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The Women of Brewster Place and The Color Purple

 

            The Women of Brewster Place and The Color Purple.
             The Color Purple, is an epic tale of a woman's struggle to find equality, stability and freedom in a male dominated existence. Incest, racism, domestic abuse, and sexism are prevalent throughout the lives of many of the African Americam women portrayed in the movie. Despite these terrible themes, the director, Steven Spielburg manages to give the film a hopeful tone and an optimistic ending. This greatly contrasts with Gloria Naylor's novel, "The Women of Brewster Place-. The multitude of black women in this novel all begin with pleasant lives, but a chain of terrible events sends them spiraling into oblivion as they move into the povery stricken area of Brewster Place. In this building, the women all continue to lead difficult lives filled with misfortune. The sequence at the end of the novel is also unusual, and can be also seen as hopeful in it's own way. Despite many distinctions, the two works have a striking similarity in their convictions and ideals. Both "The Women of Brewster Place- and "The Color Purple- depict the battle of black women against the perils of society; these come in the form of abuse, discrimination, and poverty.
             In "The Color Purple-, Celie's development from innocence to awareness is a common theme. To a certain extent, Celie's struggle to find herself can be seen as representative of the struggle of women to define their own experience through the development of self knowledge and understanding. Similar to views and opinions of that time period, Celie depicts a woman that has been placed in the background of a male dominated world. Suppression is maintained over inferior parties by various techniques, as expressed in the film. On the other hand, Gloria Naylor's novel is defferent, in that the women live mostly independent lives, and the abuse does not come from a central source. Poor decision making from the nave women result in their loss of innocence.


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