Probing Womanist Existentialism A Reading of Alice Walker's "The Color Purple"

The disquisition entitled “Probing Womanist Existentialism: A Reading of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple” is a study on Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple. This dissertation studies the Womanist novel The Color Purple from the Existentialist Womanist point of view. Alice Walker launches an advanced ‘ism’- Womanism – which is stronger as well as a microscopic approach to study the problems of the segregated section (Black Women). She designates the new school ‘Womanism’ because the black women are kept away, even among the feminists. A new compound term- Existential Womanism- is used to analyze her great work, which alone can transcend the meaning of Feminism and Womanism.
The introductory chapter of this dissertation explores the major tenets of Existentialism and describes at length the multifarious concepts related to it. It also deals with, how Celie, the protagonist of the novel, constructs her identity. The second chapter designated “Walkerian Womanism” discusses the fundamental premise of Womanism, i.e. ‘black Feminism or feminism of color’. It is the advocacy of or enthusiasm for the rights and achievements etc. of women. The third chapter entitled ‘Positing Womanist Existentialism’ shows the meaning and the compounding of the term ‘Existential Womanism’ and the relevance of the Existential Womanist reading of the novel The Color Purple. This chapter also explains the Existentialist view of life that human beings have no given essence but must forge their value and meaning in an inherently absurd world of existence.