"A Girl Child Ain't Safe in a Family of Men": El color púrpura y la violencia en la pareja

Martín Gracia, Izarbe
Tarancón de Francisco, Juan Antonio (dir.)

Universidad de Zaragoza, FFYL, 2017
Departamento de Filología Inglesa y Alemana, Área de Filología Inglesa

Graduado en Estudios Ingleses

Resumen: This dissertation is concerned with the issue of intimate partner violence within African American community. In particular, it focuses on the changes brought about by the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan and the New Right during the eighties. To get a better sense of the impact of these changes, it focuses on Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple (1982). It argues that Walker’s novel is a cultural text that provides a more precise understanding of gender violence. It will argue that this form of violence does not take place in isolation; quite the opposite, it has always been rooted within very specific social and cultural contexts. Although gender violence within the black community goes back to socialization processes developed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, here, the focus is mainly on the changes in gender roles stirred by the cultural movements of the sixties and the seventies and, to a lesser degree, on the renegotiation of masculinity that took place during the Reagan presidency. My dissertation also considers the important role played by the feminist movement at the time. Finally, once the complex relationships between the social context and the novel are tackled, it moves on to analyze intimate partner violence in greater detail – what is actually considered domestic violence, the normalization of violence against women due to concrete socialization processes and concrete social settings – and also touches upon possible solutions as hinted at by Walker’s novel, most notably the need for African American women to report intimate partner violence and the importance of the concept of sisterhood as a support network to deal with domestic violence.

Tipo de Trabajo Académico: Trabajo Fin de Grado