Color Purple and Rambling Rose Movies

Interview with Two Southern Women -- One White, One Black. Both Oppressed by Socially Constructed Southern Norms from forming Political Unity.

Over the course of the interviews, it was extremely difficult to 'draw forth' the individual known as Miss Celie. When inquired as to the relevance of voting, the Democratic Party, or the status of women in Celie's daily life, the Black woman shrugged and said that she didn't know and didn't think it was appropriate for a woman of her station and color to think of such things. The fact that the interviewer was white, however, may have affected her attitude, as did the fact that her husband was standing in the background and frequently expressed impatience that his wife needed to get back to work. Miss Celie's husband said that the couple was poor and had a great deal of difficulty getting by in terms of their material circumstances.

Miss Celie had never been politically active, although her husband had been involved in keeping the town's jazz club open, and Miss Celie, when pressed, did express outrage regarding her friend Sophia's incarceration. She said this had come about for 'no right reason,' even though the legal and formal charge was assault. In contrast, on a surface level, the equally impoverished white woman Rose was quite engaged on a social and personal level with the interviewer. However, when political issues were brought up Rose too was less than forthcoming. She stated that she would like to be married, and that she thought such issues in the political arena were best handled by men.

Yet although Rose spoke in a girlish and unconcerned manner, when drawn forth on the topic of her own past history, she expressed a tale of great tragedy. Although a beautiful and healthy woman, it became clear that only her father's poaching had enabled her to secure enough protein as a child to eat. She had avoided the complication of Miss Celie's life, which included a rape by her father and the farming off of the young girl's child to wealthy African-American families in the area -- but Rose's early sexual impingements had left her sterile, rather than fertile, and indeed Miss Celie's own early forays into childbearing had wrecked a similarly disastrous legacy on the girl's reproductive powers. Rose felt she had no other recourse other than domestic servitude and prostitution to live, because, like Celie, she was 'damaged goods.'

Thus, privileged white racial status and beauty may have enabled Rose to 'appear' better off, physically and in the transient material and economic exhibitions and vocational opportunities offered to her because of her youth and beauty. But in terms of securing a more stable social and vocational status, she seemed equally open to sexual violation and economic distress as Celie. In fact, at least the African-American woman has a community to support her, unlike Rose, whom, because of her greater physical attractiveness, had in essence 'cashed in' on these attributes to the exclusion of her connections with other women. When Rose's beauty fades, the interviewer was apt to wonder, what will become of her?

The vote and politics sadly seems to play very little role in these women's lives. One possible way of reaching the African-American community of women, it must be recommended to the proposed new Women's Bureau of the Democratic Party, would be through the institutions of the African-American church and religious community. (Women's Bureau of the Democratic Party Women's Bureau of the Democratic Party Home Page, 2004) Given Rose's displacement from most social institutions as a 'fallen woman' it might be more difficult, however, to reach such a white individual through similar religious, institutional channels.