In short, it's mentally and emotionally taxing to grow up believing physical abuse is warranted, objectification of women is normal, and whatever a man says happened, happened. Thankfully, in later chapters, Celie slowly starts to become disabused of these ideas.
In A Lost Lady Mrs. Marian Forrester is an aristocrat. And, therefore, she is not subjected to some of the personal atrocities that Celie is subjected to (i.e., Mrs. Forrester's babies are stolen from her and presumably murdered by her stepfather). Nevertheless, like Celie, Mrs. Forrester lives in an era where men objectify women. Like Celie, she is something to be possessed.
"If she merely bowed to you, merely looked at you, it constituted a personal relation. Something about her took hold of one in a flash; one became acutely conscious of her, of her fragility and grace, of her mouth which could say so much without words; of her eyes, lively, laughing, intimate, nearly always a little mocking" -- this is how the Neil Herbert describes Mrs. Forrester (Cather 38).
From the description, it's clear that she is something to behold, that she has an impact on one's conscious. But, the reader will also notice the words that are used to articulate her essence, "fragility," "grace," the sensual quality of her eyes and mouth, "intimate," are often used to express traditional feminine stereotypes (women are weaker then men, women should submit to men, women should be dominated by men, etc.). The reader can assume that Neil's attraction to Mrs. Forrester is based off of her feminine mystique. But implicit...
Forrester has grown to accept the "this is a man's world" disposition. And like Celie, she believes that submitting to men is the way in which society is supposed to be.
In her recount of how Mr. Forrester rescued her when she broke her legs, Mrs. Forrester discusses the need to feel protected, "I could feel his heart pump and his muscles strain,' she said, 'when he balanced himself and me on the rocks. I knew that if we fell, we'd go together; he would never drop me'" (Cather 175).
That last line, "he would never drop me" is instructive to the reader. It illustrates Mrs. Forester's desire to feel secured and protected, to feel that a man is in control, come what may.
The notion that men are in control, or should be in control, is something that both Mrs. Forrester and Celie accept. Celie accepts this because it has been literally beaten into her. And Mrs. Forrester accepts this because she has a desire to embrace traditional femininity. However, they also both accept it because it is reinforced by their respective cultural and social milieus. As it turns out, and what both Walker and Cather are expressing is that it's a man's world whether one is an aristocrat actress or a rural Georgia farmhand.
Works Cited
Cather, Willa. A Lost Lady. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. Print.
Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. Florida: Harcourt Press, 1982. Print.
