Christianity in the lives of unfortunate women
Christianity in the Lives of Unfortunate Women Christianity is known to be one of the most universal doctrines of religion practiced throughout the world. It has been seen through the years as the basis of cultural identity in many societies as well as the basis of self-identity in respects to self-transformation in the hopes for a better world of the way of living. In the novels, Comfort Woman and The Color Purple, Christianity is shown in two extremes of influence and empowerment through two women, Celie and Akiko. Both women become victims to male domination to the extent of sexual and violence abuse. Through these horrid experiences, Christianity functions as a tool of salvation, colonization, and domination in their journeys in life. However, it can be argued that Christianity was in fact more of a positive drive through Celie's eyes rather than in the eyes of Akiko. In the novel The Color Purple, Celie embraces her world around her faith in God to which she believes is the reason of her existence, the drive in life. Although Akiko views Christianity, or in this case "the mission", as a tool of colonization, she neither embraces nor accepts it as a faith of her own. Through these two women and the women who play
Yet, during the evenings together, she was required to play an opposite and different role to the satisfaction of her minister husband. Her experience of being baptized had left her feeling empty, desolate, and abandoned (Keller 103). In a different light of things, Christianity is not seen to be such a soul-saving factor in Akiko's eyes in the novel, Comfort Woman. Unlike the positive influences Celie and Nettie had with their experiences of Christianity, Akiko found it only to have been a prison from her own freedom to live as a Japanese woman of her own mind, body, and soul. However, through her disillusioned trances, she somehow finds strength and comfort through Induk, her spiritual healer. They become women of faith through their experiences of struggles and pain to which they prevail in the end through perseverance. Christianity in this sense is powerfully portrayed to be the driving force of Celie's existence. With every obstacle comes the essence of hope for a successful completion, with every day that Celie is faced with abuse and degradation of her self-being, comes her impeding faith in God for strength to drive on. These repeating events had left Akiko to the impression of hypocrisy that was displayed by her husband, a man of the cloth, a man representing Christianity. Through the struggles that she sees in Africa with the colonization of not only Christianity but with England, Nettie is strengthened by her compassion for the people and the mission she strongly stands for. She becomes well-aware of her role as a missionary in the tribal community and therefore expands her role as a person through her beliefs in religion and her new awareness as an African.
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Acceptance Essays
