Philomela Speaks: Alice Walker's Revisioning of Rape Archetypes in The Color Purple

(8.) Cheung also believes the title may be an allusion to the story of Philomela (172, n. 6) but does not discuss Walker's revision of this myth. For other readings of the title, see Abbandonato (1113).

(9.) For a corroborating view, see Abbandonato's statement that "in breaking the taboo against homosexuality, Celie symbolically exits the masternarrative of female sexuality and abandons the position ascribed to her within the symbolic order" (1111-12). But for an alternative view, see hooks's argument that "Sexual desire, initially evoked in the novel as a subversive transformative force ... is suppressed and finally absent--a means to an end but not an end in itself(217). I would agree with hooks that desire itself is not, per se, subversive in this novel, but that Celie's willingness to articulate her desire both privately and publicly is subversive.

(10.) For critics who argue that the novel's structure is quilt-like, see Abbandonato (1109), Wall (96), and Tavormina (225). Walker herself comments that she "wanted to do something like a crazy quilt.... A crazy-quilt story is one that can jump back and forth in time, work on many different levels, and one that can include myth" (Black Women Writers at Work 176).

Works Cited

Abbandonato, Linda. "A View from `Elsewhere': Subversive Sexuality and the Rewriting of the Heroine's Story in The Color Purple." PMLA 106 (1991): 1106-115.

Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. New York: Bantam, 1969.

Bergren, Ann L. T. "Language and the Female in Early Greek Thought." Arethusa 16 (1983): 69-95.

Brownmiller, Susan. Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975.

Byerman, Keith. "Walker's Blues." Alice Walker. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea, 1989. 59-66.

Cheung, King-Kok. "`Don't Tell': Imposed Silences in The Color Purple and The Woman Warrior." PMLA 103 (1988): 162-74.

Froula, Christine. "The Daughter's Seduction: Sexual Violence and Literary History." Signs 11 (1986): 621-44.

Griffin, Susan. Rape: The Politics of Consciousness. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986.

Harris, Trudier. "From Victimization to Free Enterprise: Alice Walker's The Color Purple." Studies in American Fiction 14 (1986): 1-17.

Hartman, Geoffrey. "The Voice of the Shuttle: Language from the Point of View of Literature." Beyond Formalism. New Haven: Yale UP, 1970. 337-55.

Henderson, Mae G. "The Color Purple: Revisions and Redefinitions." Alice Walker. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea, 1989. 67-80.

hooks, bell. "Writing the Subject: Reading The Color Purple." Alice Walker. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea, 1989. 215-28.

Joplin, Patricia Klindienst. "The Voice of the Shuttle is Ours." Rape and Representation. Ed. Lynn Higgins and Brenda R. Silver. New York: Columbia UP, 1991. 35-64.

Kubitschek, Missy Dehn. "Subjugated Knowledge: Toward a Feminist Exploration of Rape in Afro-American Fiction." Black Feminist Criticism and Critical Theory. Ed. Joe Weixlmann and Houston A. Baker, Jr. Greenwood, FL: Penkeville, 1988. 43-56.