The Color Purple (1985)

and the Letters Under the Floorboards

A woman told for most of her life that she was nothing at all, whose husband hid her sister's letters for years. What it teaches about what's kept from you, the promise that couldn't be broken, being punished for your own attention, the first woman who refused, and the line that kept his list and changed the ending: "I'm here."

The Color Purple (1985). Directed by Steven Spielberg, written by Menno Meyjes from Alice Walker’s 1982 novel. Whoopi Goldberg as Celie, Danny Glover as Albert, called Mister, Margaret Avery as Shug Avery, Oprah Winfrey as Sofia, and Akosua Busia as Nettie.

“I’m poor, black; I may even be ugly. But dear God! I’m here! I’m here!”

Celie.

A note before you read. This page discusses a film in which a girl is raped by the man she believes is her father, and a woman is beaten by her husband for years. Nothing is described in detail. If this is close to what happened to you, RAINN is there any hour at 1-800-656-4673. If you are living with someone who hurts you, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788. If a child is being hurt now, the National Child Abuse Hotline is 1-800-422-4453. Every current number is on the Resources page.

This page belongs to Plot Twist. It sits beside Fried Green Tomatoes as a film about women getting each other free, and it is the hardest film in the series so far. It is also one of the most hopeful. It’s the story of a woman who was told, for most of her life, that she was nothing at all, and who ends it saying, “I’m here.”

Like every entry on the Plot Twist page, it reads a story for the pattern it teaches, and makes no claim about anyone’s diagnosis. And it reads one story. The film was fiercely debated when it came out, including over how it portrayed Black men; Oprah Winfrey, who played Sofia, answered: “It’s one woman’s story.” This page takes her at her word. The patterns here are not about any race or any family but the one on the screen, and the same patterns run through every film in this series.

The Story

Celie is a Black teenager in rural Georgia in the early twentieth century. She has twice borne children by the man she knows as her father, and both babies were taken from her. He gives her away as a wife to a man she calls Mister, who beats her, and whose children mistreat her. Her younger sister, Nettie, runs away from home and comes to her. When Nettie fights off Mister, he throws her out. The sisters promise to write.

Years pass. Celie grows quiet and meek. Mister’s son, Harpo, marries Sofia, a woman who won’t be beaten, and when Harpo tries, she leaves. Mister brings home the singer Shug Avery, his longtime mistress, sick and needing care. Celie nurses her back to health. Shug is the first person in years to look at Celie and see her. She tells her she’s beautiful, and that she loves her.

Sofia, meanwhile, is jailed for striking the town’s mayor after he slaps her, and comes out years later a shell of herself, ordered to work as a maid for the mayor’s wife.

When Shug comes back, married, she brings Celie a letter from Nettie. Celie and Shug realize Mister has been hiding Nettie’s letters for years. They search the house and find dozens of them, under the floorboards. Nettie is alive, in Africa, working for the couple who adopted Celie’s children.

Celie reads, and reads. She doesn’t hear Mister calling her to shave him, and he beats her for it. At a family gathering soon after, Celie speaks up. She curses him, and leaves with Shug. Her words give Harpo’s new wife, Mary Agnes, the courage to leave too.

Years later, Mister is alone and drinking. Celie learns from Nettie’s letters that the man who raised her was not her father, and that the house and shop he held were her mother’s, and now hers. She opens a tailor shop. At the end, Mister quietly spends his own money to bring Nettie and Celie’s children home from Africa. While Mister watches from a distance, Celie meets her sister and her children, and the two sisters play the hand-clapping game from their childhood.

The Color Purple was a box office success and was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actress for Whoopi Goldberg in her first film role.

The Story Before the Story

Alice Walker’s novel won the Pulitzer Prize. She was reluctant to sell the film rights, because of how Hollywood had portrayed women and Black characters, and agreed only after friends persuaded her it was a way to do better. The film was argued over from the day it opened: some critics said it mangled or softened Walker’s book, and others defended it. Maya Angelou, who loved the novel, said the film “was a romantic treatment that perhaps could have been dealt with more honestly.” This page reads the film as it was made, and points you to the novel too.

What It Gets Right

A great deal. It lets a woman who has been silenced tell her own story, and gives her the last word. It shows women keeping each other alive: a sister who promises to write, a friend who sees her, a woman who refuses to be beaten and shows the others it can be done. It shows freedom as ordinary and hard-won: a house, a trade, her own money. And it lets its most famous scene of healing be two sisters in a field, playing a children’s game.

What It Teaches

1. The letters under the floorboards

The first thing the sisters promise each other is to write. “Nothing but death can keep me from it,” Nettie tells her.

Nettie keeps her promise. For years, her letters come. And for years, Mister hides them, under the floorboards of the house Celie cleans every day.

The Decoder’s Card 36, Withholding Belongings as Control, is “Using your possessions as leverage.” Those letters were Celie’s. They were her sister, her children, her history, the proof that someone out there loved her. The Decoder’s Card 39, Information Control, names the other half: what you don’t know, you can’t act on. As long as Celie believed Nettie was gone, she had no one to go to.

If something of yours has been kept from you, a letter, a document, a phone, a piece of your own story, it matters more than it might seem. It’s often the thing that would have told you that you weren’t alone.

2. “Nettie. Write.”

When the girls are separated, it’s Celie who says it: “Write.” A girl with nothing asks for the one thing that can cross any distance.

And it works, even though she doesn’t know it for years. The whole film turns on a promise between two sisters that nobody could break, only hide. Many women who got free say the same thing: the tie to one person outside the house was the thread they followed out.

3. Interrupted, and punished for it

When Celie finally has the letters, she reads them as if she’s starving. And she doesn’t hear Mister calling for her to shave him. He beats her for it.

The Decoder’s Card 36 is about what was taken. Card 1, Interruption as Dominance, is about this: “They interrupt your focused activities.” In most homes it never comes to violence. It looks like a call from the next room the minute you sit down with a book, a demand the moment you start something for yourself. It says: your attention belongs to me. Celie’s first hours with her sister’s voice were the one thing in that house that was hers, and he couldn’t bear it.

4. The woman who wouldn’t be beaten

Sofia is the first person Celie has ever seen refuse. When Harpo tries to hit her, she fights back, and when he doesn’t change, she leaves with her children. “I loves Harpo, God knows I do,” she says. “But I’ll kill him dead ‘fo I let him beat me.”

And Sofia pays for being that woman, in a world that punished it: jail, years of it, for striking a mayor who slapped her first. The film doesn’t pretend refusing is safe. It shows what it can cost. It also shows that Celie never forgets what she saw.

5. “I’m here”

When Celie finally stands up to him, in front of the family, Mister reaches for the oldest weapon he has: “You’re black, you’re poor, you’re ugly, you’re a woman, you’re nothing at all!”

Many women have heard some version of that list, from someone who needed them to believe it. Now listen to the line people remember from this film. It’s Celie’s, and it keeps his list and changes the ending: “I’m poor, black; I may even be ugly. But dear God! I’m here! I’m here!”

She doesn’t argue with the words. She refuses the conclusion. And she tells him what’s coming: “The jail you planned for me is the one you’re gonna rot in.”

6. A house, a trade, and her sister

The film doesn’t end with a rescue. Celie leaves with a friend, and then she builds a life: a house that was rightfully hers, a shop, work with her hands, money of her own. And then her sister and her children come home.

Mister, alone, sends for them, and watches from a distance. The film gives him a quiet act of amends and nothing more. The last word isn’t his. It’s two sisters playing the clapping game from their childhood, the sister he tried to erase home at last.

Who Got Her Out, Side by Side

	Sleeping with the Enemy (1991)	Fried Green Tomatoes (1991)	The Color Purple (1985)
How she left	Alone, in secret	A friend came to get her	A friend, and her own voice at the table
What kept her going	Planning, and fear	The friend	Her sister’s promise to write
What she built after	A new life, and the next man	A café, with her friend	A house, a trade, her sister home

Three women who got free of a violent man. Only one of them left saying, out loud and in front of everyone, exactly who she was.

If You Grew Up on This

Many of us saw this young, and some of us saw ourselves in it. Nothing on this page asks you to stop loving it, or to love it. The useful thing is to look at it clearly from where you stand now.

Some questions to sit with:

Is there someone whose letters, calls or messages you stopped receiving, and never found out why?
Who is the one person outside your house who would come if you called?
When you sit down to do something that’s only for you, does someone always need you right then?
Has anyone handed you a list of what you are, to prove you’re nothing? What would you keep, and what ending would you give it?
Who was your Sofia: the first woman you saw refuse?

Celie was told she was nothing at all. She kept the list and changed the ending.

You’re the audience now. You’re here.