This paper examines how Alice Walker's The Color Purple and Charles Dickens's Great Expectations employ symbolism to explore characters' struggles against social expectations. The analysis traces Walker's use of color and sewing as symbols of emotional states and feminine empowerment in Celie's journey, then turns to Dickens's use of class, money, and Miss Havisham's frozen-in-time imagery to critique Victorian social hierarchies. The paper also considers how each novel's format — serialization for Dickens and conventional narrative for Walker — shapes how themes are developed and repeated. Ultimately, both authors argue that personal fulfillment comes not from conforming to social norms but from self-acceptance and independence.
In both The Color Purple and Great Expectations, symbolism is used to reflect the struggles of the main characters against the social worlds they inhabit. In The Color Purple, the main protagonist is Celie, a young African-American girl living in the South. She does not fit comfortably into her society for several reasons. She occupies a very low social standing as part of the underclass, she is abused by her father Alphonso, and she is involved in a sexual relationship with Shug — a relationship that is not accepted by her family or by the broader society in which the novel is set. The story covers a large portion of Celie's life as she seeks to deal with her place in society and find happiness on her own terms. In Great Expectations, Charles Dickens similarly places his protagonist Pip in a world of rigid class boundaries and unfulfilled social ambitions, using an array of secondary characters and symbolic objects to develop his themes.
The color purple of the title is itself a reference to color as symbol. Colors are used throughout Alice Walker's novel as mirrors of emotional states. There are a wide range of colors in the world, purple being one of the most resonant. For Celie, color becomes a symbol of emotion — at her lowest moments, her world appears drab, brown, and grey, while brighter colors in her life signal better times.
Sewing is another important symbol in the novel. One of the major themes in The Color Purple is feminine power, something that Celie must begin to understand as part of her maturation. She explores this power in a number of ways, but sewing in particular is presented as a means of channeling creative energy into something productive, and therefore represents a form of feminine empowerment. The success Celie ultimately achieves through sewing illustrates her coming of age — finding a way to exist more fully in the world and to become a more complete person as a result.
In Great Expectations, multiple characters struggle to fit into society. Pip, for example, has difficulty winning the favor of Miss Havisham or Estella despite his efforts to become a gentleman. His journey toward gentlemanhood, however, functions as a symbol for the redemption of the criminal Magwitch. Magwitch spent a great deal of money transforming Pip into a gentleman as his secret benefactor, and in doing so sought his own redemption for the crimes he had committed.
The expectations of the title thus symbolize what people hope to achieve in life. Pip has a surface-level desire to be accepted into high society, but beneath that lies a more fundamental wish simply to be accepted for who he is — a struggle that persists throughout the novel. It is ultimately Magwitch alone who is able to recognize his goodness. Magwitch's own redemption is a more complicated matter: he has clearly accumulated considerable wealth, yet he remains outside the ranks of the gentlemen. Havisham, Estella, and Drummle are likewise wealthy individuals whose behavior and morals are no more noble than Pip's. In this way, Dickens uses the symbols of money and class to demonstrate that social standing is not a reliable indicator of a person's character or soul. Drummle in particular serves as a symbol for the moral emptiness that can reside within the wealthy classes to which Pip aspires.
The character of Miss Havisham is also rich with symbolism. One of her defining traits is her insistence on wearing a wedding dress at all times — a symbol of a moment in her past when her life was irrevocably changed for the worse. Her present self is entirely a reflection of that past. The stopped clocks in her home reinforce this, all fixed at the same hour: the moment connected to the wedding dress. It is also significant that she remains "Miss" Havisham. All of this is designed to show that she is a woman living permanently in the past, in the moment when her dreams collapsed. For Pip, her example is meant to illustrate that dreams of achieving a better life are not always what they appear to be — they can be illusory, and pursuing something better does not necessarily make one a better person.
"How format shapes thematic expression in both novels"
"Long narrative arcs and gradual character transformation"
The struggles with society that both central characters experience have a lot to do with their deviation from the norms expected of people like them — black and female for Celie, and poor for Pip. By contrasting each character's desire to rise above society's expectations with the costs of that pursuit, both authors highlight a shared major theme: that people should resist measuring themselves against society's expectations and instead live their own lives with strength and independence of conviction.
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