“The Color Purple” by Alice Walker (post 3): Are Sofia and Shug so assertive because they are feminist, bisexual, or split personalities?

When the Mayor’s wife asks Sofia to be her maid, an offer meant as a compliment, Sofia answers “Hell, no,” which gets Sofia a horrific beating, imprisonment, and twelve years of hell. And since, in the Jim Crow South, what happens to Sofia was predictable, why did she say it?

What seems to happen is that when Sofia is threatened—treated subserviently or physically attacked—it triggers a sudden switch to an insolent, violent, protector personality. Sofia is primarily a split personality, and secondarily a feminist.

In contrast, Shug is more philosophical, and thinks through what she should do in terms of feminist principles. She is portrayed as primarily a feminist, but even Shug is described as possibly having a split personality:

“Shug say, Girl, you look like a good time, you do. That when I notice how Shug talk and act sometimes like a man. Men say stuff like that to women, Girl, you look like a good time. Women always talk about hair and health. How many babies living or dead, or got teef. Not bout how some woman they hugging on look like a good time” (1, p. 81).

Does the above indicate bisexuality rather than a split personality? I don’t know enough about bisexuality to answer that question. Nor can I confirm my speculation about Sofia’s multiple personality, because, at least in the part of the novel I’ve read so far, very little of Sofia’s point of view is given.

1. Alice Walker. The Color Purple. New York, Harcourt, 1982.