Alice Walker: the Fighter of Black Women's Rights and Independence

This chapter deals with the summation based on the discussions done in the previous chapter. First of all, the reason for the choosing the author Alice Walker for this research is because she was the pioneer of Black women's education and independence, etc. she is a famous writer and an educator of the Black people. So, she later elevates herself to become a pioneer of women's education and independence in Africa. Her life stands as an example to show what women can achieve with learning and liberation. She is a woman, the Black woman and she has to face a lot of problems in her place. Alice Walker's The Color Purple is an autobiographical one. It is based on her grandmother's life. Her works are pointed out the women's liberation, education, etc.

Scholars around the world suggest that women's rights are often ignored which might be the product of gender and race. It finds that her works are entitled as men and women have equal rights in society. Most issues, like female's legal rights it could even be issues as marriage, divorce, rights, and leadership went to a different direction due to the existing misinterpretation of the African society. For instance, this study reveals women's rights, identity, and empowerment. In a similar manner, issues always related to women's rights, such as marriage and rights, the inheritance to property, etc.

Today women have acquired a much greater role in public life in employment and in all other fields of productions. Therefore, the issue of their fundamental rights, as well as gender equality, is to be considered as an issue of high importance. Most issues like female's legal rights, it could even be issues such as marriage, consent in marriage, divorce, inheritance rights, and leadership went to a different direction due to the existing misinterpretation of social laws. The African-American constitution notes that the State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth. But this statement is only applicable to public life not for personal life such as marriage, divorce, etc. As a result, personal rights have a great impact on women's lives. This clearly shows that rights have been modified and reconstructed to devalue women's rights. However, a redefining of women's rights is much needed to enhance women's political power and prestige. Only then, women can across their boundary and play an important role apart from their roles as daughters, wives, and mothers.

Alice Walker as an Influencer of Thoughts

The history of human life has always been a chronology of power structure with simultaneous oppression and marginalization of the weak, having been timed by hegemony. Alice Walker joins the rank of writers who have spelled pain and agony about the intense suffering caused by various factors such as society and culture. Writers are social activists in a sense as they produce and conduct revolutions with the written word which creates a spark into thousands to active and mobilize them to take up the cudgels and fight for their rights. Literature always has its lion's share in bringing, projecting and highlighting the changes in society.

Alice Walker is a novelist, short story writer, and poet. Among the Afro-American writers like Bell Hooks, Toni Morrison, Alice is considered one of the foremost Afro-American authors in the postmodern and postcolonial tradition.

In The Color Purple, her foremost novel, Alice makes the social sickness inherent in and brought about by the rush for money and power. The description of his characters inner landscapes the complexity of the themes evidence the debut of a promising artist. He delves into the analysis of his society, which with the shift from traditional codes of conducts, gives best to a breed of psychologically unbalanced characters. She is also a poet of outstanding repute and is known for words that focus on life in Africa. The author had chosen The Color Purple as his best novel because she wanted to tell about the suppression that happened in American.

The Color Purple opens with premonitions of disaster, hence the title of the first section deals with the presentiments, which effectively sets the tone for everything that happens in the course of the novel. The oppression of Black society is the dominant theme in the novel. The theme of corruption is not a new one in the Black people. The relationship between the father and daughter is an important sub-theme in this novel. She is particularly good at creating female characters. Like Celie, Nettie, Shug, Sophia, they almost all serve as protectors of the life-force, the foils to the oppression of men. Her works often point out the black and ominous in out-look, depict the problems which beset his homeland, famine and particularly poverty and political corruption. In her writings, she examines the relationship between the natural and spiritual world.

Her novel reflects the dilemma of individual freedom and liberation. Her method is to create main characters and restless whose experience is vicarious and who lives incomplete.

The first chapter ‘Introduction' deals with the cultural background of African-American literature. And it also provides a detailed study about the history of legend Alice Walker. Through her lifestyle, the background of his era is understood.

The second chapter ‘Social determinants, Oppression and Empowerment' in Alice Walker's The Color Purple deals with the twentieth century African and American society. The author depicts the public reality of her nation. It exposes the writing talent of Alice Walker. Her female character Celie, have a great role in the novel. This chapter also explains the Celie's and female characters struggle, Oppression and empowerment. It focuses on how the Black women suffer and it also delicates the clearest of Alice Walker's writing in term fervent approach towards women's problem in the society. She attempts to project the entire womanhood through his characters. Women are considered as weaker sex since time immemorial by our society. They had a lot of fear, anger, pain, bitterness, confusion, silence, humor, as well as pathos, underline in most of the women characters in the novel.

The third chapter deals with the theory, Black Feminism because she is a feminist writer; she is coined the new term ‘Womanism' in the world. She has to give more importance to the women character especially their rights, power, freedom, etc. Womanism, point out the women's liberation in Africa. This chapter explains the feministic aspect of The Color Purple.

The fourth chapter deals with the ‘Narrative Technique and the Character' of Alice Walker's The Color Purple. It is not written in an ordinary novel, because she used the epistolary form and also written in first person narrative. It discusses Alice Walker's style of writing, which is in any places autobiographical and delineates the experience of the men and women, questioning their identity. The literary technique 'epistolary narrative' is also used by the writer. When traditional narrative tells a story in a straightforward, linear and easy to follow old fashion, fragmented narratives, on the other hand, jumbled up the sequencing of a story, challenging the reader to piece toge4ther the different components of the story to make sense of it. Fragment narratives can start at the beginning of the action, and they often hop back and forth through the timeline of events. Fragment narration is undoubtedly used in The Color Purple.

Conclusions

To conclude, Alice Walker creates characters that live out their lives with extraordinary courage holding the strength of Black people's culture. They are oppressed emotionally and socially by the harmful effects of ill-treatment, oppression, and depression. Apart from presenting a live picture of the Black community, she also portrays the sufferings of the Black people in particular. She examines all sorts of injustice and prejudice faced by Black people's land. She demonstrates the stress and stains undergone by black people. The research has analyzed the true condition of the Black people in the most developed nation in the world, America. Her text provides the necessary data to know the cruelties experienced by the Black. The dissertation analyses the emotional and social effects of subjugation and sexual oppression faced by the Black people.