Review of The Color Purple
* Disclaimer *
The ancient story of Philomela has resonated in the imaginations of women
writers for several thousand years. The presence of this myth in contemporary
texts by African American women writers marks the persistence of a powerful
archetypal narrative explicitly connecting rape (a violent inscription of the
female body), silencing, and the complete erasure of feminine subjectivity. For in most versions of this myth Philomela is not only raped--she is also
silenced. In Ovid's recounting, for example, Philomela is raped by her
brother-in-law, Tereus, who then tears out her tongue. Philomela is finally
transformed into a nightingale, doomed to chirp out the name of her rapist for
eternity: tereu, tereu. The mythic narrative of Philomela therefore explicitly
intertwines rape, silencing, and the destruction of feminine subjectivity.
Contemporary African American women's fiction contains allusions to this
archetypal rape narrative. In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, for example,
Pecola Breedlove's rape by her father Cholly causes a fragmentation of her
psyche. Pecola's attempts to tell of her rape are nullified by her disbelieving
mother, and by the novel's conclusion her voice is only exercised in internal
colloquies with an imaginary friend. She flutters along the edges of society, a
"winged but grounded bird" (158). Similarly, in Gloria Naylor's The Women of
Brewster Place, after Lorraine is gagged and brutally gang raped, she becomes
both insane and unable to speak of her rape. Finally, she is left with only one
word, a word that echoes back to Philomela's "tereu, tereu," the word she
attempted to use to stop her attackers: "Please. Please" (173).(2) Rape is thus
a central trope in these texts for the mechanisms whereby a patriarchal society
writes oppressive dictates on women's bodies and minds, destroying both
subjectivity and voice. Or, as Madonne Miner puts it, "Men, potential rapists,
assume presence, language, and reason as their particular province. Women,
potential victims, fall prey to absence, silence, and madness" (181).
For writers such as Naylor and Morrison, the myth of Philomela graphically
illustrates the way a patriarchal society censors and erases women's voices.
More damaging, perhaps, Philomela's story also indicates that if women find
other methods of communicating, these alternatives lead only to more violence
and an even deeper silence. After her rape Philomela is imprisoned in a tower of
stone, but she manages to weave a tapestry (or in some accounts a robe)
depicting Tereus's actions. She sends this artwork to her sister Procne, who
"reads" this text and understands its import. Buried within this myth of
patriarchal subjugation, then, there is a subtext that focuses on how women can
"speak" across and against the limits of patriarchal discourse. However, the
myth's final message seems to be that women's alternative texts fail to
transform in any lasting way the social or linguistic forces of patriarchal
domination. Procne's response to her sister is to first consider killing Tereus,
whom she calls, as translated by Humphries, "the author of our evils" (149,
emphasis added). Instead she kills her young son Itys, roasts and grills Itys's
flesh, and serves this "feast" to her husband. When Tereus apprehends what has
happened, he attempts to destroy both Philomela and Procne, but the gods
intervene, transforming all three characters into birds.
Philomela Speaks: Alice Walker's Revision of
Rape Archetypes in The Color Purple. (Critical Essay)
Author: Martha J. Cutter
Issue: Fall-Winter, 2000
Page created by: Alison Joy Burroughs