Political Critique of Race Relations in Alice Walkers Color Purple Ess

The Color Purple as Political Critique of Race Relations      Ã‚  Ã‚   If the integrated family of Doris Baines and her adopted African grandson exposes the missionary pattern of integration in Africa as one based on a false kinship that in fact denies the legitimacy of kinship bonds across racial lines, the relationship between Miss Sophia and her white charge, Miss Eleanor Jane, serves an analogous function for the American South. Sophia, of course, joins the mayor's household as a maid under conditions more overtly racist than Doris Baines's adoption of her Akwee family: Because she answers "hell no" (76) to Miss Millie's request that she come to work for her as a maid, Sophia is brutally beaten by the mayor and six policeman and is then imprisoned. Forced to do the jail's laundry and driven to the brink of madness, Sophia finally becomes Miss Millie's maid in order to escape prison. Sophia's violent confrontation with the white officers obviously foregrounds issues of race and class, as even critics who find these issues marginalized elsewhere in The Color Purple have noted. But it is not only through Sophia's dramatic public battles with white men that her story dramatizes issues of race and class. Her domestic relationship with Miss Eleanor Jane and the other members of the mayor's family offers a more finely nuanced and extended critique of racial integration, albeit one that has often been overlooked.(11)    Like Doris Baines and her black grandson, Sophia and Miss Eleanor Jane appear to have some genuine family feelings for one another. Since Sophia "practically . . . raise[s]" (222) Miss Eleanor Jane and is the one sympathetic person... ...nold, 1993. 85-96.    Sekora, John. "Is the Slave Narrative a Species of Autobiography?" Studies in Autobiography. Ed. James Olney. New York: Oxford UP, 1988. 99-111.    Shelton, Frank W. "Alienation and Integration in Alice Walker's The Color Purple." CLA Journal 28 (1985): 382-92.    Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. "Explanation and Culture: Marginalia." Humanities and Society 2 (1974): 201-21.    Stade, George. "Womanist Fiction and Male Characters." Partisan Review 52 (1985): 264-70.    Tate, Claudia. Domestic Allegories of Political Desire: The Black Heroine's Text at the Turn of the Century. New York: Oxford UP, 1992.    Tompkins, Jane. Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction. New York: Oxford UP, 1985.    Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Harcourt, 1982.