A Gynocritical Study of The Color Purple by Alice Walker: A corpus-based Analysis of Adjectives

Abstract

From the beginning of the scholarly work on the women, most of the research have been carried out by opposite gender. Therefore, there have been limited work done to see how a woman portrays another woman in her writings. Moreover, there have been limited research conducted utilizing corpus tools for the analysis of gynocriticism. Thus, the present research aims to examine The Color Purple by Alice Walker by employing the corpus-based approach to investigate the representation of female character by the author in the novel. The positive or negative portrayal of women by the author in the novel was investigated through author’s usage of adjectives. Showalter's (2009) Theory of Gynocriticsim was used as a theoretical framework for the current research. Further, corpus-based methodology was employed to analyze how Alice Walker has portrayed the female character in her novel through the use of adjectives. An in-depth analysis has shown that Alice Walker has depicted woman as a helpless and sidelined being who can be turned as a resilient after suffering from frightful circumstances. The current research also opens new gates for the researchers to analyze the text from Gynocriticial perspective along with corpus techniques.
 Keywords: Adjectives; Corpus-based analysis; Gynocriticsim; The Color Purple; Woman

Gynocriticism As Bolstered On Margaret Atwood's Giving Birth

“…Usually in the text, this approach will be seen in how the woman's soul may take care of her child and serves her husband. Mental aspect of women is actually unique since its both biological and psychological aspect could always reflect his past, present, and future ideas (Hartanto & Roifah, 2020;Showalter, 1979;Zunaira Zafar et al, 2021). In the fourth aspect, women's cultural approach emphasizes how society forms perspectives, goals, responses and responses about women.…”

“…This is crucial since this study underlines how women's body involves their intimate experience with themselves and then with the babies that are born. Besides, aspects of biology in the text can be a differentiator between female's and male's culture (Aricheta-Cabeliza, 2016;Zunaira Zafar et al, 2021). It is due to biological understanding may also affect discourse of women.…”

“…The baby's head then presses against the cervix and at the same time the hormone oxytocin is released which causes contractions. Many midwives believe that this hormone plays a role in baby delivery (Kristanti, 2014;Zunaira Zafar et al, 2021). In order to give birth to her child, a woman has to give up her body, mind, energy and whatever she had.…”