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Color Purple

Watched The Color Purple recently and came away feeling sad despite the relatively upbeat ending to the story. Comes a point when so much needless pain, suffering and humiliation has been endured by the protagonist that no redemption can make her whole. The story-telling in the movie was so stark that it leaves a hollow two-dimensional feeling. The women in the movie are victims of the very men who are supposed to love and protect them. The violence that awaits them in the world outside is an extension of that awful misery they live at home every day. 

 Even love comes in this story from a particularly hopeless place - in the forming of the odd ménage à trois  between Celie, her abusive husband and his lover Shug. The story of the supremely suppressed and abused woman finding her salvation is an universal one. There are many in vernacular Indian literature that I am familiar with. For any woman who has had the good fortune of "emancipation" and has the ability to live the life she chooses to, such stories are a very stark reminder of the debt we owe our progenitors - the first woman in our family lines who stood up for her own rights and those of her daughters. We would not be here today but for her, but for Celie. 
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