The Color Purple Themes

Black female characters in this book tend to be victims of violence. Men tend to attempt to exert their dominance over women, particularly their wives, by beating them. Men also commit sexual viole...

The protagonist narrates the novel through a series of letters, the majority of which are addressed to God. Initially, the protagonist, Celie, sees God as an old white man. Being a black woman abus...

At the beginning of the novel, the protagonist is an extremely downtrodden character. As an African-American female living in the pre-Civil Rights South, surrounded by other poor, uneducated blacks...

Love, in The Color Purple is not only romantic, but the love that exists within families as well. The protagonist’s first experience with love is her love for her little sister. Her love is d...

The protagonist’s main concept of family is her connection to her sister over many years. Though physically separated from all of her family members, Celie maintains her love and affection fo...

In this novel, hardly anybody fares well in marriage, even if they love each other. Married people rarely love each other and, even when they do, they use violence to try to control their spouse...

For much of the book, the protagonist sees sex as a form of violence committed against her or at best, an uninspiring obligation to her husband. That is, until she meets a very inspiring woman name...

Early on, the protagonist begins to explain that she doesn’t look at men – they scare her. Instead, she looks at women. Women are the only people who have ever been kind to her. Her sex...

In this novel, most women either have to constantly fight against men, or completely submit and be trampled over. It is only the women with independent economic security that are able to stand up f...