Question

What is important about the portrayal of women in Invisible Man?What was the role of women in the novel, how were they treated, why were they important?

Accepted Answer

One positive example of a female character in this novel is Mary, who is the motherly black woman that the narrator stays with after he finds out that the Men's House has barred him from entering and excluded him from their fellowship. She is described as being a tranquil and serene individual, who treats the narrator with great generosity and lets him stay without paying when he cannot afford to give her any money. In addition, she is a positive role model as she helps the narrator to become established in his own black identity and encourages him to participate in the struggle for racial equality.

However, apart from the example of Mary, the majority of other women in this novel are presented as sex objects in a man's world where women take a definite second place. Sybil is one example of this. As a white woman, she seems only interested in using the narrator for her purposes of sexual gratification. She has a fantasy of being raped by a primeval, savage black man, and she starts a relationship with the narrator for this purpose. The narrator, too, only spends time with her to try and use her to get more information about the Brotherhood.

This novel on the whole therefore, in spite of the exception of Mary, treats women in a rather unfavourable light. Mostly they are presented as sex objects in a man's world, and it is interesting that none of the principle characters in this text are women.

Answer

It is not a coincidence that Ralph Ellison makes Mary, the most sympathetic woman in the novel, an older black woman. She is also one of few people in the novel with whom the narrator does not have a contentious relationship.
The narrator's relationships with white women and black men are fraught with tension. His grandfather's last words to "undermine 'em" [white people] with "grins and yeses" haunt the narrator, setting a standard in which it becomes difficult for him to develop a genuine sense of selfhood outside of others' expectations. At college, he encounters Dr. Bledsoe, a president of a historically black university who is exemplary of black people who maintain their lofty stations by cutting down other black people; he shows the white patrons only those images which are compatible with their stereotypes.
White women, such as Sybil, are presented as being just as racist as their male counterparts. While the narrator plies her with alcohol to get her to spill information about the Brotherhood, she calls him a "black brute," creating the fantasy of the sexually ravenous black man with a particular appetite for white women. Her name, Sybil, is the same as that of the prophetesses in Ancient Greek legend who revealed predictions in an ecstatic frenzy.
In other instances, white women are instruments of racism, as is the case of the nude blonde in the ring at the battle royal. The white male spectators use the sight of the nude blonde, who, in the text, bears a striking resemblance to Marilyn Monroe, to tempt and mock the young, black men who fear expressing their desire for the attractive white woman.
Ellison establishes a relationship between black men and white women in which the former cannot trust the latter due to their complicity with racism. However, Ellison sees the parallels between their conditions. They are both instruments of one another's oppression at the hands of white men.

Invisible Man

What is important about the portrayal of women in Invisible Man? What was the role of women in the novel, how were they treated, why were they important?

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