.png)
The Color Purple, first edition cover, 1962.
The Color Purple takes place in rural Georgia, where the lives and tribulations of the life of African-American women in the 1930's is laid bare. It starts in a very despairing manner exposing wide-scale family abuse and rape of women at home as a result of male domination.
Celie is the central character, abused by her husband Albert who treats her as his chattel and discards her after sex. Celie was raped by her stepfather and bore two children who subsequently disappeared. Nettie is her sister who escapes the dismal situation by going to London and joining a missionary group. She has a decent husband and lives a joyous life in Africa.
Albert takes on a mistress named Shug who is at first contemptuous of Celie, but later grows fond of her and establishes a bond. It all starts with Celie nursing Shug back to health when she falls sick. It grows into a lesbian affair and a few pages of this are the cause for demands that the book be banned in school libraries in USA.
Celie has no one to sympathise with her and confesses her troubles in letters addressed to God. This is how the first half of the story is told. She writes letters to Nettie but never gets a reply until she later discovers with Shug’s help that Nettie’s replies to her had been hidden, stashed away by her cruel husband in a trunk. From those letters, we learn of Nettie's voyage to Africa and her spiritual conversion, after finding that the white missionaries did not really care for the Olinka people or respect their traditions. In the end, the message is one of hope.
The Color Purple was turned into a musical in 2005 and played to sell-out audiences on Broadway during 2005 to 2008, earning eleven Tony Award nominations.
Scene from the musical The Color Purple – Fantasia Barrino, playing Celie, was wailing through her climactic solo, ‘I’m Here.’
The passage by Saras has the line from which the title of the novel is taken:
I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.
Joe’s passage has another comforting quote from a letter of Nettie:
Time moves slowly, but passes quickly.
