The Color Purple attracts me because of its unique writing style and Walker has applied the epistolary form in this novel and this form of narration is very rare among the latest novels. The whole story is made up of ninety-two letters. Black people’s culture and black women’s subsistence status reflected in the novel attract me a lot. This thesis is aiming to analyze the typical womanist images in the novel. Structurally, this thesis is composed of five main parts. Chapter one deals with the introduction of the author and her main contributions, and general introduction of The Color Purple; chapter two is literature review; chapter three introduces Alice Wallker’s womanism; chapter four briefly analyzes the negative stereotype of triditional black women and illustrates the important part of this thesis. This chapter analyzes the novel in details, revealing the womanist images and spirits of frighting on Celie, Shug and Sofia. And the last chapter is the conclusion.

2. Literature Review

Many people abroad are very interested in Alice Walker and her novels, especially The Color Purple. Some people regard it as striking and consummately well-written. The book is very attrative, as a result, it places her in the company of Faulker, from whom she has learned many ideas, such as, the presentation of a complex story from a naive point of view.

Many critics have praised the novel, The Color Purple. Peter Prescott consider it as “an American novel of permanent importance”（1985: 68）; Barbara Smith asserts it“The book is like a jewel. Any way you hold it to the light you will always see something new reflected”（1990: 214）. But in contrast, many people hold different views, some critics stated Alice Walker as an apologist, because she speaks or writes in defence of the liberation of the black woman. Other people also criticize the description of the bloody violence in her novels.

Similar to scholars abroad and with the passion for American minority literature, more and more Chinese scholars made their contributions to the literary studies of the novel the color purple, such as Wang Chengyu who analyzes the black women and the language in the text:

Blank language art in The Color Purple deepen the theme, and also has emphasized the rhetoric effect of irregular variant. It can cause the attention of readers, leave them more memorable deep impression, it also increases the readability of the story and mystery, so that readers can't help track Celie, to explore the secret life of the black family and pay attention to the development of Celie’s destiny. Blank language art will make this novel have more artistic charm. (2000: 70). 

Zhang Hongmin who tries to reveal what are the roles of God in The Color Purple; Wu Hongjun who want to deconstruct sexism and racism of the patriarchal society embodied in The Color Purple:“It describes the black women’s political condition and state of life under the racial and sexual oppression, their fighting against the double oppression and searching for the integrity of self and life.” (2004: 43) And Sun Qiao tries to analyze the novel from the perspective of feminism, but she focuses on the relationship between the writing style of the novel and the theory in the novel. Ji Min makes an analysis of the protagonists from the perspective of transformation. This thesis analyzes the womanist images of Celie, Shug and Sofia in the novel and they all overturned the negative stereotype of black women.