No Fighting = Survival

Topic: How Celie’s lack of resistance to the male dominant side of society has lead to her survival.
 

The Color Purple presents to the reader two women in Celie's life that that has successfully rebelled against the norms of society and the domination of men. One person is her step-son's wife, Sofia while the other is her dear sister Nettie.

 
Sofia is a hard headed women that has been forced to fight against the norms of society all her life, which is the idea that men are the dominate gender which can easily be seen in two different examples. First of all, Sofia is constantly shown to fight with Harpo, who constantly tries to except his power and dominance over her by continuously trying to beat her, but Sofia's stubbornness is shown though her ability to avoid his beatings and instead beat Harpo up (page 37). Another example of Sofia trying to fight against the norms of society is when she assaults the major who was trying to get her to work as a maid (page 85). There is sadly a price to rebellion, in the example of her husband, Sofia was forced to leave the one love of her life in order to keep her independence (page 68) and in the example of the mayor Sofia was terribly beat up and thrown into a jail cell, all for her independence (page 86).

Nettie on the other hand is a women that has avoided men all her life and has never been tied down by one in marriage due to the fact that she always managed to avoid any man that wanted to rape her, including her father. One such example is when Nettie moved in with Celie and her husband Albert. Albert would continuously compliment her on how she looked, but Nettie would always ignore it and pass on the same compliment onto her sister, Celie. This simple act of ignoring men lead to Nettie being free of the control of men, but also lead to her being kicked out of the Celie and Albert's home (page 16) where Nettie is never heard from again and is thought to be dead according to Celie (page 18). Due to Nettie's ignoring of men she was thrown out of a home and left to fend for herself in the wild, which led her to her death.

There are two similarities between these two independent women in Celie's life, they both lived on under their own power, but both suffered in the end. Celie knows the truth behind independence and that is the reason she has lived for so long, she does not strive for independence and instead accepts the male dominance of Albert over her. Throughout Celie's life she has endured all the beatings, all the hassle, and all the pain by not fighting for her independence for one reason, it is the only way she knows how to live (page 17).