Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Martha J. Cutter

Critical Essay by Martha J. Cutter

SOURCE: Cutter, Martha J. “Philomela Speaks: Alice Walker's Revisioning of Rape Archetypes in The Color Purple.” MELUS 25, nos. 3-4 (fall-winter 2000): 161-80.

In the following essay, Cutter compares and contrasts the character of Celie from The Color Purple with the character of Philomela from Ovid's Metamorphoses, noting the similarities between the women's repeated rapes and their rapists' attempts to silence them.

The ancient story of Philomela has resonated in the imaginations of women writers for several thousand years. The presence of this myth in contemporary texts by African American women writers marks the persistence of a powerful archetypal narrative explicitly connecting rape (a violent inscription of the female body), silencing, and the complete erasure of feminine subjectivity.¹ For in most versions of this myth Philomela is not only raped—she is also silenced. In Ovid's recounting, for example, Philomela is raped by her brother-in-law, Tereus, who then tears out her...
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