You Want to Be a Complex Woman in a Novel Written by a Man? Think Again!
Throughout Invisible Man, the narrator crosses paths with many women. However, the overt dilemma is the depiction of all of these women. Ellison and the narrator both typecast both black and white women in the book into strict molds that they are to follow. While one may argue that Ellison's depiction of these women is merely because they are nonessential to the overall progression of the plot, this belief is not held to the men in the book that are present for only a few pages. Men who pass the narrator in a fleeting moment are given more depth, are displayed to have greater intelligence, and have a greater range of personalities and abilities than their female counterparts.
The white women in Invisible Man exist as only sexual objects of interest to the author and other characters in the novel. An example of this is in the first chapter of the novel, when the narrator is at the battle royal. As the students are ushered into the room where the fight will occur, they notice a woman. On page 19, she is described as, “a magnificent blonde-stark naked”. The rest of the page consists of the author analyzing and sexualizing every last bit of her, while having the belief that, “of all in the room she saw only me with her impersonal eyes”. The woman continues to dance, providing satisfaction to the men and students in the room. When they take it too far, however, the woman begins to run and is ultimately grabbed by some of the men. She eventually is released, through the help of the other men.
The woman the narrator meets in chapter 19 is viewed the same. She is described to be “the kind of woman who glows as though consciously acting a symbolic role of life and feminine fertility” and “so striking that I had to avert my somewhat startled eyes” (409, 411). The woman is depicted to be only a woman of innate sexual desire and nothing else. I want to make it clear that I believe that the woman is fetishizing having sexual relations with the narrator, but what I am ultimately getting at is that to the narrator and Ellison, the white woman exists to do nothing but serve the man in his sexual fantasies and desires.
While black women in Invisible Man are not depicted in the same manner as white women, they are still depicted through an ignorant lens. Black women are depicted on two opposite sides of a spectrum. The first being a compliant woman. She is not allowed to speak up for herself, gentle mannered, and listens to everything any man tells her to do or be. She has no thoughts, no cares, no dreams. Mary Lou, Trueblood’s daughter, is depicted to be this woman. When Mr. Norton’s car drives past Matty Lou and her mother, Kate, Norton asks if the women “know anything about the age and history of the place?” (48). The narrator responds that, “They-they don’t seem very bright” (48). After driving closer to the house, the narrator notes that the women “appeared to regard him sullenly, barely speaking, and hardly looking in his direction” (50). As Trueblood tells the story of him raping his daughter he speaks for his daughter saying that after, “She didn’t want me to go then,” (60).
Trueblood then describes the moment when Kate discovers what has happened, saying, “Kate’s talkin’ the unknown tongue, like a wild woman” (61). He describes Kate chasing and attacking him in a wild manner, despite him just having raped their daughter. He continues saying that “She’s swingin’ her arms like a man swingin’ a ten-pound sledgehammer”. The characterization of Kate in this scene highlights the second type of woman depicted in Ellison’s novel. This woman is loud and does what she wants. She is strong, independent, and motherly. But overarchingly, she is viewed as a wild, crazy woman by men.
To be a woman in Invisible Man, or Native Son, for that matter, is to barely exist at all. You are either a sexual object, a meek, docile, passive woman, or a loud, crazy, motherly figure. You can never be all three. You can never have any complexities or character depth. This is present not only in Ellison and Wright’s literary worlds, but in many others. This thought is present in our own world. Where do you see women being viewed in such a light? Can issues like this be intersectional? How can we change this?
Hi, this was a super cool post and I think you hit so many points. I agree that in both novels we've read so far, the women are very one dimensional characters. The women are either there to take care of the narrators or to serve as a sexual prop - honestly, we never really see a lot of intellectual conversation taking place with them like it happens between male characters in the novel. Black women also have it worse and Trueblood's example is so relevant here - even independent women are portrayed as crazy and it's preferred that they stay submissive and don't question crap that people do. Great job on this post!
ReplyDeleteThis was a really well written post and you make some very valid points here! I agree with the point you make about the misrepresentation of women in this novel (and in Native Son). I also like how you acknowledge how the depiction of white women differs from that of black women, and how black women are depicted "on two opposite sides of a spectrum". Great job!
ReplyDeleteI find it really interesting that the women in this novel adhere to those stereotypes, because a lot of times those two specific personalities- the calm, nurturing mother figure and the crazy aggressive- are present in white-centric media, so much that there are even names for those exact stereotypes. It's a little saddening to see that these tropes exist even in black-centric literature; race AND gender are both to blame, apparently.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really good post. As we have been reading these books, I have definitely noticed the lack of women. They seem thrown in as an after thought, or are used to more effectively convey setting (you know, like props). I don't expect perfection from these novels on all fronts (obviously), but they can do better.
ReplyDeleteHey Sam, I think you've done an amazing job laying out your claim that women in not only Invisible Man, but Native Son as well, are portrayed in a less than desirable way, and simultaneously providing supporting evidence. When you lay out the instances in the novel during which these themes are present, it becomes very clear that this warped depiction of women is not an isolated incident. Now, the question begs whether this was intention of the author, or if he was simply "writing from the perspective of the narrator." Overall, great work!
ReplyDeleteThis was a really good analysis of what I think is a pretty glaring blind spot in the novel! I think that, like in Native Son the issue of the total lack complex of female representation is made a little bit more complicated by the fact that it's hard to tease out where the protagonist's point of view ends and the author's begins. In this case, it's hard to know how much of this one-dimensional representation of women is an intentional choice that Ellison uses to emphasize the others' "invisibility" to the narrator, and how much it's just a blind spot on the author's own part. However, I think it's telling that even at the end of the novel, when the narrator is at his most "enlightened" to the true nature of others, he doesn't seem to have made any progress in understanding the women around him as complex and human.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really good post! Although I had kind of noticed the unfortunate portrayals of most women in Invisible Man, I had not thought of the categories you outlined but they make a lot of sense. If the definition of invisibility really is something along the lines of people not seeing your true self, the way the Narrator sees many of the women in the story seems like textbook invisibility. This would be a whole other aspect of invisibility that the Narrator hadn't considered.
ReplyDeleteI agree a lot with what you are saying! I commented on another one of your posts kind of saying something similar, so it's nice to see all these points in a blog post! It's kind of disappointing to see how many popular books written about an oppressed group fails to show proper representation in other aspects as well. I think in Native Son, you could say that the female characters were written as 1-dimensional because Bigger Thomas saw them that way, however I don't think that argument really stands for Invisible Man because the protagonist is so different from Bigger Thomas.
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