What role does gender play in your story? How are men and women treated or portrayed differently?
In my story, The Color Purple, gender is a huge aspect of the story. The interactions between men and women are the base of this story. Celie, who is only a teenaged girl, is regularly raped and beaten by her father, and later she is married of to a man named Mr. ____, who also rapes and beats her. The men in this book are dominating and manipulative while the women are seemingly helpless in the beginning. As all books are, the women soon find strength within each other; however Celie first encouraged the men's dominating and abusive actions towards her stepdaughters.
In this story, the men are portrayed differently than they are in most stories in the way that they are not romanticized. They are not written to be Prince Charming or a knight in shining armor to save the damsel in distress. The women have to find strength within each other to overcome the abusive situations that they face against men. The 1920's for black women was very different than our world today. There was not a wide standard of racial acceptance instilled in America like there is today, so these abusive actions towards them were overlooked.
Kacie Griffin
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting and agree with our comparison of the men in the story being the opposite of Prince Charming. No of the men seem to truly love anything, for they are almost non-emotional expect for rage of course. They beat their wives when they feel they have done something wrong. to me, that is unforgivable behavior and the women are justified to leave because of the unfair treatment. I do not understand why the men cannot understand the fact that they are being cruel.
Samantha Shipley
ReplyDeleteI feel like this story can be somewhat related to "The Help" when you mentioned that the women band together to overcome discrimination and abuse. Each was set in a time period where women, especially African- American women, were considered mistakes you could argue. Also I liked how you mentioned this book was not romanticized in any way. It is a story that really focuses on what life was really like.