From Petrified Wood to Folk Art: A Somatic Reading of Celie’s Trauma and Reclamation in The Color Purple

Abstract

This article examines the somatic experience of Celie’s journey from victim to agent, as she traverses the narrative and encounters trauma in the novel, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, concluding that it is a neurobiological and text-based negotiation of trauma. This study combines poststructuralist ideas of Catherine Belsey on gaps in the text with Cathy Caruth’s theory of “belatedness” and Bessel Van der Kolk’s theory of somatic encoding. It suggests that the healing of Celie is a process of physical reawakening, in which her journey from the dissociated images of “making herself wood” to the tactile act of sewing is similarly a process of physical healing.