THE SEXUAL ORIENTATION OF CELIE IN ALICE WALKER’S THE COLOR PURPLE

The objectives of this research are to reveal the factors that cause Celie to become a lesbian and to describe Celie‟s homosexual identity development. The researcher used sexual orientation, lesbianism and other related theories to answer the formulated research questions. The method used in this research is qualitative content analysis. The subject of this research is a novel entitled The Color Purple by Walker. The data are some phrases, clauses, and sentences related to the factors that cause Celie to become a lesbian and process of Celie‟s homosexual identity development. The key instrument of this research is the researcher herself employing sexual orientation theory by Giddens and lesbianism theory by Rich as explained in the conceptual framework. Sexual orientation and lesbianism are used as the grand theories for the analysis. The indicators made are based on the employed theories to gain the research data. To gain the trustworthiness, the researcher used data triangulation technique by crosschecking the data with her consultants and other researchers. The findings of the research show two important points. First, the factors that cause Celie to become a lesbian are psychological and social/environmental factors. Second, Celie‟s homosexual identity development process covers four stages: sensitization or emergence, identity confusion, identity assumptiopn and first relationship