The Color Purple: A Pantheism of God

In The Color Purple, as female characters have been marginalized and abused, Walker attempts to underlie women s systematic oppression through giving them the opportunity to write about their understanding and experience of their surroundings. Through asserting the concept of female connectedness, female characters join in realizing that liberating their bodies is the basic phase towards destroying patriarchal and phallocentric system of domination. It is Shug who makes Celie familiar with her body, “Listen, she say, right here in your pussy is a little button that gits real hot when do you know what with somebody. It git hotter and hotter and then it melt. That the good part. But other parts good too, she says. Lot of sucking go on there, and there, she says. Lot of finger and tongue work’’ (Walker 74). To free herself, Celie must first get acquainted with her body and sexual desires that predominate it. In addition, the feminine body is often described as an oracle, a place of wonder and divinity, this could be detected when Celie washed Shug s body for the first time, the first time she saw a woman naked. Celie comments, “I wash her body, it feels like I m praying” (49). Shug helps Celie reclaim her body and appreciate her private parts. Recognizing the beauty of her genitalia is therefore significant for Celie to gain self-independence through written language, and to come to terms with her repressed desires and childhood traumas. Another aspect of rejecting male dominance in the novel is lesbianism. Female characters are induced to free themselves from the one-sex view of the body. They came to believe that liberating themselves from husbands and children is the milestone to attain self-identity and self-knowledge,
‘‘This sexual orientation is urged as the ultimate expression of freedom from male dominance’’ (Davidson 411). It all started when Celie saw Shug naked for the first time, while she was washing her body. Celie overwhelmed by the scene, ‘‘It feel like I m praying’’ (Walker 49). Along with other brazen sexual scenes (78-79-80-114-115), Celie and Shug reflect on thwarting society from patriarchal defining orders of sexuality. They attempted to liberate women from conventional feminine instrumentalism and urge other women to call for an end to systematic and hierarchical oppression.
Female characters undergo patriarchal dominance and its ensuing severe abuse and mistreatment. However, through female connectedness, Celie manages to gain freedom and personal worth and transcribe them into words. Celie succeeds in changing her view of herself and males view of women in the story. The Color Purple regards patriarchal system as responsible for women s historical second-class social and cultural status and not to the essentialist fallacy that women have been aligned with. It is by liberating both women and men that full justice and equality can be attained.
Walker portrays not only women, but also nature as an active character in the novel. She represents nature as a living entity which acts along and reacts with human characters, and not just inertly kept in the background. This idea is made clear through the Olinka’s rejection of exploiting nature for the European man s interests. Also, through depicting nature as ubiquitous in most of their cultural activities and part of their identities. Walker evinces how the Olinka’s agricultural life, huts, religious beliefs, and their perception of the world and human life are all intermeshed with nature, and how the Europeans see otherwise. Through portraying the tragedy of the Olinka tribe, Walker asserts the concept of interconnectedness of human beings with the natural world. She illustrates how the Europeans destroyed the Olinka village, the yam crop which keeps them healthy and the roofleaf, ‘‘The thing that they worship,’’ (154), the covering of their dwellings. ‘‘The ancient, giant mahogany trees, all the trees, the game, everything of the forest was being destroyed, and the land was forced to lie flat, he said, and bare as the palm of his hand’’ (171).
The deplorable tapestry that delineated the spiritual and intellectual transformation of female characters has additionally altered their conceptualization and definition of God. As stated by Shug, this understanding is about reaching a certain point where ‘‘Ain t no way to read the bible and not think God white, she say. Then she sigh. When I found out I thought God was white, and a man, I lost interest’’ (196). Shug s view can be interpreted as radical and placed with those who revolt, as Cynthia Eller opines:
The feminist rejection of established religion saw women s oppression in patriarchal religion occurring along many axes—theological, biblical, institutional, and so on—and all of these came in for feminist criticism. But the entire interlocking system of oppression was finally summed up in a single metaphor: the maleness of God. Simply put, a religion with a male god is no religion for women. (Eller 47)
God is perceived rather as a manifestation of the natural world and natural phenomena, and it s up to human beings to appreciate and admire its creation. ‘‘God ain t a he´-or-she,’’ Shug claims, ‘‘but a It’’ (196), ‘‘[It s] a feeling of being part of everything, not seperate at all,’’ (197) she adds. The first words written by Celie are ‘‘Dear God,’’ (1) and the novel ends with a letter, the salutation of which reads, ‘‘Dear God. Dear stars, dear trees, dear peoples. Dear Everything. Dear God’’ (291). This mirrors an obvious transformation from a belief in a single God, incarnated in a white man, to a God that exists inside everyone and all around, and is part of the human and nonhuman world, to the extent that, as Shug thinks, ‘‘I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don t notice it’’ (197), and here exactly lies the true meaning of The Color Purple. It is about appreciating and admiring God s beauty through his creation, this understanding is made clear through recognizing the shared causes of oppression, the dualistic mindset that leads to a global pattern of oppression. The Color Purple sees that women and nature are similarly devalued and exploited in relation to men. Walker believes that it is inappropriate to seek to liberate only women without liberating the natural world and its inhabitants, which is also systematically oppressed and exploited by men. By recognizing linked oppressions, liberating one oppressed group only is insufficient and self-centered. Considering patriarchal systems of domination exposed by ecofeminists, the goal is therefore unearthing common causes and breaking down these established, ingrained systems of oppression, mainly through recognizing the inherent value and beauty of both women and the natural world.
In short, The Color Purple is a true feminine text that writes about black women and consequently brings other women to writing. Through writing, Celie changed her position in history, language, and in real life. The novel predicts a brighter future for the entire black community via unity and connectedness. The feminine text adopts an egalitarian approach to writing that views the woman as able to shun patriarchal system of oppression and recreate her context and identity as well as of man and other life forms equally. It highlights the idea that man s needs are as equally important as the needs of woman and other parts of creation.

Sources
Davidson, Jo. A. ‘‘Modern Feminism, Religious Pluralism, and --script--ure.’’ Journal of the
Adventist Theological Society, 10/1-2, 1999.

Eller, Cynthia. Living in the Lap of the Goddess: The Feminist Spirituality Movement in America.
New York: Crossroad, 1993. Web. https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.1997.1.1.156

Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. London: Women s Press, 1992.

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