Concept of womanism: A study of alice walker's the color purple

An effort has been made in the present research paper to explore the concept of “Womanism” in Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple (1982). In this novel, Walker examines the estrangement and violence that have marked the relationship between black men and women. The story chronicles the life of a black African-American girl Celie—a poor, barely literate black woman in the South who struggles to escape the brutality and degradation by men. Walker's black womanist consciousness is characterized by sexual, racial, cultural, national, economic and political considerations. Celie's initiation into black womanhood is achieved through her relationship with Shug Avery. Celie celebrates her own genuine and real black womanist self by liberating herself from the patriarchal dictatorship. For achieving this, Celie reinterprets history by initiating an alternative myth—the goddess before God, the mother before the father; womb envy rather than penis envy by forming community of woman who facilitate one another's growth in course of the action in the novel.