She is constantly worried that her letters will not reach her sister and voices her concern, telling Celie that Albert had promised that she would never hear from her again. When Nettie arrives in Africa she begins to write frequently to Celie. After they find that one of their partner missionaries is unable to go, they offer Nettie the chance to join them in Africa. The Reverend, whose name is Samuel, and his wife Corrine are both missionaries preparing to go to Africa. She gets a job as a maid with the family. When Nettie leaves, he follows her and tries to rape her, but she escapes and seeks out the Reverend, who is raising Celie’s children. Unfortunately, Albert (who always preferred Nettie to Celie and asked Nettie to marry him first) refuses to allow Nettie to stay in his house unless she rewards him. Things improve for Celie for a short while after her sister Nettie comes to live with her. She must raise Albert’s children, take full control of any house chores, endure unenjoyable intimate nights with her husband, and undergo regular, unnecessary beatings from him. Married life is also quite painful for Celie. After her mother dies, Celie’s father marries her off to Mr. Alfonso puts the children up for adoption, and they are taken in by a reverend living in the town. Celie falls pregnant twice and is taken out of school. Alfonso told her that she must not tell anybody what happens, except God.
In Celie’s first letter to God, we learn that she has been raped by her father, Alfonso. Her most ambitious challenge is to remake her idea of God as an old, white, bearded male-her antithesis-into a God who encompasses everything and lives within her. She fights her way through life and questions everything she has been taught. At the start of the novel, Celie is a fourteen-year-old, vulnerable, abused black girl who addresses her letters to “Dear God.” Thirty years later, at the end of the novel, she has forged her own life despite a male-dominated and racially prejudiced society.
The Color Purple is an epistolary novel, made up of letters written by Celie to God and by Nettie to Celie.
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