Irigarayan Sensible Transcendental in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study displays how Alice Walker in The Color Purple reconciles the duality of spirit and the flesh through Irigarayan sensible transcendental to appreciate female protagonist’s subjective identity. It shows how Walker represents a new vision of God in the form of divinity within women and in nature as the Mother Goddess, far from the Western patriarchal image of God. In this paper, Irigarayan sensible transcendental is introduced as a process of discovering the uniqueness of women’s divine body. Women need to gain their own subjective identity by becoming divine in their feminine body. Celie, the female protagonist in The Color Purple, comes to understand the destructive nature of a male-defined deity; thus, she personifies an alternative for her exploited and marginalized existence. She seeks her self-development by awakening her hidden female energy, not merely for her physical pleasure, but as a creative power.