SOURCE: Abbandonato, Linda. “‘A View from “Elsewhere”’: Subversive Sexuality and the Rewriting of the Heroine's Story in The Color Purple.” PMLA 106, no. 5 (October 1991): 1106-115.

In the following essay, Abbandonato explores Walker's denouncement of the caucasian, patriarchal order in The Color Purple by displaying Celie's claiming of an identity and sexuality outside of traditionally accepted parameters.

Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple begins with a paternal injunction of silence:

You better not never tell nobody but God. It'd kill your mammy.

(11)

Celie's story is told within the context of this threat: the narrative is about breaking silences, and, appropriately, its formal structure creates the illusion that it is filled with unmediated “voices.” Trapped in a gridlock of racist, sexist, and heterosexist oppressions, Celie struggles toward linguistic self-definition. She is an “invisible woman,” a character traditionally silenced and effaced in fiction; and by centering on her, Walker replots the heroine's...