Celie the reason
of her telling Harpo to beat his wife, Celie understands her mistake and honestly says,
“I say it cause I’m a fool, I say, I say it cause I’m jealous of you. I say it cause you do
what I can’t.” (Alice Walker, 2004: 39) Celie confesses her sin but Sofia doesn’t
understand what she can do but Celie can’t. Celie can’t do is the fight. Sofia tells
Celie, “All my life I had to fight; I had to fight my daddy. I had to fight my brothers. I
had to fight my cousins and my uncles. A girl child ain’t safe in the family of men.”
(Alice Walker: 2004: 39) Sofia educates Celie that the women are not safe in the
world run and dominated by Men. She suggests that all women should stick together
for survival and wholeness. Celie breaks all her bondages of patriarchal society and
starts her own business. Gender role is transferred and Harpo stays at home doing
housework and looking after children and Sofia works in a store. Albert helps Celie in
making quilts. Finally, all the people, Celie, her sister, Nettie; her children Olivia and
Adam as well as Harpo and Sofia celebrate their union.

Celie in The Color Purple and Fanny in The Temple of My Familiar

respectively serve memorable examples of the journey of black women towards the
self. Celie shows an ability to grow out of a stage of passive submission to male
authority and oppression to a state of independent woman. This becomes evident
when Alice Walker presents the change in her attitudes towards herself and her
responses to her male exploiters at the end of the novel. Alphonso and Albert both
treat her as an object of sexual enjoyment. She becomes alienated and faces physical
and sexual abuses by men passively and silently. In the beginning she appears as a
woman with a negative image of her self. She does not revolt against the abuse and
oppression and suffers like a dumb, when is beaten by Albert with a belt. After this
she starts her story of her transformation into a strong, self-respecting and an
independent woman. This process of her self-growth and development starts with the
help of Shug Avery. Shug Avery, when suffers from some illness, comes to live in
Celie’s house. They understand each other and fall in love with each other. Shug
develops a bond of warmth and friendship with Celie. Shug learns of Celie’s griefs
from their intimate conversations. Celie starts understanding her inner self. In fact,
Shug initiates a desire for selfhood in Celie and an awareness of her own inner side.
Celie, who has been hating her body for being responsible for her oppression, starts to
love and value it. She comes to know how oppression has robbed her beauty and
mystery of her womanly creativity. Shug makes her go and see her sex organ in the
mirror, she becomes aware of her beauty and enjoys this discovery of her self-worth.
She stops thinking herself as an object owned by her man and experiences a sense of
belonging to her own self. It is an important change that Celie, who remains
speechless over her oppression, now comes to utter angry words at her oppressor,
Albert. She has tolerated all kinds of tortures and humiliations received from her
stepfather. She tolerates verbal abuse of her husband, Albert, who says her, “You
ugly, you skinny, your shape funny. You too scared to open your mouth….You black,
you pore... you a woman, Goddam.... You nothing at all.” (Alice Walker, 2004: 186-
87) Celie discovers her beauty that initiates her into some valuable experiences. She
is deprived of these experiences by the abuse of her body. Her relationship with Shug
generates not only her love of her own body and beauty but also creates a sense of
human warmth and sympathy in her. They become lovers of each other and when
they make love for the first time, they experience a pure pleasure. “They kiss and kiss
until can’t hardly kiss no more.” (Alice Walker, 2004: 109) This relationship marks
the beginning of her journey towards the freedom, creativity and self expansion. This
is the beginning of Celie’s journey from sexual abuse to a state of independence and
liberation, self-expansion, regeneration and an affirmation of her self as a woman. In
this way Walker suggests that a woman can express herself in a speech or any
creative art only if she finds her own language.

The Temple of My Familiar follows a history of evolution of humankind. This

is achieved by the author, Alice Walker, with the help of three couples. All the
characters, except Miss Lissie, are spiritually fragmented. They all struggle with a
fundamental and destructive fear, frustration or conflict in their lives. The novel is
related to the process of their struggle for the value of oneness and self. It also deals
with the communion between people of different races, sexes, cultures and of
different times.

In The Temple of My Familiar Walker explains how a black woman feels

oppressed by patriarchy and she struggles for her self and freedom. The novel focuses
on the husband wife relationship into a kind of master–slave bond, in which a wife
has to obey her husband and to please him as he wants. It allows man a right to prove
his superiority through his sexuality. In the novel every character has to learn
something of the self-perfection. They struggle for the self identity and self
realisation in the course of the novel. One character of the novel, Miss Lissie, has
reached the status of wholeness from the beginning of the novel. She serves as a
guide for all other characters in their struggle for self-identify and self-worth.
Arveyda and Carlotta make a couple with two children, Cedrico and Angelita.
Arveyda knows nothing about his father and thinks that her mother never cared for
him. Only remembrance of his mother pains him, therefore he never thinks about her.
Yet, he thinks that he has missed something of her spirit in the world. His wife,
Carlotta is an artist who makes peacock capes like her mother, Zede. She provides
quilts to Arveyda and becomes much familiar with him and gets married to him.
When she comes to know about her husband’s affair with her mother, she becomes
restless. But in the course of time and with the help of her knowledge of past, she
forgives her husband and mother’s offence. This forgiveness helps her to reach her
self.

Fanny and Suwelo suffer from improper bond between them. Fanny is isolated
from her own family and she is feeling alienated. This alienation results from the
anger she feels towards her husband, Suwelo and towards white society. She returns
to the African countries that helps her to know her cultural heritage. When she meets
her father, Ola, she better understands the African part of her identity. In Africa,
Fanny understands that her anger for the white society is real but directing it towards
only white people is improper. Walker relates to the wholeness of coloured women by
examining the negative effects resulting in fragmentation and alienation in the lives of
black women. Fanny tries to search for the reasons of her anger and alienation and
fragmentation. Kishori Nayak writes,
 Suwelo’s wife, Fanny goes through the motion of suffering and self-
realization, but in her case it is the direct confrontation with racism
and sexism that fragments her.
(Kishori Nayak, 2002: 51)

The journey of African country, for Fanny, is one of liberation where she gets
connected to her roots. On the other hand, Suwelo also reconnects to his past. This
takes place with the help of Miss Lissie, who remembers everything and contains
within herself the archetypal memory of humanity. She relates Suwelo to his past
history and his roots in full details. In the end he gets united with his wife, Fanny,
with the view of wholeness and survival.

While struggling for the search of self all the characters present their
womanist behaviours. In The Color Purple and The Temple of my Familiar Alice
Walker has presented characters with desire to know more about their history and
roots. They also love their people, their community and their self. The characters,
such as Celie, Nettie, Shug and Sofia, in The Color Purple, suffer from the sexism
and racism. Racial oppression has a psychological impact on black men and that
results in domestic violence. Alphonso and Albert beat and abuse Celie. She opposes
none as she wants to survive. Shug and Sofia are the characters of masculine deeds
and feminine charms. Eliot Evans takes Shug to be “the embodiments of feminist
existential freedom.” (Eliot Evans, 1989: 95) Shug frees Celie from the oppression
and sexism of her husband. They develop a lesbian relationship as a part of their
womanist behaviour. Sofia and Nettie also show their womanist behaviour. Sofia
opposes her husband, Harpo and takes the hold of her home. She comes out of the
house for her own economic freedom. Yet, she loves her community, people and
family that indicates her womanist behaviour.

Unlike The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar portrays the female,
already free from any social restrictions. They are in search of their self through
getting connected to their pasts. They use methods of “story-telling, music, massage
and course of love and sex for this connection. They avoid the traditional system of
white male patriarchy while asserting a philosophy of spiritual unity and balance.”
(Adom Sol, 2002: 395) As Walker has stated, womanist “Loves music. Loves dance.
Loves the moon. Loves spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle.
Loves the Folk. Loves herself. Regardless.” (Alice Walker, 1983: xii), all the
characters in the novel are connected to the music, love, art, story-telling and love for
their culture. All the women are struggling for their self identity. They love struggle
and go up to an extent of taking their decisions on their own. Fanny and Carlotta love
individual men sexually and have sexual relations with different men in the novel,
though they are married. Their behaviours are outrageous, audacious, courageous and
wilful, those are womanist in nature as womanist characters.

3.1.8. Black Artist

African American community inherits the traditionalism. As they suffer from

racial discrimination and poverty, they adopt art for the development and survival. In
The Color Purple, Alice Walker presents her women characters with some skills or
arts. With the novel, she revisits and revise the historical era of 1920s blues singers.
Shug, Celie, Sofia and Squeak revive the spirit of great blues that combines these
women’s songs and lives with her concept of womanism. Walker defines the term
womanist as a feminist of color, women who love women’s culture, who love music –
who sing and dance, women who concern with the survival of entire race and who
love themselves. In The Color Purple, Walker presents a womanist artist to show how
these blacks fight against sexual and physical abuse of women by men.

Walker uses womanist artists in The Color Purple those face the violence due
to racist social structure. She has presented Shug Avery and Squeak or Mary Agnes
as the black artists in the novel. They connect the novel with the blues tradition and
culture of the 1920s in America. Shug Avery is a beautiful, worldly, strong and an
independent woman. She plays a great role in the life of Celie to support and uplift
her from the abusive and racial surrounding of her family and society to a self-
sufficient and an independent state. About Shug Avery, Linda Tate writes, Shug
represents a “total flaunting of societies prescribed roles of women.” (Linda Tate,
1994: 127) She plays different roles in the life of Celie. She is friend, sister, teacher,
preacher, comforter and guardian of Celie. She teaches Celie how to laugh, how to
speak, express and how to love herself as a woman. According to Walker’s concept of
womanist, Shug loves music, loves dance, loves struggle, loves the folk and loves
love. When Shug dedicates a song in a concert to Celie, Celie writes, “First time
somebody made something and name after me.” (Alice Walker, 2004: 70) The blues
helps blues women to create female community through their songs. Walker, by
exploring the blues themes of violence and abuse, engenders a womanist story that
deals with black women’s struggle against racism and sexism. Shug’s love of singing
and dancing, her outrageous behaviour and her love for men and women are
indicative of womanist nature. She uplifts Celie from the place of racism and sexism
to a self supported and to a free state of being.

Celie’s stepfather and husband are abusive and unappreciative of women. Her
husband, Mr.—, needs to posses and control women through violence. He tackles his
powerlessness with Shug through his beatings of Celie. He is unsatisfied with his
marriage as he wants to marry Shug but his father does not permit him to do so. At
first he marries Annie Julia, mistreats her and she dies. Later on he marries Celie and
gives same treatment to her also. Shug when enters the scene, gets attracted to Celie
and teaches her how to speak, how to fight and how to tackle the situations. She helps
Celie to start a business on her own to become economically independent. In this
work Sofia and Mary Agnes also help Celie. Her evolution has become possible
through affirmation of self and others. Her transformation from a tortured and abused
woman to an independent person has occurred through the art, creativity and love.
Celie and other women characters in The Color Purple find the release for their
creativity. Walker’s women are creators and artists by nature. Shug Avery and Mary
Agnes get involved themselves in music. Sofia and Celie are good at quilts making
and Celie develops her new art of folk pants making. Finally, all the women support
each other, come together at Celie’s home and celebrate their triumph and wholeness.

The Temple of My Familiar is framed with the help of men and women artists.
The opening pages of the novel introduce elder Zede as a sewing magician, “She was
the creator of clothing, especially capes, made of feathers. These capes were worn by
dancers and musicians and priests at traditional village festivals and had been worn
out countless generations.” (Alice Walker, 2010: 3) This art of the folk lore of
African American community is in practice from the ancient period. Alice Walker
presents Zede, the elder and her daughter, Zede with this ancient art of creating capes
through this novel. In the course of the novel she presents a womanist interpretation
of this art of creating capes that stands for the feminine aspect of the black
community. This art is transferred to Zede, the junior by her mother, Zede, the elder.
She performs her art with conventional system of exchange and profit. Walker’s
another woman, Miss Lissie, is also presented as a painter and story teller. Fanny
becomes a masseuse and play-writer. Another woman, Carlota is presented as bell
chimist.

In the novel, the status of being an artist is linked to the development of most
of the characters. Walker has presented all these characters with different arts, for the
artist has certain functions in the novel. First of all, with the help of the art one learns
to listen the inner self and achieve the personal development. The next function of an
artist is to get involved in any social function. Walker clears this function of an artist
in the novel itself, as Nzingha says to Fanny, “writers don’t cause trouble so much as
they describe it. Once it is described, trouble takes on a life visible to all, whereas
until it is described, and made visible, only a few are able to see it.” (Alice Walker,
2010: 259) Thirdly, the artists guide a certain individuals, who are in their own
circle. They have their eyes with a power to see things more clearly and guide their
beloved ones regarding the path to follow. Miss Lissie, a story-teller and a painter,
guides Fanny’s husband, Suwelo, to break up his phallogocentric conception of self
and introduces him to the invention and the change. Arveyda also expresses his views
about the artist as they are the informers and messengers of the world. Arveyda and
Zede talk to each other about the importance of the art and artists. Walker writes
about the understanding of Arveyda,

Artists, he now understood, were simply messengers, on them fell the

responsibility for uniting the world. An awesome task, but felt up to it,
in his own life. His faith must be that the pain he brought to others and
to himself – so poorly concealed in the information delivered – would
lead not to destruction, but to transformation.
(Alice Walker, 2010: 125)
The black artists, presented in the novel, have their roles of bringing the information
to the people. Walker creates a visual and verbal text of black feminist as a process
and a play. The ability of Walker’s artists to present their surroundings originates the
knowledge. Miss Lissie’s knowledge is based on her personal experiences in the
community. She puts it in her narratives. In the same way, Suwelo gets his
knowledge of black American history through his researches in the University and the
library. Fanny knows the things merely by the co-incidence and the journey to her
native place..
 Walker has presented the black women as well as black men as the artists in
her novel The Temple of my Familiar. Almost all the characters are related to some
art. Each of them embarks on a journey of self discovery in order to dislodge the
external construction of the self. The characters discover the material space of
liberation and creativity in the nature. They develop a great love for garden as a part
of nature. The African jungle, as a space of material creativity, has become a garden.
Hal and Lissie, the painters, paint a beautiful garden that surrounds their house. The
garden contains giant dahlias, corn and blue morning glories.. When Suwelo watches
the painting, he spends a day there as “eternity itself and soon lay back on the porch
and drifted off to sleep......The unconscious, maternal landscape of feminine
creativity.” (Alice Walker, 2010: 192) Fanny and Carlotta have their own houses
among “hibiscus and jasmine” and with “bright colours and lovely scent.” (Alice
Walker, 2010: 192) All these feminine spaces indicate freedom and creativity.
Garden thus stands for a womanist artist. In the end all the characters find their self-
identities and peace of mind.

3.1.9. Survival and Wholeness

The Color Purple and The Temple of My Familiar are inter-related novels to
some extent. The characters, Celie and Shug, in The Color Purple, play the
background roles in The Temple of My Familiar. Though they are not more prominent
characters, they have their influence in the novel. Celie, in The Color Purple, moves
from a sexually abused by her stepfather to a lesbian partner of Shug Avery. She
learns about the mystery of her body, the way of getting economic freedom by
accepting abuse and victimisation from Southern patriarchal family. Celie learns from
Nettie, her sister, that for the survival resistance and struggle are necessary. But Celie
is ignorant about the ways of resistance and fight in response to torture and abuse.
She writes, “….. I don’t know how to fight. All I know how to do is stay alive.”
(Alice Walker, 2004: 18) There is a contradiction in survival and the present situation
that permits these kinds of suppressions of the self. Celie thinks fighting back can
cause one more problem. She believes that others are responsible for her destiny. Yet
she says, “I don’t say nothing …. I don’t fight. I stay where I’m told. But I’m alive.”
(Alice Walker, 2004: 22) She does not become an extra ordinary woman till her
adulthood and her encounter to battered and outspoken wife of her stepson, Harpo.
Celie submits to male authority because she accepts a theology which requires female
subjugation to father and husband.

Celie’s request for freedom and survival starts at the age of fourteen. At this
stage she lacks a power to resist the sexual advances of her step father. The same
abusive situation continues when she enters a marriage with Albert. She is pained
much by the thing that her father abused her sexually and she has two children from
these incest relations. But her agony is softened by the truth. She knows that
Alphonso is not her biological father. She comes to know that her children are not the
results of incest that removes a layer of pain. Walker affirms that the key to
wholeness is forgiveness. Celie forgives herself and Alphonso after the wrongs done
to her. She overcomes her sufferings with the help of her indomitable spirit. While
describing the power and spirit of Celie, Gerri Bates writes,

In spite of all she endures, such as losing her children, rearing Albert’s
children, surviving Albert’s physical abuse, and being denied love and
attention, she has courage to rise above the monstrous forces of
negativity that engulf her.
(Gerri Bates, 2005: 101)

With the power to bear and desire to survive, Celie never loses her control of mind
and protects herself from insanity.

Celie gets connected to Sofia and Shug that helps Celie to encounter her true
and secret self which is long oppressed. Sofia helps Celie to emerge as a courageous
and self loving woman. Shug finds all the letters written by Nettie to Celie from
Albert’s trunk. By these letters Celie discovers that Nettie and her children are alive
in Africa. Celie stops writing letters to God and begins to address her letters to her
sister, Nettie. It becomes a means of structuring her own identity, her sense of self
and healing of her wounds in relation to her sister and children. She starts her own
business with the help of Shug for the economic freedom and becomes self
supportive. She decides to create her new identity by leaving her husband. It can be
considered her further step towards wholeness. She announces to Albert that it is time
to leave him and enter into creation. She leaves Albert’s house for Shug’s Memphis
estate. At the end all the characters live a very insular life. They get rid of problems
of racism, sexism, violence and oppression and achieve, both personal and
communal, wholeness.
 The Color Purple closes with a celebration of kinship. Its concluding action
composed of a series of family reunions, Sofia patches things up with Harpo; Shug
visits her children for the first time in thirty years and Celie and Nettie reunite
joyfully and tearfully. Celie has achieved both economic independence and emotional
security. The reunions, in the end of The Color Purple, leads to the importance of
kinship and to the happiness of every individual. When the two sisters fall into one
another's arms at last, each identifies her kin. Nettie introduces her husband and the
children, and Celie also introduces her family and for the first time she says, “I point
up at my peoples. This Shug and Albert, I say.” (Alice Walker, 2004: 260) This
suggests that every woman realises her full potential only within the supporting bonds
of a strong kinship group. In the end, Walker answers the question posed by Adam
whether the progress in race relations is possible. She brings Sophia, the black, and
Miss Eleanor Jane. the white, together. This union suggests that progress in race
relations is possible. Yet, it contains some vivid images of racial segregation in both
Africa and America that complicate the idea of progress. But the novel gives a final
definition of kinship based on race. Sophia and Miss Eleanor Jane are reunited when
the mayor's daughter learns from her family why Sophia comes to work for them in
the first place. Miss Eleanor Jane comes to work in Sophia’s home, helping with the
housework and taking care of Sophia’s daughter Henrietta. This is indicative of an
improvement in the domestic relationship between the two women. For her part,
Sophia's acceptance of Miss Eleanor Jane in her own home indicates progress. An
improvement in race relations is presented by Sophia's work in Celie's dry goods
store. This is not only because Sophia gets relief from her housework but also
because shops are used throughout The Color Purple to represent the status of
economic and social integration between blacks and whites. To own a shop or land
stands for an ability of African Americans to achieve economic integration into the
American mainstream. Celie's biological father works hard, buys his own shop, and
hires two of his bothers to work there for him.

The Temple of My Familiar, as a story of three couples, exhibits Alice

Walker’s view that the wholeness can be achieved by every one through the union of
body and soul. This novel is a story of lives and love of three couples: Arveyda, a
musician, and Carlotta, a south American and a teacher of women’s studies; Suwelo,
a history professor and Carlotta’s lover, and his wife Fanny, the grand-daughter of
Celie from The Color Purple, teaching literature, becomes a masseuse and Mr. Hal
and Miss Lissie, an elderly black couple, friends to Suwelo’s uncle, Rafe, who is dead
now. Their pasts emerge as they tell each other the stories or they read diaries, letters,
and jottings in books or hear tape-recorded stories.

Fanny feels much anger for the white people as she is traumatised by the
violence during the Civil Rights Movement in America. She recalls, “…. the night
the whole campus seemed to go up in flames, and white people raged…. I saw a lot of
black people and their white allies humiliated brutally beaten or murdered.” (Alice
Walker,2010: 298) She is terrified of the future and becomes an activist. She suffers
from the hatred for whites and the violent impulses she feels. Suwelo, her husband,
describes her as a victim of racism. She dreams of being devoured by the white. She
reclaims long repressed memories of growing up as a black woman in racist world.
She hopes that she can stop this before racism starts within herself. She says, “I
won’t be a racist, ….. I won’t be a murderer. I won’t do to them what they’ve done to
black people. I’ll die first.” (Alice Walker, 2010: 300) Under the influence of this
suppression, she wants to divorce her husband Suwelo. She wants her freedom. She
loses the control of her senses and feels love for spirits. In this situation she stops her
work and starts a course in massage. She joins a consciousness-raising group, where
she learns to masturbate and meditation. She travels to Africa and meets her father,
Ola and her sister, Nzingha. She moves out of her place for a personal growth and
wholeness. Finally, she gets a suggestion of forgiveness from her mother, Olivia. She
understands that forgiveness as a true foundation of health and happiness. By this way
she forgives all the racists of the world as well as her husband’s amoral sexual deeds
for the wholeness and survival of self and others.

Arveyda and Carlotta get separated because of their unfaithfulness to each

other. Arveyda has an affair with Zede, Carlotta’s mother, therefore Carlotta becomes
a female impersonator by putting on the outward grab that would make her attracted
to men. She develops sexual relationship with Suwelo, husband of Fanny. Carlotta
remains just a body for Suwelo and he can have only sex with her. Yet, Carlotta has a
great pain that she can never share herself with anyone. She only starts healing after
Arveyda tells her about her mother’s past. She changes her views towards every one.
She also forgives her mother Zede, Arveyda and Suwelo for what they have done.
She stops her job of teaching and becomes an artist. In addition, she losses her
feminine look, “Her hair is cut so short it must feel prickly to the touch.” (Alice
Walker, 2010: 378) Carlotta and Arveyda start living together again and behave very
cordially to each other. They start making music together. Both the couples, Suwelo
and Fanny and Arveyda and Carlotta, struggle for the wholeness and survival. These
couples maintain separate identities. Arveyda and Carlotta, being married to each
other, maintain their separate residences. Suwelo and Fanny, being divorced, live
together. They build their house modelled on the house of Ababa tribe in Central
Africa, a house shaped like a bird. Suwelo and Fanny as well as Arveyda and Carlotta
return to the life style of their ancestors, in order to achieve spiritual freedom. Each
couple decides to live apart and free. All these characters in the novel want to know
more and in greater depth than is considered good for one. They are universalist and
all of them make it clear that they are womanist people.

3.1.10. Motherhood and Womanist Maternity

The women are at centre in every social organisation. Matriarchy is a basic

form of social organisation. The mother has a sacred relationship with her children.
This relationship is a symbolic of the relationship between the earth and creativity. In
the journey of any person towards wholeness, a mother plays an important role. The
women characters in a literary work become mothers in the journey of other
characters. One can find in them the desire to change without destroying. They help
to resist the separation and alienation of the person related.

In the novel, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, there are such type of
mothers who are nameless and without any voice in the novel. Celie, and Nettie’s
mother is referred to as Ma in the novel. Celie and Nettie’s mother becomes silent and
distant, unable to speak to her children because she is lynched by husband. This
mother is not present in the novel, yet she can be noticed by some signposts. Her
presence in the novel is indicative of her motherly care for her girls. She knows what
is going on in the home. When Celie is raped by her stepfather, her mother notices
that something wrong has happened. She suspects the presence of Alphonso’s hair in
the room of Celie. Celie tells, “After while ….. , Mama, finally ast how come she find
his hair in the girls room if he don’t never go in there like he say.” (Alice Walker,
2004: 103) Mother comes to know the things but she is helpless. In this helplessness
her mother dies and her ‘Pa’ gets married to a teenage girl. This new mother also sees
the sexual abuse of Celie but cannot prevent it. Celie speaks, “our new mammy see it
too. She in the room crying.” (Alice Walker, 2004: 116) She also sees and grieves but
can do nothing, she is made silent and she knows her voice is not to be heard. She
cries in the room silently and helplessly.

Another mother in the novel is the Mother of Harpo, Mr.—’s first wife. She is
also a silenced woman as she has no role in the story. Celie gets information about
Harpo’s mother from the town gossips and from Mr.—’s story. Nothing is known
about her more than Mr.— tells to Harpo. He asks his father, Albert or Mr.— “What
wrong with my mammy? Mr.— say, somebody kill her.” (Alice Walker, 2004: 29)
Mr.— tells that Harpo’s mother is killed by her lover and none is there to defend her.
It is an example of a silenced woman in a patriarchal society of the time. Along with
Harpo’s mother, there is an invisible mother in the novel, that is Sofia’s mother.
Sofia’s mother is not present in the novel. She is mentioned in the novel a little.
Sofia says to Celie, “To tell the truth, you remind me of my mama. She under my
daddy thumb. Naw [No] she under my daddy foot. Anything he say, goes. She never
say nothing back. She never stand up for herself.” (Alice Walker, 2004: 39) Her
mother is smothered by her father. Though she is silenced and oppressed by him, she
cares for her children as a womanist. Sofia’s father hates his children and suspects her
mother regarding the children’s origin. Sofia tells, “He hate children and he hate
where they come from.” (Alice Walker, 2004: 40) Yet, Sofia’s mother, sometimes,
takes unsuccessful stand for the children. Sofia tells to Celie, “She never stand for
herself. Try to make a little half stand sometime for the children but that always back
fire. More she stand up for us.” (Alice Walker, 2004: 39-40) This nature of Sofia’s
mother is womanistic. Though all these mothers, mentioned earlier, are womanist in
their behaviour, they are not successful. Therefore they cannot be considered to be
ideal womanist mothers as Alice Walker proposes.

In The Temple of My Familiar Walker has discussed that many of the cultures,
tribes and families are the forms of social organisation with women at centre. The
novel refers to such matriarchal organisations. In the beginning of the world there
were different tribes organised as matriarchies. In those tribes motherhood was the
central power. While talking about this matriarchy, Walker writes,
 ….. If the producer of the earth was a large woman, a goddess, then
women must be her priests and must possess great and supernatural
powers. What the mind doesn’t understand, it worships or fears. I am
speaking here of man’s mind. The men both worshipped and feared
the women.
(Alice Walker, 2010: 49)
The place of a woman is highly appreciated by Alice Walker in the novel. Every
woman is trained by her mother generation to generation. The women characters
discussed in the novel have a positive attitude towards their society, culture, men and
women. This motherhood is considered to be womanist motherhood.

Miss Lissie, one of the major women characters in the novel, explains her
mother as the queen of their tribe. She says,

I suppose she was what queens were originally thought: a wise

woman, a healer, a woman of experience and vision, a woman
superbly trained by her mother. A really good person, whose words
were always heard by the Clan.
(Alice Walker, 2010: 355)

In the novel several matriarchies are portrayed by the author. Fanny’s family is an
ideal example of the case. In the house of Fanny there are two grandmothers–Celie
and Shug along with her mother, Olivia. Fanny states about her house, “In our house,
however, it paid to be a girl, and all my womanish ways were approved.” (Alice
Walker, 2010: 155) Fanny, after being a girl, gets all the love and care from her
mother and grandmothers. This due care and attention is a womanist behaviour of
Fanny’s mother and grandmothers.

The novel specially talks about motherhood and motherly figures. There are
several biological mothers referred to in the novel. The elder Zede, the junior Zede,
Celie and Olivia are presented in the novel as mothers. The novel has discussed the
mother child relationship in different ways. Carlotta and her mother Zede, the junior,
have proper understanding between them. Zede has taught an art of tailoring to her
daughter, Carlotta. She has a great role to play in the development of her daughter,
Carlotta. Carlotta is married to Arveyda and has certain critical problems in her
family. In this relation she is helped by Miss Lissie as a mother helps a daughter. She
also helps another major characters of the novel, such as Suwelo, Arveyda and Fanny
to get in contact with their past. Her mothering is a social nurturing for the women
and men mentioned in the novel. Carlotta and Suwelo are helped by Miss Lissie to
reconnect to their own mothers. This relation is a womanist love for the men and
women. This novel is a clear presentation of Alice Walker’s universalist view. It also
discusses the relationship between all aspects of one’s own personality, between
different races and sexes, between people of all places and species. The novel deals
with the women’s experiences and the motherhood that make it a womanist novel.

3.2. Summary

Alice Walker is considered as a writer of expressive fictions. Her concerns of

racial, sexist and gender issues have found place in her novels. The black women’s
struggle for wholeness and survival is reflected in her works. The black women and
their families are presented by Alice Walker with their specific tasks. She says, “I am
committed to exploring the oppressions, the insanities, the loyalties and the triumphs
of black women.” (Alice Walker, 1973: 192) The women presented in her novels
demonstrate their concerns for the black extended families as viewed by womanists.
Her women range from the state of slavery to the revolutionary women. Walker has
used in her works a distinctive voice of a woman immersed in her southerness,
blackness and womanhood. She also attacks on the sexual violence and physical
abuse prevalent in the American Southern black society.

The Color Purple, the third novel of Alice Walker, won her the 1983 Pulitzer
Prize and the 1983 American Book Award, as well as a nomination for a 1982
National Book Critics Circle Award. Because of The Color Purple Alice Walker is
recognised as the first African American woman writer to win the Pulitzer Award for
the novel. The novel presents and discusses the issues of incest, sexism, racism,
lesbianism and gender. It is an epistolary novel in which the protagonist Celie writes
letters to God, to her sister Nettie, and Nettie writes letters to Celie. This is a story of
Celie’s growth from an abused, silenced and suspended woman to a woman with
independence, liberation and a woman with purpose. The protagonist of the novel,
Celie develops a liberated spirit, fights her battle and acquires her inner strength. She
develops bonds with other women, like Shug, Sofia, Squeak and Nettie, to fight
against the sexism and economic deprivation. As a womanist character, Celie
develops a lesbian relationship with Shug. As Walker explains womanist woman
loves other woman sexually and non-sexually and loves the culture of woman, Celie
develops proper bonds with Shug and Sofia. Her quest for self and her journey
towards wholeness and survival begins at the age of fourteen. In this age her physical
and psychological development is in the process due to this she lacks the stamina to
resist the sexual and physical abuse by her stepfather. Her early marriage to Mr.— or
Albert, against her will, is another hindrance in the way of her development. She has
no way to express and speak to her inner. She starts writing her views to God who is
not receiver of her letters. Yet she fights her battle for the survival and forgives all
who abuse and tortures her. Gerri Bates writes,

Walker affirms that the key to wholeness is forgiveness; thus, when

Celie manages to pick up the pieces and move on with her existence
accepting herself and forgiving herself, not seeing Albert as an enemy
or holding a grudge against him, the two of them begin a friendly
relationship.
(Gerri Bates, 2005: 100)

Celie forgives her stepfather, Alphonso, for his abuse and Mr.—’s children for
disrespect they give to her. Along with Celie, Sofia also fights her battle as a
womanist character. But she becomes a victim of white racism in the North of
America. She manages her journey towards wholeness with the help of Celie, Shug
and her husband, Harpo. Finally, Mr.— acknowledges Celie’s independence and
helps her in the work of quilt making. Sofia becomes a worker in a store for her
economic independence.

In the novel the characters like Celie, Shug, Sofia and Nettie are the examples
of strength against all oppressions. Because of their love for each other and their own
culture, they can reach their desired destination. In this journey they are supported by
their own womanist way of thinking and actions. This makes the novel a best
example of Walker’s womanist work.

Walker has presented her womanism in her fourth novel The Temple of My
Familiar. This novel is also a womanist in its content. Though there is no straight
forward presentation of womanism in the novel, the women characters presented in
the novel deal with the issues of racism, sexism and social oppression. In relation to
the womanism in the novel, Gerri Bates rightly states,

Conversations between characters focus on spiritual connections,

past and present and a plea for people of African heritage to
discover a lost spirituality and recognise its value.
 (Gerri Bates, 2005:103)

In this relation the characters in the novel search for the self and spirituality. This
search leads them to the wholeness and survival with the help of forgiveness and
acceptance.

The Temple of My Familiar illustrates the universality, non-separatist attitude

of the women characters and women’s love for women’s culture. Walker has stated in
the novel that in order to be whole as a person he or she has to be at peace with
everyone and every element or creature around him or her. There are narrations of
three couples those struggle for a peaceful understanding between genders, races,
places and times. The novel is a practical representation of the universal side of the
concept of womanism. Along with the stress on concrete issues of black feminism
and sexism, Walker has given the stress on the universal side of the term womanism.
This stress can be located in the novel with the help of behaviours of the characters in
it. Walker has picturised three major women characters and three major men
characters. Miss Lissie, Carlotta and Fanny major women characters of the novel, are
presented as the artists and mothers with womanist views. Their arts and motherly
natures are linked with the experiences and their journey towards the wholeness as
the persons.

The novel is shaped by Alice Walker with the help of her specific preference
for African American women, their families and the relations with their men and
society. All the main characters in the novel are spiritually fragmented and they
struggle against a fear, frustration and conflicts in their lives. Arveyda and Carlotta
suffer from the conflicts between them as Arveyda is in love with Carlotta’s mother,
Zede, the junior. When Carlotta comes to know about their love she gets frustrated
and gets separated from her husband, Arveyda. At the same time Fanny and Suwelo
lose their interest in each other and Fanny wants divorce from her husband, Suwelo.
These separatist views bring all the characters to a state of hatred for each other.
Finally, as they search for their pasts they come to a conclusion that the forgiveness is
a proper solution for their wholeness and survival. All the women and men forgive
each other after confronting their pasts and start living together and become non-
separatists. They share their insights and “they all vaguely realize they have a purpose
in each other’s lives. They have collective means by which each of them will grow.”
(Alice Walker, 2010: 398) With this understanding, all of them help each other in the
process of their development towards survival and wholeness.

Works Cited

Bates, Gerri. Alice Walker: A Critical Companion. Westport: Greenwood press, 2005.
Butler, Evans Elliot. Race, Gender and Desire : Narrative Strategies in the Fiction of
Toni Cade Bambra, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1989. Print.
Gillespie, Carmen. Critical Companion to Alice Walker: A Literary Reference to Her
Life and Work. New York: Facts on File, 2011. Print.
Goodman, Lisbeth. ed. Gender, Race, Class and Fiction: Literature and Gender.
London: The Open University Press, 1996. Print.
LaGrope, Kheven. ed. Alice Walker: The Color Purple. New York: Redopi,
2009. Print.

Lauret, Maria. Alice Walker. Palgrave: McMillan, 2011. Print.

Nayak, Kishori. “In Search of Alternatives : Identity and Multiculturalism in Alice

Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar.” Haritham 14 . 2 (2002):46-55.
Print.
Ranveer, Kashinath. “Alice Walker: An African American Womanist Writer.”
Perspectives on the Afro-American Novel. ed. Tarlochan Singh Anand.
Jalandhar: ABS Publication, (1994): 103-135. Print.
Sheeja, S. Angelin. “Mapping the Black Culture in Alice Walker’s The Temple of My
Familiar.” The Journal for English Language and Literary Studies 3 . 4
(2013): 9-15. Print.
Shukla, Shilpa, Banerji Niroj. “The shadowed Identity : A Study of Alice Walker’s
The Color Purple.” Academic Research International 2 . 2 (2012): 729
– 745. Print.

Sol, Adam. “Question of Mastery in Alice Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar.”

Critique 43.4 (2002): 393-404. Print.
Tate, Linda. "No Place Like Home: Learning to Read Two Writers' Maps: A
Southern Weave of Women.” Fiction of the Contemporary South. The
University of Georgia Press, Athens, Georgia, 1994. Print.

Walker, Alice. The Color Purple [1982]. London: Phoenix, 2004. Print.

— —. The Temple of My Familiar [1989]. New York: Mariner Books, 2010. Print.

— —. In The Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose. New York: A

Harvest Book Harcourt, 1983. Print.
Willis, Gladys. Alice Walker’s Influence on Womanist Theology. New York: Xlibris,
2006. Print.
Websites

<en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Womanism<

< http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Walker<

< http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/alice-walker-b-1944<

< http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7380.Alice_Walker>

Interviews

O’Brien, John. Walker, Alice: Interview in Interviews with Black Writers, New York:
Liveright, 1973.