Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening fundamentally share the universal feminist yearning for personal freedom and independence within an oppressive, patriarchal society. With regards to the texts’ stylistic differences and disparate social contexts, their heroines seek to ideologically oppose social rules and conventions for women without achieving the same results. This difference lies in the fact that Chopin’s text fosters the traditional feminism embraced by the majority culture, while Walker’s text makes use of womanism. The availability and authenticity of feminine space for the generation of women’s culture also determine the extent of changes achieved.

In this thesis, I will argue that the characters and groups in Walker's The Color Purple and The Temple of My Familiar, who practice holistic survival, remain or become whole, which is the key to living a meaningful life. For Walker, holistic survival entails embracing the fragments of our past, present, and future experiences. The past is made up of knowing about our personal experiences and remembering our heritage. The present is made up of healing the past by taking responsibility for the pain we have caused and valuing fellow life, and the future is made by using the past and present to create hope. It is not enough to merely survive, to continue breathing;rather, in order to survive whole, we must also successfully paste together the fragments that make up our past, present, and future. However, the consequences of neglecting any fragment can cause us to become lost. We can either collect and come to terms with our many fragments in order to become whole, or our experiences will remain scattered, leaving us fragmented beings.

Bildungsroman in Contemporary Black Women's Fiction is a study of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Alice Walker's The Color Purple. Both of these writers implement a newer version of the genre of Bildungsroman to reveal the complexities involved in coming of age for a young woman of color. Both novels have protagonists that struggle with racism, sexism, and classism as barriers to their identity formation. This study aims to reveal the ways in which multiple layers of oppression inhibit the progress of contemporary African-American female heroines in modem Bildungsroman. / Graduation date: 2002

The protagonists in the fiction of Paule Marshall, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison illuminate American cultural perceptions of black women and illustrate how the creators of these characters hope to change those perceptions. I studied Paule Marshall's Daughters, Alice Walker's Meridian and The Color Purple, and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye to learn what the writers of these novels have to say about the women they hope black girls can grow up to be and to learn what potential for self-development they see for black women. For example, in order to become whole people, what do black girls and black women need from their parents and their community? What do black women need from their intimate relationships? "Part One: Political, Historical and Religious Identity " surveys politics, religion and history for views of black women. Politically, they appear disenfranchised; historically they were property. In reference to religion, I found that a white male religion does not serve black women well. Walker sees god within her female protagonist Celie, and Marshall has a belief in a Caribbean/African diaspora that provides a sense of spiritual and cultural continuity. "Part Two: Childhood Identity" explores childhood and the community's role. Childhood appears as a critical time for self-development. The adults in the community contribute to the child's self-awareness. Mistreatment of girls causes them harm throughout their lives. How well the community safeguards its children is a measure of how highly these children are valued. These authors want to see girls more highly regarded. Toward this end, they expose the abuse that takes place in the community. Morrison shows not only the abuse, but also the love. By showing concerned parents as well as neglectful ones, Morrison offers a fuller portrait of the community she knows. The Color Purple also tells a story of sexual abuse of a girl, but this abuse is overcome by the inner strength of the victim combined with the loving support of Shug Avery and the supportive community context of the juke where Celie is accepted. The portrayal of childhood in Daughters involves a Caribbean island culture where the roles of the women that the child Ursa observes offer few role models. "Part Three: Adult Relational Identity" looks at the dilemma in communication between the sexes and across the generations from mother to daughter. Step-fathers and husbands are abusive characters in Walker's writing, while Morrison shows a loving father and an incestuous father in The Bluest Eye. "Part Four: Language Identity" discusses Black English, orality and dialect, looking at the role of language as an aspect of self-definition. James Baldwin's view of language is presented: rejecting a child's language is rejecting the child himself. Baldwin's view supports the attitude toward language as self-defining that appears in the writing of Marshall, Morrison, and Walker. These authors show pride in Black English, and they demonstrate their ability with edited English through their own writing. / Graduation date: 1994

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