ABSTRACT
In several cultures in the world, women usually receive inequality. They also experience oppressions, like violence, rape, and sexual oppressionbecause they are living in apatriarchal society where men are the center of everything.However, it does not make women just keep silent. They fight by using self-determination. These experiences are reflected in a literary work by Alice Walker entitled The Color Purple. This novel tells about a woman which is oppressed. However, she fights the oppression by having her self-determination. This study tries to identify how the characteristics of Celie are described, to find out how the oppressions that she experiences are described, and to examine how her self-determinations to fight the oppressions described.
There are three objectives which are discussed in this study. The first one is how Celie’s characteristicsare described throughout the story. The second one is how the oppressions that Celie experiences are described throughout the story. The last one is how Celie’s self-determinations to fight the oppressions are described throughout the story.
Feminist approach and radical feminism theorywere used in this study to analyze self-determination to fight oppression of the main character of The Color Purple. The writer used library research methodology in order to complete the analysis. The primary source of this study was The Color Purple by Alice Walker. The other sources that the writer used to fulfill the analysis were taken from printed and electronic books, the previous undergraduate thesis, and journal articles which discussed the similar topic.
In summary,The Color Purple proves that a woman must be able to fight any oppression by having self-determination. Celie is described as an uneducated, submissive, and unattractive woman in the story. She experiences sexual oppressions, namely repeated rapes, forced to marry a man that she does not love, and treated as sexual object; and also non-sexual oppression, namely is not allowed to get education, lives separated her sister and babies, gets physical violence from her stepfather and husband, and becomes a slave in her husband’s houseShe proves that her sexual self-determination, by having a lesbian relationship with Shug Avery, and non-sexual self-determination, leaving her husband to Memphis and running her own business, helps her to fight oppressions that she experiences, and she could live her life without any oppression.
