Trapped in Double Katatonic Silence: A Postcolonial Perspective to ‘The Color Purple’

Abstract

There is a striking parallelism between feminist approaches and postcolonial theories. Just as a woman is considered to be a space to be penetrated, a colonised region reveals itself as an embodiment of a motherly space which is occupied by a coloniser country, as a fatherly place. In this sense, the colonised space - as woman - represents passivity whereas the coloniser place - as man - symbolises activity with respect to its actively functioning paternal means. This article deals with Walker’s novel, The Color Purple (1982), with respect to gender relations with a special touch on the double oppression of women in a colonial context, which opens the novel to the postcolonial feminist criticism.