LANGUAGE IN INDIA

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Volume 25:2 February 2025
ISSN 1930-2940

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A Study of Epistolary Narrative Voicing Ecowomanism in
Alice Walker’s Novel The Color Purple

Ms. Suma Lalit Podnolanna, M.A., M.Phil., Research Scholar
Dr. Savita Kishan Pawar


Courtesy: www.amazon.com

Abstract

Abstract This study analyses Alice Walker’s use of epistolary narrative in her most celebrated novel The Color Purple and discovers the merits of narrative style in propagating Ecowomanism. This famous woman writer pens about the miseries of suppressed black women. The Color Purple deals with the feeble condition of women in male dominated society and the way they existed unaware of their own self. Ecowomanism is a theory of African American women thinkers who debunk the stereotypes against African Americans and expose the environmental works of Afro Americans to the world. This research paper aims at the protagonist’s self-discovery who is a coloured, illiterate and quieted girl of fourteen years in the beginning of the novel but turns out to be an independent woman by the end of the novel. It also evaluates the impact of narrative technique in communicating environmental activism.

Keywords: Alice Walker, The Color Purple, Epistolary Narrative, Narrative Technique, Self-Discovery, Black Female Experience, Ecowomanism.

Introduction

Epistolary narratives are the stories narrated through the medium of multiple letters by one or more characters in the story. Though the usual form is letter diary entries, newspaper clipping and other forms of documents are also used in epistolary novels. The style is traced back to Samuel Richardson’s Pamela 1740, in which the female character Damsel writes a series of letters to her partner. The huge popularity received by Richardson, inspired many writers like William Hill Brown and Tobias Smollett in the 18th century. But the style was less used in the early 19th century, except few works like Bram Stoker's powerful epistolary usage in "Dracula" of 1897. In the 20th century most of the writers used few letters in their works, but there are very few examples of complete epistolary novels. Recently the genre has grown into emails, presentations and other recent forms of communications in writing and films. There are a number of American writers employed the epistles in their works to achieve various purposes. Alice Walker’s The Color Purple published in the year 1983, which uses the epistolary form extensively. The present study is limited to the use of epistolary form by Walker in The Color Purple. The main focus is upholding the merits of literary form by investigating the impact created by the writer selecting the form in spreading Ecowomanism.

Alice Walker constructed the theory of Womanism, to express the experiences of black women who were not included in mainstream feminism. With the development of women movements, feminists moved to ecofeminism and Afro American women thinkers to Ecowomanism. Ecowomanism is more inclusive, it advocates equality for all and exposes all kinds of oppression of men and women, other living beings and the mother earth. The systematic theory of Ecowomanism is written by Melanie L Harris in her book, “Ecowomanism: African American Women and Earth Honouring Faiths”. According to Harris, the important steps of Ecowomanism are: i) Honoring the experience and Mining Ecomemory, ii) Critical reflection on experience and ecomemory, iii) Womanist intersectional analysis iv) critically examining African And African American History and Tradition, v) Engaging transformation, vi)Sharing Dialogue (Harris M, 23-59)

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Ms. Suma Lalit Podnolanna, M.A., M.Phil.
Research Scholar, Dr. Homi Bhabha State University, Mumbai
Email: sulalitp.1@gmail.com
Ph.9833474058

Dr. Savita Kishan Pawar
Research Supervisor
Professor and Head, Dept. of English
Dr. Homi Bhabha State University, Mumbai
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