The Color Purple

Winifred Morgan (Essay Date 1997)

SOURCE: Morgan, Winifred. "Alice Walker: The Color Purple as Allegory." In Southern Writers at Century's End, edited by Jeffrey J. Folks and James A. Perkins, pp. 177-84. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1997.

In the following essay, Morgan discusses The Color Purple as an allegory that represents the traditional gender role of women as constituting slavery.

Since the 1982 publication of The Color Purple, Alice Walker has continued to publish essays, poetry, and fiction. She has also maintained a high profile in news media for her role in spearheading a campaign against the primarily African practice of female genital mutilation, clitorectomy. Regardless of these accomplishments, Walker remains best known for The Color Purple. Since its publication, buoyed up by the enthusiastic support of feminists and black studies departments, the novel has enjoyed considerable success. This was true both before and...