Westernization, it is true, destroys frontier forests and sometimes destroys villages, but it brings new hope for women. Girls now attend school. It took the advent of the road to force the Olinka to accept the fact that the real and powerful influence of the outside world could no longer be ignored. The Olinka can rage, but they cannot stop the onward, inward road of Westernization.
Nettie has so much self-assurance that Tashi's parents' outrage at Westernization does not make Nettie feel less of a person. She jokingly calls herself "a pitiful, castout woman who may perish during the rainy season." With humor like this, Nettie will endure. Clearly, she is a strong woman, and just as clearly, Olivia will be an even stronger woman.
The concept of a special sisterhood, or a female fellowship, that exists between women has run throughout the course of this novel. Celie and Nettie are an excellent example of this concept, as were Sofia and Celie when they mended their differences and began to create a quilt together called "Sister's Choice" (Letter 28); they were living out Nettie's observation, a continent away: "It is in work that the women get to know and care about each other."
Focusing on Nettie's situation while remembering Celie's situation, we could profitably imagine that Shug is Albert's "other wife," in the West African sense. Thus, Nettie's statement, "It was through work that Catherine became friends with her husband's other wives," can be understood more fully — thereby linking Nettie's exotic world far away with Celie's plain, country life in the South.
