The Woman Who Walked Into Doors and the The Color Purpl

No one knows what happens behind closed doors.

Within the confines of a relationship cruelty can thrive and domestic violence become the means of communication and authority. Yet, in spite of this evidently widespread behaviour, in remains a taboo subject in our society. Roddy Doyle and Alice Walker give voice to the women who suffer in silence in damaged relationships away from prying eyes. Their stories connect with their readers on a very deep level as they are invited to engage with the struggles of their heroines to protect themselves and those around them.

Doyle confidently steps into the shoes of a woman in The Woman Who Walked Into Doors. From the early stages of the text, Doyle introduces us to the dynamics of Paula's relationship with Charlo. This opening is symbolic by having its own chapter just nine lines long. The blunt statement "- You fell, he said" comes quickly into the text leaving the reader asking more questions about their relationship because it is said with no fore or post explanation.

Throughout the text there are constant hints of problems but it is not until much further into the book that Paula, the narrator, the woman who walked into doors, relays what actually happened.By contrast, Walker opens with Celie's memory of her stepfather's command that she stay quiet about his abuse of her. The abrupt release of information at the start of The Color Purple leaves the reader a lot more affected by the abuse than Doyle's processes, which is a lot more easing on the reader but ultimately does not affect the reader as strongly as Walker does. Talking to God, Celie uses the words "titties," "pussy," and "his thing" without any sense of embarrassment.

These words are the only words that Celie knows for these terms. The opening line is an enigmatic yet troubling line because of its ambiguity.The reason why Celie writes to God is that she would like to tell her mother what happened, but Celie's father has warned her not to, to tell "nobody but God," especially not Celie's mother because, according to him, "It'd kill your mammy. " Whilst we go on to know it is Alphonso her stepfather (who Celie believes to be her father until many years later) telling her this as he forces himself upon her, it could however, also symbolise every man that does wrong against her. She begins to write letters to God asking for "a sign" because she cannot understand what has just happened to her.

This is the first time she has been raped, and by opening the book at this moment, Walker lets the reader know that this is just the first of many. The abuse is significant motif throughout the text which gives it a more mysterious quality about it, because for a while this causes the reader to ask questions, and reveals a brief glimpse into the mind of an abused woman, searching and asking questions, but not ever knowing the full truth. The epistolary form in which the text takes shape gives it a quasi-confessional quality about the writings.To look at the effects domestic violence has had on these women we must look at their history. Doyle is very good at giving a detailed insight into the life of Paula before marrying Charlo. By recollections of her school time stories as she "wanked a boy in the back of the room", her naivety shows through as she declares "I didn't masturbate him: I wanked him.

There's a difference, I think. " Critics reading this have suggested that what she did to boys at such a young age, she rightly deserved to be called "a bike" and so too deserved what she had coming to her in later life after gaining such a reputation.Yet if we read on, we learn she did not do it because she wanted to, she did not do it because it was in her nature, she did it because she had to. Celie on the other hand has had no such earlier sexual experiences, and before she befriends Shug Avery she had not had even orgasmed, and so therefore Shug still thinks of her as a virgin. To Celie sex was a duty, but she never calls it sex or making love but simply describes the movements of Albert as if no more than a robotic command."What is it to like? she announces, "He git up on you, heist your nightgown round your waist, plunge in.

... Just do his business, get off, go to sleep" she talks like it has been done to her so many times now, like she is not even there. Celie has come to accept that "getting beat" is a way of life, it does not matter what she does do, or does not do.

This bluntness of language has a strong effect on the reader we understand an implied sense of passivity from both characters. They were objectified by sex. Paula has no choice she has to "make a name" for herself.Neither wants the sexual contact but each feel obliged and restricted of choice because of their social status. The Color Purple is set in a highly religious time and The Bible says sex is meant to be a pleasure between man and wife in a loving relationship. So because there is no love in their relationship, there is no pleasure in sex.

The Color Purple opens at the start of the 1900's, there still remains a lot of memories of slavery and whilst black people were "freed" almost forty years previous, many are still oppressed by those same memories and attitudes.People both black and white who were born either into slavery or whose parents were slaves, are still alive, and so a lot of slave mentality still exists within the people yet we hear little about the struggle black women faced just to have equality with the black man. Walker calls herself a "womanist" and a favourite definition of mine of a womanist is taken from Walker's In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983) "Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender, darker and stronger too".Womanists are not there to beat down the man, but to reveal man's weakness, and in turn strengthen a woman.

Shug act more manly than most men ... You know Shug will fight...

Just like Sofia. She bound to live her life and be herself no matter what. Mr. ______ think all this is stuff men do.

" Sophia stands for none of it and beats her husband back and so "one of his eyes shut like a fist. He walk stiff and say his teef ache". But does he blame it down on his wife, no and immediately we see that roles have been switched, all of sudden we are faced with excuses for the injuries and ironically he declares that he walked into a door, in the same way Paula in The Woman does when she is talking to the nurses at the hospital.Nettie follows in the near same footsteps as Celie as Alphonso rapes her and beats her, but she runs away and on the advice of Celie somehow manages to start a new life in Africa, with a caring Christian family, whom she eventually marries into. Walker uses these women to show the different stages of womanhood they are at, but also uses the men around them to show that they are not all bad. At that time women were not viewed at equals and definitely were not treated so, and Walker has given these qualities to these women to show that whilst they did not change the world, they did a lot to change their own lives.

If we look at the influential African-American women of that era they include women such as Harriet Tubman and Madam C J Walker. Now Celie did not free any slaves, nor did Nettie and Sophia become self-made millionaires, but they created better lives for themselves, by not being oppressed by men, and that was worth more than any amount of money, the same can be said of Paula, getting Charlo out was her main aim and she achieved it, now she is able to move on with her life. The Woman Who Walked Into Doors is set in a very different time but similar culture to The Color Purple.The Woman is set in the centre of the Republic of Ireland focused on a woman born in the late 1950's to a very different world, She is Irish, a Girl and poor and so faces all of the second class citizen issues that Celie does. "[Y]ou were a slut or a tight bitch, one or the other" even from her own brothers and her father acknowledged it also saying if she was not careful she'll "soon get a name".

So perhaps she did get a name, was she was merely asking for the abuse she got? A realist would argue that as a woman coming of age in such a male dominated era, it is easy to see how a lowly woman can get lost in the system.Paula belonged to the working class, cleaning offices for a living, struggling to cope with four children, resorting to drink and becoming an eventual alcoholic. No wonder her husband had to beat her, she was a terrible mother and an even worse wife. She failed at education, failed at work, and is now failing in life.

Are we to believe that because of her failures that is why she is abused, and thence the abuse caused her to fall even deeper thus creating a vicious circle, or is it, that she simply picked the wrong man?It is not that she set out to fail at life but she was simply unlucky in love. Paula "stopped being a slut the minute Charlo Spencer started dancing with her". She believed he was her soul mate, Charlo he could turn her life around for the better, everyone called her a slut. Every girl was called a slut but she could not handle that. Perhaps Charlo thought she really was a slut, but before they got married it seemed their relationship was perfect, sex was amazing especially on their honeymoon, "all week. Me as much as him.

.. Four, five goes a day".Of course when they got home it all changed. Charlo had started out as paradoxically "the perfect husband", whereas Celie had married into a relationship that would never be defined as perfect, far from it. But ironically in the end it seems that Albert is a more perfect by the friendship that he is able to forge with Celie, and Charlo on the contrary, is thrown out on his ear into the street, out of Paula's life.

Celie had been raped for nearly 6yrs and had bore two children to her stepfather, before she was 'sold' to Mr. _____.Paula had had a few relationships but nothing too serious, this sudden anger outburst was new to her, but she was young and still in love so much that she took Charlo's abuse. Charlo however saw the errors of his ways, supposedly, and always fawned over his wife afterwards, each episode seemed short and sharp but never do we see Charlo admit to beating his wife but he always makes excuses for her.

Celie and Albert's relationship is such that, because of the time, there is nothing wrong with raping a woman, nothing wrong with beating her.Throughout the text Walker never really tells us of the true injuries Celie suffered at the hands of Albert. Doyle however does, through Paula's narration and we are introduced to extended streams of consciousness as she recalls the moments surrounding each attack. A key part that Paula never seems to understand is that with every time she went to the hospital the doctors always put it down to drink and she really wanted them to "Ask me. Ask me. Ask me.

" and she'd tell them the truth instead of always saying what Charlo told her to say. "Broken nose. Loose Teeth. Cracked ribs. Broken finger.Black eyes.

" And now we see those similarities between our two heroines. Whilst they both deal with the situations outwardly in very different ways, inwardly they remain the same. Their lives become clockwork, quasi-robotic they know what is going to happen to them, they deal with it, it becomes so much a way of life they cannot remember life before it. They are "brainwashed and braindead", unable to think for themselves, it suggests that the men have won. Had both texts ended on a point where the men had won, there would have been an absolute outcry from feminist critics worldwide.Feminists do not want to have absolute superiority over man but want to be equal and not have to succumb to the callings of men.

Had The Woman finished at the point where she is at her lowest ebb a feminist would have argued that all Doyle sets out to do is to weaken women, set them back seventy years and not show such inner inbuilt strength that women have. Doyle was praised for recognising that it is at a woman's weakest point that men think they have won and women are able to regroup and triumph.The contrasting characters of Albert and Charlo are interesting because whilst we see Charlo show signs of love and compassion to his wife, usually after an abusive episode, Albert never shows similar signs and even when in the concluding letters of the text Celie and Albert are able to sit down and talk and actually become friends there is no suggestion of that developing back into a relationship. "His face was full of worry and love.

.. He hit me, He sent me across the kitchen..

.He loved me again" Charlo displays signs of somewhat bi-polarity because whilst he can't control his emotions he shows some traits of remorse in hindsight. Albert contrarily is never sorry and does not say sorry at first, his character does change somewhat however throughout the text, whilst Charlo never changes because he is unable to the ultimate error of his ways long enough to do something meaningful to put things right. But Albert does so, with obvious help of Celie. The whole novel can be seen as an attack on all these things as he shouts at Celie "You black, you pore, you ugly, you a woman.Goddam, he say, you nothing at all.

" The white woman is the mayor's wife. The rich woman is Shug Avery who is not oppressed by any man. The pretty woman is Sofia who is oppressed and is not afraid to hit out at the men. Celie is none of those and so is the lowest of the low.

At the end, both women end up domestically single, even if not legally divorced, one through the help of a friend simply leaves her husband, and the other throws him out but not without getting her revenge on him first. Paula ends up as a widow, a single parent an alcoholic but "It was a great feeling. She'd] done something good. "Celie after leaving Mr. _____ is finally able to call him Albert, by reconciling through acknowledging both their loves for Shug; it is a symbolism of Albert being a friend and no more.

It is impossible to talk of the marital relationships without discussing the extra marital relationships. Paula insists she has no more than stupid crushes, "no sex or adultery" they were merely infatuations that passed the days. Charlo, Paula tells us did have affairs that she knew about but that he did not think she knew about.We wonder whether Charlo ever hit any of these other women or did he just save it all for her? Charlo was able to relieve his sexual tension at other points but that just left physical frustration and so he took it out on Paula. Perhaps deep down he really no longer wanted to be in the relationship, they married quite young, and had their first child within a year, they never had real time for their relationship to flourish, maybe they are not meant to be together but they have four children now and so he has to stay.Deep down a part of him just wants to kill her so he can escape from this relationship.

It suggests that it was killing him mentally and so he had to hurt her physically to relieve the pain. Celie and Albert both had affairs with the same woman Shug Avery. Did Celie therefore withstand all this abuse, was she able to 'zone out' because she knew she was never attracted to men and that is why it never caused her serious psychological damage?Any other person surely would have been a lot more traumatised if they lost their virginity to the man they called father but not Celie, was it because she knew she was in love with women and so a man raping her did not seem as invasive as it should have done? Walker conveys the psychological damage of perpetual abuse of a person throughout not only their own life but the life of their ancestors. Sexism and racism heap psychological damage on their victims for generations, not to mention the clear sociological problems that germinate from them.

In conclusion both authors present domestic violence in such different ways, yet we can see clear similarities in the mindset of the women despite their outwardly differences. Both are graphic and basic depictions of abuse but powerful nonetheless. Doyle adds more depth to Paula by portraying this because we see that domestic violence can act as a learning curve for its victims and we see signs of this in the sequel to this text "Paula Spencer". Walker's Celie too comes through the abuse and has effectively turned her life around for the better.