Alice Walker presents her ideas of love and marriage through the character in ‘The Color Purple’ and their relationships. Each character’s perception of love and marriage differs in the prime of the novel, yet as we progress and witness the trials and tribulations they endure, we see their ideas distort and reshape, or strengthen. Throughout the novel we are given a mixed bag of types of relationships, some are love-starved, others are brimming with love and some are only short bursts of love.

From the early chapters of the novel we are given the fundamentals of the generic relationship back then; dominant male and submissive female (there is also the exception of Shug and Celie, even then it seems that Shug is more dominant than Celie). Most marriages throughout the novel aren’t particularly joyous; we rarely saw any love and most, and even when we do, violence is used to control their other-half’s behaviour. There are a few stable relationships that prevail, for example Nettie and the Reverend. With the different marriages that we encounter I believe that Walker is implying that marriage wasn’t so much to do with how much you loved the other person, but much to do with how much you could grow while being with the other person, or how much labour one would have to do while with their spouse. One message I feel that Walker is trying to depict is that marriage was just an institution that does not do much other than give men and excuse to control women. Another is that marriage, on love alone, will not last.

Those who fall in the same age demographic as me may be oblivious to what it takes to be married to someone, but through some of the hardships that a few of the characters to go through in the novel, there is much more involved. Aside from love, there is also the component of comprise, tough love, persistence and resilience and patience. Inside most of the