Drawing on Professor Curseen’s theory from last class — that blackness gets defined differently in The Color Purple — I wanted to investigate how blackness represents itself between Sofia and Celie. The dialog between Sofia and Celie, as well as their interactions with Miss Millie’s family, identify blackness as something other than the conflict of double consciousness. Blackness, represented here, is a release of the repressed through conversation.
The scene starts like this:
Dear God,
Sofia say to me today, I just can’t understand it.
What that? I ast.
Why we ain’t already kill them off (99).
Sofia is perplexed. Celie asks a question. Sofia expresses her hostility towards her captors. Sofia is able to speak honestly and openly, without fear of harm, when speaking to Celie. She says something that, if spoken to Miss Millie, might land her back in jail, or dead.
Contrast this flowing conversation with the dialog between Sofia and Billy. Celie narrates: “Throw me the ball, say the little boy, with his hands on his hip. Throw me the ball…Don’t you hear me talking to you, he shout” (99). Billy demands. He is portrayed without a single appealing quality. Billy kicks the nail, and his mother and sister walk inside. Left alone, Sofia and Celie speak together again:
She seem like a right sweet little thing, I say to Sofia.
Who is? She frown.
The little girl, I say. What they call her, Eleanor Jane?
Yeah, say Sofia, with a real puzzle look on her face, I wonder why she was ever born.
Well, I say, us don’t have to wonder that bout darkies.
She giggle. Miss Celie, she say, you just as crazy as you can be.
This the first giggle I heard in three years (100).
Different from Gilroy’s focus (to resolve European and black identities), Celie and Sofia want nothing to do with these white characters in this scene. Billy is a tiny tyrant with “ice blue eyes” (99). Eleanor Jane defends Sofia, but Sofia still wonders why the girl was born. Miss Millie “cut her eyes” at Sofia (100). They are cold, lifeless, sharp humans. Sofia and Celie do not try to incorporate Billy’s, Eleanor Jane’s or Miss Millie’s dispositions into their own.
Instead, they are drawn to each other. Sofia finds temporary relief in a giggle caused by a common knowledge between herself and Celie about black childbirth. Blackness is not represented as the coexistence of twin histories; rather, it is posited as the release of the repressed, of a giggle or an honest thought. Crazy is not pejorative. From Sofia to Celie, it becomes a compliment. Crazy isn’t repressed; it is celebrated.
Question A – Return to The Color Purple and select a passage of dialog. Does your selected conversation represent blackness as Du Bois did (double consciousness) or as something different?
Question B – Return to any Atlanta Episode and select a passage of dialog between female characters. Does your selected conversation represent blackness as Du Bois did (double consciousness) or as something different?