Abstract The Color Purple, written by Alice walker, is a novel about black women’s self-consciousness, revealing the unfair treatment like racial discrimination and gender discrimination the black women encounter in their life. It describes the black women’s political and living conditions under both racial and sexual oppression, their fighting against the double oppression and searching for the integrity of themselves and their lives. Out of sympathy, understanding and support for her fellow sisters’ situation and their fates, Alice walker successfully created several typical womanist images in the novel, like Shug, Sofia and Celie, and described the growth of them from being traditional to being independent. Through analyzing the womanist images of Shug, Celie and Sofia, this thesis intends to discover Walker’s womanism which is against sexual discrimination and advocates black women’s pursuing freedom and independence. 60050

Key words: Alice walker; black woman; womanism;

摘 要艾丽斯·沃克的《紫色》是典型的关于黑人女性意识的小说，揭露了黑人女性在生活中所遭受的不平等待遇，例如种族歧视和性别歧视。这篇小说主要描述了在性别和种族的双重压迫下黑人女性生存的政治环境和生活状态，以及她们反抗双重压迫不断完善自我、追求美好生活。出于对自己同胞姐妹们处境的同情、理解、支持和热爱以及对于她们命运的关心，艾丽斯·沃克在小说中成功塑造了莎格，索菲亚和西丽等几个典型的由传统走向独立的黑人妇女形象。本文通过剖析莎格，索菲亚和西丽这三位小说女主人公殊途同归的妇女形象，浅析作者意图阐述的反对性别歧视，追求自由独立博爱的妇女主义概念。

毕业论文关键词：艾丽斯·沃克；黑人女性；妇女主义；

1. Introduction 1

2.Literature Review 2

3. An Introduction to Alice Walker’s Womanism 3

4. Typical Womanist Images in The Color Purple 5

4.1 Traditional Black Women in History 5

4.2 Celie-- from Submission to Rebellion 7

4.3 Shug--an Independent and Unruly Black Woman 9

4.4 Sofia--a Rebellious Spirit 10

5. Conclusion 11

Works Cited 12

 1. Introduction

Alice walker is one of the most famous and successful black women writers in American literature. She was born in a small town of Eatonton, Georgia. She has witnessed her parents’ tragic experience with the oppressive sharecropping system and the racism of the American South and it also had influenced her life a lot. Once in 1965, Alice Walker joined Civil Rights Movement after her graduation, which had deep influence on her novels, such as The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970), Meridian (1976) and The Color purple. Alice Walker was also involved in the Women’s Liberation Movement. The two movements all influenced Alice Walker’s life. Walker’s attitude towards race, gender and class issues and her searching for the black cultural heritage were rooted deeply in The Color Purple published in 1982, which is considered as her representative and most successful work. Since the publication of the novel, it has caused a great response and also made Alice Walker win the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Greatly influenced by feminism, Alice Walker determined to take racial equality and the emancipation of women as her life career, which was reflected greatly in The Color Purple. This novel is a deep analysis of the double oppression of black women, which is racial discrimination and gender discrimination. The barriers of awakening and liberation for black women also have been revealed in the novel. It encourages black women to wake up and fight for themselves. This novel also reveals black men and white people’s oppression and discrimination to black women.