Hard not to love Shug, I say. She know how to love somebody back. (89.20)
Shug’s mystique is explained. Being loveable is about the ability to love others. Once Mr.__, for example, gets a little nicer and shows care and consideration to the people in his life, they reciprocate.
Quote 14
He come home with a girl from round Gray. She be my age but they married. He be on her all the time. She walk round like she don’t know what hit her. I think she thought she love him. But he got so many of us. All needing something. (4.1)
Pa gets married to a young woman; the love she thought she had for him doesn’t last long in the face of familial needs. This marriage is less about love than about Pa wanting sex and a woman to take care of his children.
Sometime he [Pa] still be looking at Nettie, but I always git in his light. Now I tell her to marry Mr.______. I don’t tell her why.
I say Marry him, Nettie, an try to have one good year out your life. After that, I know she be big. (5.2-3)
Celie sees marriage as a way for Nettie to escape from Pa. However, she also sees marriage as ultimately unfulfilling, because once pregnant, a woman is chained to raising her husband’s children.