The Colour Purple

Marriage

• Marriage is seen as pragmatic in valuing family allience and property.
• However, in the early decades of the 1900s, premarital intercourse became more common, and the new way of marriage was based on gratification, shared love, and not responsibility.
• Marriage was a way to seal peace between former enemies.
• The median age that both women got married was 21, and 26 for men.
• Women were always younger when married.
• Any property a woman did have was given to her husband upon marriage.
• Women were supposed to be passive towards their husband.
• They were seen as housewives and nothing more.
• Women were forced and sold into marriages they didn't want to be a part of.

Alice Walker

• Her parents experienced the oppressive share cropping system. This was a form of agriculture where the tenant allowed someone to crop on their land for a percentage of the crop. Many black families were exploited in this system.
• When she was younger, she was shot in the eye by her brother, becoming blind in one eye. She was ashamed of her looks so hid herself away, reading and writing to pass the time.
• Because of her injury, she was sponsered through education by a scholarship fo children with disabilities. 
• During college, she became active in the African American civil rgihts movement.
• She found out she was pregnant in 1963, and considered suicide because of her parents reaction. A friend did help her get a safe abortion.

African American Civil Rights Movement

• It was a movement against the racial segregation and discrimination in the southern US.
• Occured during the 1950s, so would have had an influence on Walker's writing.
• Many slaves that had been emuncipated were given basic civil rights.
• Celie's stepfather and friend own property, which goes against the social norms of the time.
• Until this movement, African Americans still earnt a much lower wage than white people.
• Rosa Parks became a 'mother' of the movement, when she refused to give her seat on the bus up for a white man.
• African Americans only gained the right to vote in 1957. 

The Feminist Movement

• Equal pay act was in 1963.
• Black feminism became popular in the 1960s as a repsonse to the sexism and racism of the civil rights movement.
• The women's rights movement was occuring during Alice Walkers life. They wanted votes, an ability to become part of law making, an ability to own property, and to not have to get married in order to be considered worth anything. They managed to change most of these things, giving women more power than they ever had. 
• There was an introduction of female birth control in the 1960s.
• More females began to have higher paying jobs.
• In 1969, the law was changed that allowed…