The novel opens with a line of dialogue spoken by Alfonso, Celies father: You better not never tell nobody but God. Itd kill your mammy. After this spoken line, Celie begins her letters, written to God. Celie has been raped by her father while her mother was visiting the doctor in town, and Alfonso has told her that she can speak of these matters to none except God.
After having so many children and now being ill, Celies mother wont sleep with her husband, so Celie is forced to take her mothers place. When Celie has a child, her mother screams at her asking who the father is. Celie can only answer that it is Gods. Then the child goes missing, and Celie tells her mother that God took it, though she knows that Alfonso did. Celie is pregnant again when her mother dies. Her second child, a boy, also is taken and sold by Alfonso.
Now Alfonso looks interested in Celies younger sister, Nettie, but Celie promises she will protect her. Alfonso gets remarried to a girl as young as Celie. Nettie meets a man in church who comes around every Sunday and who already has three children of his own.
Celie is beaten by Alfonso for looking at a man, but she writes that she was not looking at any manif she were going to look at anyone, she writes, it would be a woman because she is not scared of women. Celie felt sorry for her mother because she died trying to believe Alfonso, who had told her that Celies children were not his.
Celie encourages Nettie to marry Mr. ______ from church because Alfonso still has his eye on her. Mr. ______ asks Nettie to marry him, but Alfonso will not let him because, he says, he has children already, because his last wife was killed, and because of the scandal surrounding him and his relationship with Shug Avery. Celie is intrigued and asks her stepmother about Shug Avery. Her stepmother produces a photograph of Shug for Celie, who thinks that Shug is the most beautiful woman
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