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Themes

Relationships

A dominant theme is the power of women coming together. The women see men as careless and insignificant to their lives. Women in the novel are degraded by men and generally used for male pleasure. The female relationships are friendly and sisterly and also sexual. Celie and Sofia have a friendly relationship with each other because Celie was Sofia’s stepmother in law, and they befriended each other because the men in their life treated them poorly. Shug Avery had a large number of shallow relationships in her life previous to Celie, and Celie had always been in relationships that were the product of real or implied threats of violence. As such, she had never fallen in love. After pursuing a relationship with one another they found happiness in life. What makes the woman-woman relationship attractive is the stark contrast afforded by all of Celie's heterosexual contacts. It is really the first time that she has experienced love and sharing and appreciation in any way related to her sexual life.^[2] Celie and Nettie provide the sisterly relationship in the novel. Nettie is Celie’s hope and faith for life. They constantly push each other throughout the book to stay true to God, and they believe that they will meet again one day.

Racism

There is no getting away from the fact that 1930s Georgia must have been a difficult place to live as a black person, due to widely-held prejudices amongst the white population. Slavery was not yet a distant memory. Due to their mistreatment at the hands of white people, the characters believe that their children are doomed to grow up in a racist society, with no hope for improvement. Furthermore, Sofia is convinced that due to the influence of society's prejudice her children will become cynical of everyone around them. The black characters have difficulty accepting this condition, yet they see no hope of change in the future.

Sexism

The majority of the men and women involved in the story are of the opinion that men should dominate women. Harpo feels threatened by his strong-willed, defiant wife, Sofia, and tries to become physically stronger than her so that he can beat her and return things to what he sees as their natural order. Throughout the book, women are degraded by men and treated as second-class citizens. This self-imposed inequality ironically mirrors the inequality between the races, which they all find so hard to accept...