The Invisibility of Women in Invisible Man
As I'm reading Invisible Man, which is full of intentional irony and everything seems incredibly socially conscious, there's one ironic element that sticks out like a sore thumb and I'm not sure it's intentional. In a world full of thoughtfully built male characters, we've seen maybe three women in the entire book so far. One had sex with the narrator, and one of them was naked.
I'm not trying to be that person that says "yeah race is cool, but wHaT aBoUt GeNdEr??" But like what about gender? I just got a little tired of reading about marginalized people not being seen as individuals when literally the only female character with a name or any substance is Mary, who took the narrator in like a mother-figure and encouraged him to grow his own character until he decided to have nothing to do with her. Again, I'm not trying to sound over-sensitive or anything, but the irony is not lost on me.
I was going to let it go because it didn't have enough substance for a blog post. But then the "Woman Question" chapter happened and I couldn't figure out Ellison's stance on women. On the one hand, Ellison's presentation of the Brotherhood's dismissal of women's rights suggests that he is aware of the problem of women's visibility and critiquing it. But then the woman in the chapter does not even talk ideology at all. All she does is seduce the Narrator partially against his will, which does not portray women in a very positive or developed light. And then there's the fact that the woman, like the narrator, does not have a name. This could be suggesting that Ellison sees women as as invisible as other marginalized groups which is a problem, but she is also the only person the narrator has met whose name isn't specified. It's kind of a problem if one of the only women who gets a chapter devoted to her doesn't have a name or anything new to offer the narrator's perspective.
I guess it's possible that Ellison is aware of the problem in its entirety and is making a statement about the narrator not seeing women, but like everything else, wouldn't he make it more obvious? I also understand that in a narrow first person narrative like this it may be hard to develop other characters including women, but that doesn't mean they aren't present. Some of the one-chapter characters we run into along the way could have been women. To me it seems more likely that on some level, the absence of female visibility is unintentional.
It seems impossible to ignore, but maybe not a useful dialogue when the book has so many points it IS trying to make. What should I make of this?
I'm not trying to be that person that says "yeah race is cool, but wHaT aBoUt GeNdEr??" But like what about gender? I just got a little tired of reading about marginalized people not being seen as individuals when literally the only female character with a name or any substance is Mary, who took the narrator in like a mother-figure and encouraged him to grow his own character until he decided to have nothing to do with her. Again, I'm not trying to sound over-sensitive or anything, but the irony is not lost on me.
I was going to let it go because it didn't have enough substance for a blog post. But then the "Woman Question" chapter happened and I couldn't figure out Ellison's stance on women. On the one hand, Ellison's presentation of the Brotherhood's dismissal of women's rights suggests that he is aware of the problem of women's visibility and critiquing it. But then the woman in the chapter does not even talk ideology at all. All she does is seduce the Narrator partially against his will, which does not portray women in a very positive or developed light. And then there's the fact that the woman, like the narrator, does not have a name. This could be suggesting that Ellison sees women as as invisible as other marginalized groups which is a problem, but she is also the only person the narrator has met whose name isn't specified. It's kind of a problem if one of the only women who gets a chapter devoted to her doesn't have a name or anything new to offer the narrator's perspective.
I guess it's possible that Ellison is aware of the problem in its entirety and is making a statement about the narrator not seeing women, but like everything else, wouldn't he make it more obvious? I also understand that in a narrow first person narrative like this it may be hard to develop other characters including women, but that doesn't mean they aren't present. Some of the one-chapter characters we run into along the way could have been women. To me it seems more likely that on some level, the absence of female visibility is unintentional.
It seems impossible to ignore, but maybe not a useful dialogue when the book has so many points it IS trying to make. What should I make of this?
Im like 90% sure ellison excludes women on purpose. I mean, considering how careful he is about his stuff, there's no way he excludes them by accident. I don't know exactly why, but after reading you're blog post, I'm curious. Maybe it's partially because a woman character would automatically evoke romance vibes and the narrator is too much of an ambitious, single-minded angry idea of a person to have any association with such things? He's too busy to even notice women? I don't know.....
ReplyDeleteI mean it is possible that ellison did leave women out by accident. Or maybe he's a woman himself and ralph is just a pen name.
Yes, perhaps I should have been clearer. I definitely don't think Ellison was oblivious to his treatment of women in the book. But maybe there's some part, some small portion of him that doesn't include them as much. After all, even if the narrator doesn't see them as people, female people would still be around him more than they are in the book.
DeleteI think you're right, though, like it kinda seems like besides Mary, the rest of the women of the story are there as background elements or to seduce the narrator. I don't know if Ellison intended to leave out women, perhaps it was something he couldn't relate to much, or maybe it was just something he was unaware of. I feel like many stories and novels, even today, don't seem to be leaving people out until you take a closer and look and realize, wait... where ARE the women/people of color/LGBT+ characters/etc. Since women make up 50% of the population, it's especially frustrating when most of the characters remain men.
ReplyDeleteYou make a good point about the exclusion of women in the story. Could this be a conscious ironic choice about how the biggest groups of invisible people are invisible to each other as well? Ellison seems too self-aware about issues in his time to accidentally leave out women in his story. I think a comment posted on this post had a good idea about how he excluded women from the plot to make it stray from any form of romance.
ReplyDeleteAfter having read the chapter with Sybil, there's definitely a sense that the narrator recognizes the shared invisibility with race and gender, but we still never get an intersectional perspective, which I suppose is due to the gender identity of the narrator and the fact that the women in Invisible Man are just part of the story and not developed as their own characters (which is disappointing).
ReplyDeleteI think part of the reason why there aren't very many women in Invisible Man is because of the time period in which it is set. The narrator is living in the early 1900s and spends all of his time in environments that were extremely hostile to women at that time. Both within the labor force and in the political world, there were very few prominent women because they were forcibly kept out. However, it goes so far in this book that you can't really excuse what Ellison does with women because even if it is intentional, he doesn't make that clear or execute it well.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great point. I think that the lack of women in this story could just be a choice that Ellison made on purpose. Yet, whether it is to make a point about how the people claiming to be invisible are actually blind to another big group of invisible people or whether it just adds to the environment that elision is trying to set is up to debate. I think there could be many reason why the choice was made, but it is a very interesting thing to think about while reading this book.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the treatment of women in Invisible Man is certainly bizarre. Everyone else is allowed their moment, to have character, but the women of the story are pushed constantly into the background. The narrator explicitly describes Mary as a "force" at one point instead of a person. If it wasn't for the chapter on the "Woman Question" I'd guess that it was unintentional, but that chapter makes it clear that it must be intentional.
ReplyDelete