Celie's character highlights the detrimental effect of silence on black women.
Individuals are silenced when they are denied agency in shaping their own experiences.
Agency is the concept that individuals make choices that shape their own lives and that
they are solely the product of their environment. The character of Celie emphasizes the
silencing of African American woman as experienced through male family members, in
particularly fathers and husbands. Surprisingly enough, woman within the African
American community also serve as vehicles that perpetuate silencing. Celie's stepfather
is able to silence Celie through abuse and isolation. The beginning of the novel offers the
reader an intimate view of Celie's oppression by her stepfather. The many obstacles that
Celie must overcome in her life are, the abuse and silencing from her stepfather, the
further abuse and silencing from her husband, and Celie's breaking of silence.
The reader quickly discovers that Celie's stepfather has impregnated her
twice. "First he put his thing up gainst my hip and sort of wiggle it around. Then he grap
hold my titties. Then he push his thing up inside my pussy. When that hurt, I cry. He
start to choke me, saying You better shut up and git used to it."(Walker 1) Rape, as a
form of abuse, has conquered Celie's desires under her stepfather's authority, thereby
psychologically training her mind to accept submission and silence. Celie's stepfather
continues to silence her by exploiting the notion of love. By denying Celie the love that a
father and daughter should share, the stepfather trains her mind to accept herself as an
expandable being. An instance of such deprivation occurred when Albert came to ask
permission to marry Nettie but convinces him to take Celie. "She ugly. He say. But she
ain't no stanger to hard wo...