In the novel the Color Purple (1982), the author, Alice Walker, highlights the oppression African American women had to endure in the South, during the 1920s. It tells the story of the protagonist Celie's life, from being a sexual abused girl, to becoming an independent woman. Through Celie's collection of letters, the novel is a documentation of an African American woman's transformation from a life of oppression to finding her voice. The analysis seeks to display the connection between Celie's fight against oppression to her becoming a "masculine female". In order to investigate Celie's transformation, in this paper I explore the cause of her transformation and look more closely at the factors that that resulted in her change. This is discussed by focusing on stereotypical gender traits, role models, motherhood, the elimination of male power, and lastly, multiple forms of oppression. In the end it is concluded that Celie's liberation from the patriarchy helped her find her new identity as a masculine female.

Cette thèse part d'une réflexion sur l'inédit hors norme mis en acte par Jeanne la Pucelle, faisant d'elle la matrice de Jeanne d'Arc. Pour saisir sa singulière spécificité paradoxale, nous postulons que les changements majeurs opérés en et par l'anomalie Jeanne la Pucelle peuvent s'expliquer par un processus adolescent à l'œuvre, un travail d'adolescence créateur. Elle est un exemple emblématique d'adolescente hors temps de l'adolescence sociale. Le langage de ses actes verbaux et comportementaux transgressifs, d'ordre narcissique phallique, laisse transparaître l'expression d'une féminité masculine, qui condense une combinatoire d'identifications et d'idéaux transmis par les figures parentales, mais remaniés. Pour ce temps pubertaire, nous postulons que la voix johannique ne signe pas l'entrée dans la psychose, mais fonctionne comme un double de soi, un interlocuteur transitionnel ouvrant à une relation de soi à soi et à l'autre ; comme un étai autorisant et stimulant une création de soi originale en son temps.Au XIXe siècle, des républicains et des nationalistes, visant à bâtir une nouvelle France fondée sur de nouvelles origines, fabriquent une position idéologique par un roman national, qui met la fonction héroïque de Jeanne d'Arc au service de l'idéalisme patriotique. Prototype du héros patriote, elle sert de support et vecteur d'identification héroïque et d'idéaux collectifs. Le nouage identification-identité-idéal à l'individuel et au collectif fait liaison pour cerner les enjeux identitaires d'un sujet en devenir et d'une nation qui se construisent, et pour répondre au besoin identitaire du sujet et à son désir de réparation de traumatisme et de préjudice. / This thesis is based on thinking around the unprecedented action of the Maid of Orléans which created the Joan of Arc matrix. In order to understand this intriguing and singular specificity, we hypothesise that the major changes operated in and by the anomaly of the Maid of Orléans can be explained by the adolescent process, the work of a creating adolescent. She is emblematic of the adolescent who finds themselves developing outside of the social framework of adolescence. The language of her transgressive verbal and behavioural actions, which can be viewed as phallic-narcissistic, express a masculine femininity in which a combination of identifications and ideals passed on by the parent figures are coalesced and reworked. In a pubescent context, we hypothesis that the voices heard by Joan of Arc are not a sign of psychosis but a sort of double of herself, a transitional intermediary, opening up the development of a relationship with herself and with others; a form of support which authorises and stimulates the creation of a self that is both original and disturbing in medieval times.In the XIXth century, Republicans and Nationalists, building a new France, on new foundations, established an ideological position through national storytelling which used Joan of Arc's heroic function to further patriotic idealism. A prototype of the patriotic hero, she was to be used as a support and vector of heroic identification and shared ideals. The identification-identity-ideal nexus is deployed in both the individual and the collective: it helps to understand the identity issues, to respond to the individual's need for identity and the desire to repair the trauma and damage inflicted.