양성평등의 구현: 엘리스 워커의 컬러 퍼플

Abstract

The Equality of Both Sexes in Walker’sThe Color PurpleGil-soo KimThis study examines The Color Purple by Alice Walker with the viewpoint of both sexes equality. Walker sticks to not only her black feminist tradition but also Hurston’s narrative strategy. She describes the women's oppression in relation to the sexual discrimination and the patriarchal ideology through her writings. Walker depicts an distorted consciousness in her protagonists. So I intend to trace the protagonists’ physical and mental struggles and their life based on the black female community in this novel. Especially, I’v set a goal to examine the author's strategies of both sexes equality. Walker links the sexual oppression of black women to the patriarchal ideology. The Color Purple shows us the very positive portrayals of homosexual love, and that of lesbian love for equality of both sexes. The Color Purple embodies the greatest equality of both sexes, which is to collapse the inhumane categories and to seek the dignity of human life. It contains her belief that life should achieve the harmonious wholeness, that is, the happy life of gender equality. And the black female community contains a new paradigm enhancing gender equality and homosexuality. At the end of the novel, by sharing quilting with Albert, Celie regains the equality of both sexes being crushed by the patriarchal system. Ultimately, Celie completes her relationships with both men and women. I dare say that this equality of both sexes represents Walker’s theme of a principle of human rights for the future oriented society.