Characterization of Color purple, Summaries of English Literature

Download Characterization of Color purple and more Summaries English Literature in PDF only on Docsity! TEXTUAL ANALYSIS LETTER 1 The Color Purple begins with Pa’s voice warning Celie not to tell anyone about his rape of her, especially her mother, signaling to us the way in which incest is shrouded in si- lence. By having Celie write to God, Walker initiates not only the theme of spirituality in the novel, but also Celie’s feeling of isolation. Celie is just learning to write, hence she crosses out words and uses her own language rather than the standard English that she would have been taught. She writes in order to make some sense out of her experience. Like many incest victims, she does not know what is hap- pening to her for she knows nothing of sexuality. Her mother, worn from childbearing, clearly does not grasp what is happening to Celie. By the end of the first letter, we know that the fourteen-year-old Celie is pregnant. LETTERS 2, 3, 4 Celie confides to God that she had a baby, that her mother died, and that Pa has taken her baby away from her. She becomes pregnant again. Pa has gotten tired of her, begins looking at her sister Nettie, but finally marries another woman. In church, Mister is drawn to Nettie but Celie ad- vises her to stick to her books. LETTERS 5, 6,7 These letters focus on Misters courting of Nettie, Pa’s refusal to give her to him, and Pa’s offering of Celie instead. Walker emphasizes the way men are the primary actors in determin- ing the future of their girl-children, and how in marriage women are a means of exchange between men. Pa enumer- ates Celie’s qualities as if she were a slave he is selling, ending with a statement associated with slaves, that she tells lies. Mister desperately needs a wife, because his first wife  58 THE COLOR PURPLE has been killed by her boyfriend a he needs a woman to manage his home and his children. An important note: In letter 6, Celie sees a picture of Shug for the first time and falls in love with this “Star’s” beauty and independence, which is so different from her lot. She begins dreaming of Shug. LETTER 8 As Nettie teaches her how to write, Celie recalls how in the past Miss Beasley, the schoolteacher, came to see her in an effort to persuade her father that she should come back to school. But Celie is pregnant, an absolute obstacle. This inci- dent is important since it indicates that the black community, personified by a teacher, does inquire about Celie’s welfare. But pregnancy halts all growth for a woman. Celie then comes back to the present, recounts how Mister, who barely looks at her, finally agrees to marry her because he is over- come by the mess in his home, and since Pa offers him a cow, as well. LETTER 9? Celie writes about her wedding day, about being injured by Mister’s children who resent her as their new mother, and about going through the ordeal of sleeping with Mister in this loveless marriage. Only the thought of Nettie and Shug, her dream, get her through that experience. LETTER 10 This is an important letter in that it is the first time Celie thinks she has news other child, Olivia, whom she believes she sees with a black lady, the Reverend’s wife. The letter also gives us a view of relations between blacks and whites, since the white storekeeper treats even this black lady as if she is a stupid girl. In this episode, we see Celie laugh, a side of her we haven’t seen before. THE COLOR PURPLE 61 repress their anger. Celie offers to make a quilt with a, a sign of the peace between them. In these letters, Iker also gives us a picture of flexible gender definitions elation to work. Often Sofia is doing carpentry and Harpo king care of the babies. ERS 22-26 Mister brings Shug Avery home despite the town’s bad talk about her. The scene of Celie and Shug’s meeting is impor- tant. Celie is excited; Mister declares to Harpo that Shug should have been his mammy. And the sick Shug, anticipat- ing trouble from Albert’s wife, calls Celie ugly. We find in this section that Mister’s name is Albert. Shug can call him by his first name, an indication of their equality. Celie nurses Shug to health and begins to admit to herself her physical attraction to this beautiful woman. Shug, at first, is difficult, but encouraged by Celie’s kindness, and excellent cooking, she begins to get better. Walker makes this evident by hav- ing Shug begin to hum a song. LETTER 27 Mister’s father comes to see him, because he is upset that Shug Avery is living under Mister's roof. We see the power the father tries to exert over the son. His visit brings Celie and Mister close to each other as they both love Shug. Then Tobias, Mister’s brother, comes to visit and tries to enlist Celie as an ally against Mister and Shug. But Celie, Mister, and Shug stand together. During his visit, Celie teaches Shug how to “stitch on a quilt.” For the first time Celie “feel just right.” LETTERS 28-31 There is harmony among Sofia, Shug, and Celie that is sym- bolized by the quilt they're working on, called “Sisters Choice.” But Harpo is upset because he can’t control Sofia; he has been taught that this is the way a husband is sup- posed to act. He eats and eats to get bigger so that he can 62 THE COLOR PURPLE deal with his strong, muscular wife. Of course, this does not work. Sofia, disgusted with Harpo’s behavior, leaves home, taking her children with her to her sister’s. Her talk with Celie about how boring Harpo’s lovemaking has become is the first conversation that emphasizes the right of woman to sexual fulfillment. Celie gives Sofia the quilt as she leaves with her sisters. LETTERS 32, 33, 34 Celie tells us how Harpo changes after Sofia is gone. He makes plans to build a juke joint and finally persuades Shug to sing there. When Mister objects to bis wife going to the juke joint, Shug makes it clear she is her own woman and insists that Celie come. Shug sings a song to Celie and Celie describes the desire both she and Mister have for Shug. Celie says Shug’s song is “First time somebody made something and name it after me.” Shug is now well and decides she must leave. But Celie is upset and tells her that Mister beats her, precisely because she isn't Shug. Shug says she won't leave until Albert stops beating her. LETTER 35 This letter recounts Celie’s initiation into sexual pleasure as Shug gives her a lesson on her body. Walker uses images from nature to describe the beauty of the female body. LETTERS 36, 37, 38 Celie recounts how Sofia got jailed. Sofia comes with her new husband to the juke joint. Squeak, Harpo’s new girl- friend, hits Sofia and Sofia knocks her out. We see that Sofia refuses to be hit by anyone. This incident is a prelude to the letter in which Celie tells us how the mayor's wife says Sofia should be her maid. Sofia refuses and is hit by the mayor. Sofia responds by knocking the white man down. She is beaten and taken to jail. These letters also introduce Squeak to us. Celie insists that Squeak have Harpo call her by her right name—Mary Agnes. This is an important theme  Hapa the novel in that Celie understands how “Squeak” is di- Tl I} inished by not being called by her right name. (@METTERS, 39, 40, 41, 42 bfia’s family and friends meet to devise a plan to help her, er they learn she’s to serve twelve years in prison. They Se scover that Squeak is related to the Sheriff as Walker points Out the way many black and white folk in the South are family, in name only. They decide to have Squeak go to the Sheriff and tell him a false thing—that the worst punishment for Sofia would be to make her the mayor’s wife’s maid. (The tar baby folktale is the basis of the falsehood cooked up for the sheriff.) At least, then, Sofia would not be in jail. Squeak is sexually assaulted by her own “uncle,” but her visit does help to get Sofia’s “sentence” changed. At the end of her ordeal, Squeak insists that Harpo call her by her real name, Mary Agnes. Six months later, Mary Agnes begins to sing. These letters emphasize that black women, in this case Sofia and Squeak, are, like black men, physically assaulted when they resist racism. Interestingly, Walker demonstrates this in the context of two major stereotypes of black women—the “mammy” and the “slut.” These letters graphically demon- strate how black families come together to help one of their own—and how they understand the way white folks think. LETTERS, 43, 44, 45 These letters follow Sofia’s life when three years later, she is let out of jail in the custody of Miss Millie, the mayor’s wife. Sofia is enraged at white people and barely manages to be a maid. Her story indicates the distance between black and white women created by racism and the complex inter- actions of sexism and racism in Southern society. The mayor buys his wife a car because “Colored” have cars. But he refuses to show her how to drive it. Miss Millie de- 66 THE COLOR PURPLE LETTERS, 61, 62, 63 Nettie describes her travel through the African landscape to the Olinka home where she, Corinne, and Samuel are going to live as missionaries. Nettie finds that the Olinkas are simi- lar in some ways to black folk in the South—e.g., they love barbecue. She pays special attention to the women, and how the wives work for their husbands. She tells us how their history is linked to the worship of the roofleaf, from which they make everything they need. LETTERS 63, 64, 65 Nettie gives Celie a detailed description of the daily life of the Olinkas and notes how they think girls should not be educated. We hear, in particular, about Tashi, one of the Olinka girls who becomes a friend of Adam and Olivia. Net- tie also tells us about the beautiful quilt-like designs the Olinka men weave, an indication that gender-related work is culturally determined. After Nettie has been in Africa for five years, a road is begin- ning to be built, as Walker indicates the initial phase of European colonialism, following the arrival of missionaries, on Olinka land. Nettie also mentions that Olivia and Adam look like her. She describes the Olinka funeral of Tashi’s father, and tells Celie that although it is against their custom, Tashi’s mother wants her daughter to be educated. Nettie points out that women are completely subordinate to their husbands, as Walker underlines that sexism in Africa pre- ceded the arrival of Europeans. Walker makes it clear through Nettie’s discussion that sexism in black society is not derived from racism. LETTERS 65, 66, 67 Olinka land, now controlled by a British rubber manufac- turer, is taken over by the roadbuilders, the beginning of colonialism. Corinne has become very ill. There is tension between her and Samuel because Olivia and Adam look so  ch like Nettie that Corinne wonders whether Nettie had y relationship with Samuel before they took her into their me. Nettie realizes that Adam and Olivia are Celie’s, when uel tells her about how he and Corinne got these chil- len. Nettie discloses to Celie that their real father was 5 ched and that Pa was not their father. TTERS 68, 69 Celie is amazed by Nettie’s news. She and Shug go to see Pa, who now has a new house and a new wife. Celie tells Pa what she has learned about her real father. Pa responds that it was too pitiful a story to tell little girls. He points out that he made sure he used a white man as a front for his business so that he might avoid the same fate as Celie’s father, a ploy that some Southern black businessmen used to escape racist violence. Celie and Shug put horseshoe markers in the area where her parents were buried, an act that consolidates their sense of themselves as each other’s family. LETTERS 70, 71, 72 Nettie describes Corinne’s disbelief in Samuel’s story about how he got the children, disbelief that is killing her. Using a quilt which has in it fabric Corinne bought the day she met Celie, Nettie reminds her of that meeting. Corinne finally remembers, but it is too late; she dies. (Note that Walker has Corinne mention that she is a graduate of Spelman.) Nettie tells Samuel about Celie. LETTER 73 In this letter, Celie declares that she won’t write anymore to God but to Nettie. Celie is disgusted with her idea of God. But Shug tells her God isn’t a white man with long hair, God is everything and loves admiration. It is in this letter that Sbug uses the image of the color purple to embody the unity and enjoyment that is her view of God, a view that sees no separation between the body and the spirit and ex- ~~ eee eee eee eee resses the spirit of the oneness of the universe. Celie’s eyes re opened to this view, but she is still angry at what hap- ened to her. She does as Shug suggests, and replaces her age of a white male God with a rock. “Every time, I con- jure up a rock, I throw it.” LETTERS 74, 75 These letters are critical in the novel, for in them Celie tells us how she confronts Mister in the context of their family. Sofia has finally come home after eleven and one-half years and at her homecoming dinner both Celie and Squeak tell the men they are going North with Shug. Celie reveals to Mister that she knows about her children and warns Harpo that his treatment of Sofia was related to the trouble she has experienced with whites. Sofia says she will take care of Susie Q, Squeak and Harpo’s daughter. When Mister tries to stop Celie from going North and verbally abuses her, she responds with a curse: “Until you do right by me, I say, everything you even dream about will fail.” Celie’s final words of this letter indicate how far she’s come in believing in herself. LETTER 76 The excited Celie tells Nettie about her life in Memphis. The details of her description are related to Walker’s definition of womanism for they give us a view of a woman-centered household. Shug’s light-filled house is round and_ sur- rounded by trees and flowers. Turtles and elephants, key animals in African mythology, are everywhere. In this har- monious universe Celie develops her own business of mak- ing pants. Walker demonstrates the creativity of supposedly ordinary black Southern women even as she underlines the joy in work that is creative rather than drudgery. Celie proudly ends her letter with the name and address of her business.  ETTER 86 ettie tells Celie that Tashi and her mother have joined the beles, the rebels in the forest. Later, Nettie finds out that dam has gone after Tashi. She also talks about God, how e has become more of a spirit to her, and of how she and amuel may found a church without idols. Nettie also wor- > ies about how her Africancentered children will fare in a ostile America. LETTER 87 This long letter concentrates mainly on Sofia's relationship with Eleanor Jane, the white woman she was forced to take care of when she was a child; on Shug’s letter to Celie; and Celie’s relationship with Mister. Eleanor Jane feels that Sofia is the only mother she’s known and wants Sofia to love her baby boy. Sofia feels nothing for Eleanor Jane’s child and tells her so. This section is important because it goes against the old stereotype whites have of black mommies, that no matter how they’re treated, they love all white children. Celie also pours out to her sister her love for Shug, who has written that she finally went to see her children, whom she had not been able to mother, and how one of them is work- ing on an Indian reservation, another comment on the inter- relationship of blacks and Indians, a theme that runs throughout the novel. Walker also implies that Celie’s loving of Shug is one reason why she is able to go and see her own children. The rest of this letter is Celie’s recounting of the developing friendship between her and Mister, based on their love for Shug and their attempt to know each other. A sign of mister’s growth is that he asks Celie to teach him how to sew. Walker revises the concept of gender-specific work, as a means of showing that friendship between peo- ple, whatever their gender, is based on mutual respect. LETTER 88 Nettie writes to say Adam and Tashi have returned, Adam has married Tashi and has gone through the scarification  72 THE COLOR PURPLE ceremony in order to allay Tashi’s fears of her isolation when she reaches the U.S.A. LETTER 89 Celie hires Sofia to work in her store and Harpo does not object. Eleanor Jane helps Sofia in the store, despite the social custom that whites are not supposed to work for blacks. Shug writes to say she’s coming home. Celie realizes she’s learned during Shug’s absence what she was supposed to learn: that love is not possession. LETTER 90 This concluding letter begins with a new salutation to vari- ous aspects of the universe as God, indicating the harmony and peace Celie is experiencing. All of Celie’s family includ- ing her children and her sister Nettie are united at a Fourth of July barbecue. The last sentences of this last letter show how happy and vital this family is. MEANING OF WALKER’S SIGNING-OFF Note that in ending her novel with thanks to the characters for “coming,” Walker signs her initials with the title “author and medium.” This self-designation represents a tradition (since Homer) that an author is merely an intermediary through whom some larger force (inspiration? the divine Muses?) expresses the story. The word “medium” also con- notes one who claims to speak with and for the spirits of the dead, as Walker surely does for her turn-of-the-century characters, including some of her own forebears, whose spirits have surely “come” to her.  CRITICAL COMMENTARY ON THE COLOR PURPLE SOURCES AND THEMES What Alice Walker has told us about her sources for The Color Purple is useful in understanding the novel. Her plans for her work in the 1970s, as discussed with critic Mary Helen Washington, suggested that her third novel would begin where Meridian had ended, that it would be contem- porary in setting. Yet, The Color Purple is set in the early part of the twentieth century and could be called a historical novel. Walker has said that her third novel represented a detour; still it is a contemporary novel in that it addresses contemporary issues with which African-American women’s literature and the international women’s movement have been intensely concerned: issues of men’s violence against women, issues of sisterhood, women’s eroticism and lesbi- anism, and issues of women’s economic independence. These issues have been discussed more openly during the eighties than ever before and Walker’s Color Purple has been a significant contribution to that discussion. Walker tells us in an interview that one source of the novel is a story her sister had told her, about two black women in rural Georgia who were involved with the same man and who became so close they wore each other’s panties. She also has said that Celie and Mister are based on her step- grandmother and grandfather, whom she had written about in the poem “Burial.” Rachel had died in her seventies, her spirit so battered, no one ever really knew her. Walker wanted to given new life to this maternal ancestor of hers, a way of celebrating the many ancestors who had suffered greatly yet had survived and flourished.  THE COLOR PURPLE 47 owards black women. Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and ‘oni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye included scenes of incest. ichard Wright’s Native Son, and Ann Petry’s The Street, to ame a few, depicted violence between black men and omen. What differentiates The Color Purple’s treatment of these two subjects from previous novels is Walker’s use of Celie’s voice. That is, these experiences are told from the point of view of the victim who at first does not know what is happening to her. Also, Walker does not attribute male violence—as other novelists have or as she did in The Third Life of Grange Copeland—to poverty or solely to racism. She emphasizes the physical power which men, whatever their class or race, have used over women. WOMAN AS MULE If we look at Walker’s entire body of writing, we can also see how The Color Purple proceeds from her previous work. At the beginning of the novel, Celie resembles the Copeland women of Walker's first novel in that her body and spirit are battered, and she is seeking a language through which to articulate her condition. “Burial,” and other poems in Rev- olutionary Petunias, are compressed narratives of rural Southern women and men that are developed in The Color Purple. Walker experiments with the letter/diary form as early as “Really, Doesn’t Crime Pay” in In Love & Trouble and “1955” in You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down. Like Roselily in In Love & Trouble, Celie wonders “if she will ever know what it is to live,” and like Hannah, in “The Revenge of Hannah Kemhuff,” Sofia is almost crushed by racism. Poems in Good Night Willie Lee relate directly to the image of woman as mule, a central motif in this first half of The Color Purple. And like Meridian, Celie is haunted by the loss of her children. Perhaps the most significant precedents in Walker’s previous work are her experimentation with the form of quilting, and the “bodacious” spirit of the two publications that precede  48 THE COLOR PURPLE The Color Purple, a spirit arrived at only through the struggle so beautifully expressed in her early work. This spirit is em- bodied in the blues singer, Gracie Mae Stills, of “1955,” the singer who is a foreshadowing of Shug. The Color Purple is one of a few novels in the tradition of African-American literature which explores the female blues singer as heroine. Like Walker’s other novels, it is intensely rooted in the his- tory and creativity of black women even as it pushes that tradition to another level. And as in her other two novels, Walker uses that history to explore change in generations of one black Southern family. In contrast to the sharecropping Copeland family of her first novel, or the small town Hill family of her second novel, Celie’s family is a middle-class land-owning black family, like many at the turn of the cen- tury. Walker explores in her novels the relationship of class to racism and patriarchy. The Color Purple, then, does not come out of nowhere. It is informed by Walker’s own work, as well as by the tradition of African-American literature. FORM: THE LETTER AS A FEMALE GENRE One of the most arresting aspects of this novel is its form, a tour de force in that it is written entirely in letters. Letters are short units, each of which is complete in itself and, when stitched together with other letters, creates a series of pat- terns—a quilt. Just as important, letters tell us about the objective conditions of a person’s life while being a subjec- tive reflection on her life. The letter is a form of narrative that combines both the objective and the subjective. This dual quality may be one of the reasons why letters were written so consistently by women of the past, when their experience was considered trivial and was usually omitted from history. Through writing letters, women not only re- corded their lives but also reflected upon them, a source of personal growth. Feminist historians have used women’s let- ters as an important source of researching women’s history in its concreteness as well as in its subjective ramifications.  THE COLOR PURPLE 49 alker has adopted this genre, so useful in history as a > lpecifically female literary genre. FORM: THE SLAVE NARRATIVE But letters can be arranged in many different ways as the European tradition of the epistolary novel indicates. Walker arranges the letters of The Color Purple in terms of the Afro- American literary tradition, specifically the genre of the slave’s narrative, which usually traced the slave’s growing awareness of her oppression, her increasing resistance, es- cape, and the final realization of freedom in body and spirit. Like the slave in the nineteenth-century narratives, Celie’s body and spirit are brutalized, a fate she accepts until she is confronted with other models, in this case Sofia’s resistance through fighting, Shug’s resistance through loving. Then there is a period of anger, followed by one of flight, her subsequent escape to Memphis where she develops her eco- nomic independence. Finally, there is a resolution of the spirit as she achieves independence of self, even from Shug, and effects the unification of her family and community. By ending her novel with a family reunion on the Fourth of July, Walker recalls Frederick Douglass, one of the finest writers of the slave's narrative, and the creator of the famous Fourth of July speech, “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?” BLACK GEORGIAN ENGLISH The other unmistakably formal quality of this novel is Walk- er’s use of black folk, or colloquial, English, a variety that is black Georgian. It is extremely important to note that the colloquial English used in this novel is not an all-encom- passing black English, but a variety that differs from say, the rural Floridian black English of Hurston’s Their Eyes Were ' Watching God, the urban New York English of Toni Cade Bambara’s stories, or June Jordan’s novel His Qwn Where (1970). Celie’s language is the essence of black Georgian English as Walker transforms speech into a compressed writ- ten form. 52 THE COLOR PURPLE inherit land. In a real sense, Celie’s abuse is derived from that fact, for Mister gives up the woman he loves, and be- comes a bully to his first wife as well as to Celie. Walker demonstrates how the pursuit of power that patriar- chy represents affects the sons as well as women and how profit supersedes human needs. And she refuses to ascribe the sexism of black men solely to the effects of poverty, a position that has often been taken by black ideologues. In- stead, she graphically traces how power determines the rela- tionships among black men, between black men and women, as well as between the black community and white society. MEANINGS OF “MISTER” “Mister” is a title by which all white men at that time demanded that they be called by blacks. In turn, whites never gave blacks the title of “Mister,” no matter what their class or age, and instead called them by their first names. This practice was a way of denigrating blacks, and labeling them as children, as inferiors who could never be equal to adults. In turn, many black men, regardless of class, insisted that their wives call them “Mister.” They restored their wounded pride by imitating the practice of white men on whom they based their definition of man- hood. In an interview, Walker reports that her grandfather insisted that his wife always call him ‘Mister Walker.” This is why Walker calls her character in The Color Purple ‘‘Mis- ter’; many black men, like him, treated their families the way white men treated them. Through the character of “Mister,” Walker shows us the intersections of racism and sexism in black society. POWER: CLASS, RACE, GENDER One other important aspect in the novel of this class/race/ gender intersection has to do with how women, no matter what their class, are subordinated to men. Celie’s real father was a businessman, who, because of his success, was THE COLOR PURPLE 53 nched by white men, not an uncommon occurrence at that e. Her mother inherited the property but could not, be- ause she was a woman, avail herself of it. Thus, the prop- tty passed to Pa, her second husband, who kept it when she died. In effect, that properly actually belongs to Celie and Nettie, their parents’ heirs. But because of their mother’s second marriage, and the silence about their real father, who died violently, they are completely under the control of Pa. In addition to their economic dependence, this situation re- sults in incest. As Walker has pointed out, then and now, “incest” often occurs between a mother’s boyfriend, new husband, etc., and young adolescent children. The pursuits of power in the spheres of class, racism, and sexism are interrelated in the novel. WOMAN'S STATUS AT TURN OF CENTURY In order to understand how typical and/or atypical Celie’s experience is, we need to consider a few facts about wom- an’s status at the turn of the century. In much of the world, as well as in the United States, woman was seen as inferior to man. She did not have many of the rights we now take for granted. As recently as the nineteenth century, many American women could not be legal agents and thus could not own property or negotiate contracts, except through their fathers, husbands, or brothers. American women could not act as political agents; they could not vote or be elected to political office. They were not expected to speak in public or operate in the public domain and were to remain primar- ily within the family. They were not regarded as economi- cally independent. “Respectable” women were not expected to work, particularly if they were married and had children. And women’s goal in life was supposed to be marriage and motherhood. In effect, women (“the weaker sex”) were under the control or “protection” of their male relatives, and in many ways were conceived of as property. Husbands and fathers could 54 THE COLOR PURPLE not be prosecuted for physical or sexual abuse, and in many states, fathers, rather than mothers, had the right to children. Incest then, as now, existed although it was not often spo- ken about—young orphaned girls were considered particu- larly unfortunate since they had no access to power or even to protection. The women’s rights movement of the nine- teenth century protested these conditions but it took some fifty years to achieve the vote for women. One aspect of woman’s condition critical to Celie’s story was the denial of education. Ironically, it was the creation of The Freedman’s Bureau, which taught one and one-half million blacks to read and write between 1864 and 1870, and re- sulted in general public school education for poor Southern whites and women. But because of the passage of segrega- tionist laws, blacks did not have equal access to education. Being able to read and write was considered as valuable a prize as it had been for slaves. USE OF “MULE” IMAGE Black women, of course, had an even lower status than white women, who were often placed on a pedestal, even as they lacked independence. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Hurston characterizes the status of black women as that of a mule, an animal bred to work; creating an image that comes out of slavery. Walker makes great use of this image in the first part of The Color Purple as well as in the section set in Africa. This is not to say that black women did not oppose these conditions in many different ways. Walker presents three different ways in which black women resisted their lot. Sofia represents the strong black woman who does not accept the definition of woman as weak and helpless and resists whites’ attempts to diminish her. Often women like her have been denigrated both in black and white society as Amazons, or matriarchs, and punished for their resistance. Nettie repre-