AFRICAN-AMERICAN CULTURE: BUSINESS AND EDUCATION

In The Color Purple, Alice Walker addresses significant African and African- American cultural issues, in
particular how business acumen as well as education and literacy can both liberate and repress African-
American people. Business themes in The Color Purple For the economic context in which the novel is
set, see Social and political context Early twentieth century American business. The Color Purple shows
how quickly black men and women are able to prosper in private enterprise, once the opportunity
arises.

Harpo becomes a new man when he discovers that he has a talent for making money (see Letter 32).
Building a juke joint behind his house entails long hours to complete the building and to make it a
successful venue for entertainment. Once it is built he becomes prosperous and the establishment
offers the opportunity for Shug Avery, Mary Agnes and various local musicians to earn money for
themselves as cabaret singers or band members. Harpo‘s efforts make it possible for him to support his
extended family and by the end of the narrative he is a more confident and considerate family man.

Shug Avery works hard at her singing career and earns enough to buy a big house in Memphis and a
second car (probably one of the first model T Fords, produced in America from 1908). At the time it
would be the height of fashion and an unusual thing for an African-American woman to own outright.

Although Alphonso (Pa) acquires ownership of his dry goods store by deceit, he nevertheless turns it
into a successful business which earns him sufficient income to build a large new house with extensive
grounds. When the business passes to Celie and Nettie, their natural father’s foresight and acumen plus
Alphonso’s attention to business ensure that the sisters inherit a valuable asset and face a secure and
prosperous future.

The name of Celie’s firm, ‘Folkspants Unlimited’ suggests her business has the potential for unlimited
growth. Walker does not mention the Great Depression which followed 1929, perhaps intending the
reader to infer that Celie’s determination and drive enables her to remain solvent even during a national
economic crisis. She is also able to provide work for a number of women as the business grows.

Grady operates an unusual but successful commercial enterprise growing and selling marijuana when he
moves to Panama with Mary Agnes. The reader is not told whether Grady’s enterprise succeeds or not,
but given the fact that he smokes a good deal of the product, it would seem unlikely.

Albert runs a large and prosperous farm on land which is extensive enough for him to parcel out
sufficient space to build Harpo a house when he marries Sofia.

Minor characters, like Sofia‘s second partner, Buster, and her sister Odessa’s husband, Jack, are be hard-
working black men who provide for their wives and children. The fact that Buster owns a car suggests
that he is quite well off.

Conclusion

Walker’s references to business are deliberately kept within quite small boundaries. Nevertheless, for
the central character, Celie, business success is closely bound up with her personal development and
plays a significant part in enabling her to achieve heightened self-awareness and contentment.
For characters like Alphonso, Albert and Harpo, success in business acts to an extent as a mitigating
factor in enabling the reader to see them not just as monsters or weaklings, but as men who work hard
to maintain their property, despite the challenges which face them as African-American men in a white
racist society.

EDUCATION AND LITERACY IN THE COLOR PURPLE

The significance of education The Color Purple has been described as a didactic novel, intended to teach
or morally instruct the reader. For Walker education is more than just learning to read or write. It is a
process by which a person can acquire knowledge by studying, or by experiencing life lessons that lead
to an understanding of many things. To become educated requires instruction of some sort, generally by
way of attending school. In The Color Purple, Nettie most benefits from this, while Celie’s schooling is
curtailed because of her unwanted pregnancies and her early marriage to Mr_ (Albert). As a result,
Nettie gains skills that enable her to become a missionary teacher, while Celie is bound to an abusive
domestic servitude that gives her little chance to develop intellectually.

In Letter 4 Celie tells Nettie to keep learning her ‘books’ so that she can escape, through factual
knowledge, from the ‘lies’ that Celie believes killed their mother. Education is a means of escape from a
world that is dominated by men. When Nettie begins to write regularly to Celie, she not only educates
her sister by sending detailed written accounts of Africa and its people, but also broadens Celie’s
horizons (and those of the novel’s reading audience).

Oral teaching

Limited access to formal education means that both male and female characters in The Color
Purple instruct one another mainly by word of mouth. Traditional beliefs, patterns of behaviour and
customs are ‘fixed’ by constant verbal repetition and once fixed are difficult to challenge or change.
Albert, for example, keeps telling Harpo that wives are like children and should be disciplined, implicitly
educating another generation of violent men. Shug’s positive verbal reinforcement teaches Celie how to
understand and appreciate her own body and also helps Celie to understand the nature of God.

The threat of education

There are however sections of the novel where education is presented as dangerous or is seen as a
means of forcing cultural change. The Olinka do not believe girls should be educated, which suggests
that African women must remain subservient to men Samuel, Nettie and Corrine attempt to educate the
Olinka heathens by teaching them Christian beliefs that are alien to their African culture Darlene tries to
interfere with Celie’s language register and style, telling her that the way she speaks is ‘wrong’. It is Shug
Avery who helps her understand that linguistic diversity is normal.

Female education and written expression

The themes of education for girls and women’s writing also help to connect the African and American
sections of the novel. Nettie teaches Celie in America, in the way that Olivia teaches Tashi in Africa. Both
women carry out their tasks in secret, because men resent and fear the consequences for themselves if
women achieve independence through education.

The writing of letters from both sides of the world becomes a symbol of defiance. Celie’s letters are both
a record and an accusation of neglect and abuse, while Nettie’s letters are full of critical observations
and comments on the cruelty of white colonial expansion and also of the way in which African men
behave towards women. In this sense writing is seen as a powerful means of expressing and sharing the
opinions of women during the time in which the novel is set.

The influence of politics

The Color Purple is a political novel, with strong opinions transmitted on the problems that affect the
African-American descendants of slaves in a post-colonial context, as well as the Olinka people of Africa,
victims of white colonial expansion. Walker situates Celie’s birth only fifty years after slavery had been
abolished. She lives in a society where the economic and social structures of slavery are still evident.
White dominance influences the characters in the American South, and Nettie and her missionary
companions in a colonised Africa.

COLONIALISM IN THE COLOR PURPLE

Abuses of power

Much of the conflict in The Color Purple springs from the tension that exists between people of different
ethnicity and social standing. Men abuse women, white people abuse black people, and colonial
empires abuse their colonial subjects. The abuse of power whether wielded by black or white
characters, underpins nearly all the inter-personal conflict in the story

 Alphonso (Pa) exercises complete control as an abusive and violent father

 Albert (Mr_ ) exercises the same control over his children and both his wives
 Samuel and Corrine, as representatives of a colonial system, attempt to impose
European Christian ideology to control the lives and beliefs of the Olinka people
 As white upper-class people in a world order that privileges them over those who are black and
poor, Miss Millie, Eleanor Jane and Doris Baines exert control over both African-Americans and
Africans.

Colonialism in Africa 

Active oppression

The tragedy of the Olinka tribe is the most significant example of active colonial oppression in the novel.
While both French and Dutch imperialism is mentioned in the novel, Samuel and Corinne’s missionary
work is administered through London, so it is the British Empire that has the most direct impact. Walker
does not explicitly criticise their colonial greed, but simply illustrates how the English rubber planters
destroy the Olinka village, the yam crop which keeps them healthy and the roofleaf that is honoured as
a covering for their homes.

Well-intentioned help

Even well-meaning efforts to help Africans can be regarded as colonialist. Nettie, Samuel and Corinne
naively attempt to connect with their slave ancestors, discover their ancestral roots and convert
their heathen brothers and sisters to a white-based Christianity, yet natives do not see this as being
relevant to their African culture. The complicity of the missionaries becomes clear when the Olinka
village is destroyed. They are incapable of criticising the exploitation of the Olinka people, who have
neither the technology, military power, political influence nor understanding of the processes of
modernisation to oppose colonial development. Even the hoped for ancestral connection fails. Samuel
and Corinne find that the Africans do not care about American slavery or its effects, but regard the
Americans as useless, alien outsiders. Ultimately, unable to truly connect or stop what is happening to
the Olinkas, Nettie and Samuel have no choice but to leave and return to the United States. There is a
sense in which both black Americans and Africans are the victims of white oppression, yet little evidence
that either can be of help or assistance to the other.

Independence Day

The colonial and imperial past of the United States is clearly addressed at the end of the novel, when
Celie’s extended family is reunited on July the Fourth, which is a national holiday to celebrate American
Independence from British colonialism. Harpo remarks that the family can enjoy being together
because, while white Americans celebrate Independence from the UK, black people can have a day off
work to ‘celebrate themselves’ instead. The sarcastic comment is aimed at white people’s
understanding of white American history and a white definition of patriotism. Harpo, a descendant of
slaves, sees little significance in a celebration that has nothing to do with the freedom of black men, but
is concerned only with white men’s struggles for political control of a newly colonised continent.

Female challenges to male dominance

Walker examines in some detail the troubled relationships between men and women. Within the society
of the time, men were breadwinners who exerted control over the family and held the dominant role in
family life, while women were expected to be obedient, bear children and look after the household. This
is as true for Miss Millie as it is for Celie, although the novel portrays the greater honour accorded to a
white wife.

Patterns of male oppression

Many black males, lacking power and control in a white dominated society, turned their frustration and
anger on their wives, partners and female family members. In consequence, black women were doubly
oppressed; firstly by white men and women because of their perceived inferiority as African-Americans
and secondly by their husbands, partners and other black males, because they were convenient victims.
The combination of male oppression and physical assault in The Color Purple leads to a loss of female
identity and individuality in a number of characters, most obviously Celie. Her self-worth and identity is
only recovered by the ministry of a woman, Shug. Walker also addresses various forms of brutal
violence, such as domestic incest and rape which reveal the weak internal structures of some African-
American families. Fonso’s control of the family’s private resources effectively gives him license to
violate his wife and his stepdaughter. Albert’s treatment of Celie reveals a similar lack of respect for
women. It is chilling that this model is passed down through the generations. In a patriarchal system
older males possess power over younger and make them conform, with brutal control being regarded as
a measure of ‘manhood’. That Harpo and Albert are rescued from this pattern is due to Sofia and Shug
Avery, who combine ‘masculine’ strength with ‘feminine’ nurture and are quite capable of fighting back.

A parallel situation of patriarchal (and colonial) oppression

Working as a missionary in Africa, Nettie finds that the patriarchal system of oppression of the Olinka
women is not dissimilar to the situation she left in America. African women are defined only in terms of
the value they have for their husbands; girls are denied education and ritual female circumcision and
scarring leaves many African women joyless and spiritually dead. As women, Corinne and Nettie
encourage female participation in education which is ultimately respected. But their efforts are
thwarted by the greater power of white colonialism, whose economic demands mean that no-one
beyond the age of seven is educated. Initially, Tashi’s resistance to the colonists means that she retreats
back to the physical oppression of female genital mutilation, until the ‘new man’ Adam convinces her
that she can have a secure future as an equal by his side.

The cyclical nature of oppression

Many characters in the novel demonstrate the cyclical nature of violence. Victims of sexism and racism
can become perpetrators themselves:

 Harpo, for example, beats Sofia because his father (Albert) taunts him by saying that Sofia’s
strong willed resistance makes Harpo less of a man
 Albert is violent and mistreats his family much as his own tyrannical father treated him
 Having been separated from her children for twelve years, Sofia’s deep sense of outrage and
hurt leads her to reject Eleanor Jane’s son, Reynolds. Though an innocent baby, he represents
everything she despises about the white race as a whole and she is unable to offer him love.

The novel’s resolution

How can the repeating pattern of victim becoming aggressor be addressed? The novel’s message is that
women must stand up against physical violence and oppression by helping one another: 

 Albert’s sisters attempt to help Celie, whilst Shug’s intervention with her lover gives Celie
greater freedom within her marriage
 When Mary Agnes helps Sofia to be released from prison, Sofia looks after Mary Agnes’ child
when she decides to go away and be a singer
 Olivia supports the African girl, Tashi, and in the Olinka tribe the women have strong friendship
groups amongst themselves
 The women also free their men from patriarchal conformity, Sofia encouraging Harpo’s
nurturing qualities, whilst Shug and later Celie support Albert’s creativity and compassion.

Individuals like Shug Avery and Sofia can fight for themselves but, alone, many of the women in The
Colour Purple are weak. Only when united is their strength and resilience more than equal to resist male
domination.

SHUG
Shug Avery is a remarkable character, named Lillie by her parents but known to all her admirers as
Queen Honeybee, Sugar or Shug. Celie describes her as sweet but many of Shug’s characteristics
contradict that idea. She is a woman of great strength of character; feisty, sometimes aggressive, always
ready to fight for what she believes in and seemingly unafraid to face anything that life throws at her. As
one of her nicknames suggests, she is the dominant character around which many people revolve.

A fractured past

Her first appearance in the novel is as a very sick woman, who arrives at her lover Albert’s house to be
nursed back to health from some disease that she has caught while touring nightclubs as a professional
blues singer. Although Walker never tells us what caused the sickness, there are hints from townspeople
and churchgoers that Shug’s lifestyle has resulted in her catching some kind of ’nasty woman’s disease’
(i.e. sexually transmitted).

Shug reveals to Celie that her mother never really loved her and would not even touch her, whilst her
father made sexual advances. As a result, Shug learned to stand up for herself and left home to make
her own way in life, achieving independence at an early age (a direct contrast to Celie’s timidity and lack
of self- esteem). Although Shug’s affair with Albert has lasted for many years, she has deserted the three
children she bore him, leaving them to be brought up by her parents, who have disowned her because
of her chosen lifestyle and what they see as her sinful ways.

When Shug performs, she lives up to her name, beguiling the customers, but she can also be savagely
sarcastic and quick-tempered. Celie describes Shug at one point as having a mouth that is full of ‘claws’,
like a wild animal.

Black success

Untypical for the time in which the novel is set, Shug is a rich and successful black performer, having
made enough money to build a large house in Memphis and run a car. Her clothes are elegant and of
high quality and she takes pride in her appearance. Walker probably based her character on some of the
famous African- American women blues singers of the 1920s and 30s. In Letter 33 for example, Shug
claims to be a friend of Bessie Smith (see Synopses and commentaries Letter 33; also Letter 46), but she
is only portrayed once as a performer when she appears in Harpo’s juke joint and dedicates an original
song to Celie, in appreciation of her nursing Shug back to health. Shug is described as having very black
skin, which at the time was associated with those at the bottom of the African-American social scale, but
this only seems to make Shug more determined to make an impact on the people she meets. It may
influence Celie’s physical attraction to her, since Celie’s own skin is also extremely dark.

Comparison with Celie

Shug and Celie may share similar skin but their appearance and personalities are quite different:

 Celie is consistently described as ugly, whereas Shug is always represented as beautiful

 Shug’s figure is attractive, whereas Celie is often described as skinny
 Shug dresses elegantly and Celie’s clothes are only ‘fit for church’
 Shug is confident and articulate, whereas Celie finds it almost impossible to carry out a
conversation and obviously thinks of herself as ignorant and worthless
  Shug, when performing, can dominate an audience and she dominates her male lovers also.
Celie on the other hand never seeks to be in the limelight and is so traumatised by her
experiences with men that she can only cope with her shame by imagining that she is made of
wood.

ALBERT

The un-named husband

Albert is known to Celie only as Mr_ until the final letter, when she finally accepts him as a member of
her family, although not as a husband. The couple’s marriage is never dissolved, Celie and Albert
remaining man and wife, but not living together after Shug Avery and Celie begin their love affair and
move to Shug’s home in Memphis. It is not until the end of Letter 89 that Celie acknowledges their
changed relationship and uses his Christian name, Albert, signifying that they can now accept one
another as friends.

Like Fonso and, it is implied, all men in this African-American community, Albert lacks respect for
women, apart from one - his long term lover Shug Avery. He regards his second marriage, to Celie, as a
business transaction, acquiring two pieces of ‘property’ - a woman to look after his children and a cow.
In the negotiations with Fonso over taking Celie as a wife, it is obvious that Albert regards the cow as the
more important factor in clinching the deal.

Attitude to relationships

Albert has an appetite for sex and uses Celie to satisfy his desires, without showing her any love and
completely disregarding her emotional and physical health. Celie describes her sexual experiences with
Albert in terms that suggest an animal doing its ‘business’. The beatings that he inflicts on his wife show
Mr _ to be callous; the insults that she endures about her appearance and housekeeping illustrate
abusive cruelty. His belief (like that of many African-American men of the time), that his masculinity
automatically grants him total power over his wife, justifies the beatings in his eyes. He exercises this
power when he tries to stop Celie going to Harpo’s juke joint to hear Shug Avery sing. Albert’s need to
coerce covers his own weakness – he was never strong enough to stand up to his family or fight for
Shug. Consequently he takes out his resentment on anyone he regards as weaker than himself. There is
no justification for his treatment of Celie, particularly his spiteful decision to withhold Nettie’s letters
from her once he is thwarted by Nettie’s escape. His total indifference to the well-being of his children
and his laziness also make the reader judge him negatively. Furthermore, his advice to Harpo to assert
physical control over Sofia perpetrates the family’s history of unhappy marriages.

Judgement

Knowing that Mr _ has better qualities but never shows them to Celie somehow makes it worse. The
overall impression of Albert throughout most of the narrative is of a man who is fundamentally weak,
vindictive and unattractive. Hiding Nettie’s letters is a pivotal point in the novel’s plot. When Shug
discovers what Albert has done, even her feelings towards him change and the two women join
together in opposition against him.

It is the strength of this relationship that enables Celie to curse Albert, turning back on him all the evil he
has created - or wishes - for Celie. This is a point of judgement which, although Albert resists it at the
time, leads to the breakdown necessary for his eventual restoration. It is significant that he only
recovers after making amends to his wife and, at Harpo’s insistence, returning her sister’s letters to her.

Restoration

It is only late in the narrative (from Letter 79 onwards) that Albert’s character begins to change. He
discovers feelings in common with Celie once he understands their mutual affection for Shug and by
letting go of his oppressive ‘male’ conditioning in this way he is enabled to transform himself into a man
who can act naturally, in harmony with his environment rather than coercing it. His love of beauty and
creativity re-emerges in his shell collection and shirt designs. His compassion, once solely for Shug, starts
to extend to his wider family, whom he learns to appreciate rather than try to dominate. Ultimately he
forges a relationship with Celie based on respect, at last valuing her opinions and skills. Although some
have suggested that this is in part due to her recently acquired wealth, there is no sign that Albert lacks
materially – simply that he seeks affection, realising that no one has ever loved him other than Shug,
and that he is accountable for much of that.

Walker has defended the way that she depicts African-American men against much criticism by stating
that the story is one of redemption. She claims that far from being a negative portrayal of an oppressive
male society, the men in the novel are themselves victims of oppression. As descendants of slaves and
slave owners, she argues, African-Americans must not only struggle against seeing themselves as the
victims of slavery but also fight against a desire to assert themselves as ‘masters’ over others. Her
assessment of the character of Albert is that he is a black man who has the ability to change and his
ability to love Shug Avery means that he can also find love for himself. In this way she justifies the
transformation that takes place in Albert’s character in the latter half of the novel.

NETTIE

Thematic significance

Nettie’s history plays an important part in The Color Purple and embodies one of the novel’s
major themes - the relationship of the black African to the black African-American experience. As
a missionary, working with the Olinka tribe in Africa, Walker uses Nettie as the voice which articulates
the evils of colonialism as well as the difficulties of imposing a religious ideology on a race of people who
not only do not understand it, but see it as an irrelevance to their culture and lifestyle.

A responsible woman

Nettie is the person who ultimately brings up Celie’s illegitimate children, Olivia and Adam, indicating
her sense of responsibility. She has a strong sense of duty and an intense loyalty to her family. Even
when she fears that her letters will not reach her sister, Nettie never stops writing throughout their
separation and constantly refers to the love that exists between them. She regards it as a privilege to be
able to watch over Celie’s children as it gives her an opportunity to express that affection. Nettie takes
education seriously, seeing it as a means by which African- Americans can escape from an oppressive,
restricted lifestyle. She is the more intelligent of the two sisters, her fondness of reading illustrated by
her use of a more standard form of English in her letters and careful composition (similar to the
style found in missionary magazines of the 1920s and 30s). Her horizons are extended when the well-
educated Samuel and Corinne teach her as a trainee missionary and take her with them across the globe
to work in Africa.

Comparison to Celie

Physically, Nettie is supposed to resemble her sister but is considered to be more attractive. This of
course exposes her to the threat Celie faces of sexual advances from both Fonso (Pa) and Albert (Mr_),
which results in her leaving. Celie and Nettie share a common bond in that both are isolated and lonely,
literally existing on opposite sides of the globe for a large part of the narrative. Both, to an extent, are
also outsiders in the society in which they live. Nettie tries hard to understand the culture of the Olinka
people and does succeed in making friendships, although only with a tiny number of Olinka women,
most notably the girl Tashi and her mother Catherine.

Just as Shug is initially jealous of Celie, so Nettie arouses Corinne’s mistrust and jealousy and both sisters
are further excluded. Despite this, Nettie remains understanding and forgiving and eventually her
patience and tolerance are rewarded, after Corinne’s death, by her own marriage to Samuel. There is
never the least hint of sexual attraction between the two while Corinne is still living, although they
clearly admire one another. One must assume that Walker deliberately creates Nettie as a pure, almost
virginal character. Unlike her sister she is not overpowered by the sexual desires of the men she
encounters and thus serves as a contrast to Celie’s experience. She also better fits the stereotype of
what a dedicated Christian missionary should be.

A nurturing carer

As a substitute mother to Celie’s children, Nettie shows the dedication and resilience common in many
of the novel’s female characters. Her attitude towards Olivia and Adam is one of watchful responsibility
and her careful, anxious accounts of their lives create an interesting counterpoint to the comments
about African society, in particular those that relate to the problems of mothers and daughters. Nettie
identifies for example, the misogynist attitudes of the Olinka men with those of white racists towards
African-Americans in the United States. Her accounts of the evils of tribal scarring and genital mutilation
reflect Walker’s own preoccupation with these issues (customs against which Walker has actively
campaigned against for many years).

An under-developed character

In spite of her good qualities, and her extensive accounts about African experience, Nettie’s character
never seems to be as fully developed as that of other women in the novel. This may be because so many
of her letters are descriptive rather than personal. Walker uses Nettie as an attentive, understanding
observer, revealing little of her own personal experiences, whilst being sympathetic towards the people
she loves. The reunion of the two sisters at the end of the novel (Letter 90) as recounted by Celie, brings
the story full circle and provides a conventional happy ending.