Gender Trouble in The Color Purple

Abstract

This paper aims to analysis the gender trouble in Alice Walker’s novel The color purple. Winning the highest award in America literature------Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Alice Walker, the contemporary American black woman writer, engages a series of gender and ethical topics in her work. She pays special attention to the gender identity of black women who are under dual oppression. Based on Gender Trouble of Judith Butler, this paper analyses the three protagonists’ different sexual orientation, viz, heterosexuality、homosexuality and bisexuality. Through going deeper into the psychoanalysis of the protagonists and evaluating their choice of love object, I argue that Alice Walker intends to inform her readers that there should be no oppositions between different sexual orientation. The Color Purple brings about the collapse of traditional binary opposition of gender difference and the realization of the subversion of identity. And I conclude that Alice Walker yearns for the harmony coexistence of the three different sexual orientations.