Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Female Stereotypes

Author(s): Carolyn W. Sylvander

Source: Negro American Literature Forum, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Autumn, 1975), pp. 77-79
Published by: African American Review (St. Louis University)
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3041094
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RALPH ELLISON'S
INVISIBLE MAN AND
FEMALE STEREOTYPES
The analysis of stereotyping of Black Americans
which Ralph Ellison explores in various ways and
places in Shadow and Act has applicability to any
oppressed group. Unfortunately, however, his own
creations do not always transcend the very fault he is
opposing. Ironically, both Black and white female
characters in Invisible Man reflect the distorted
stereotypes established by the white American male.
Though Ellison in Shadow and Act also suggests
correctives to the oppression of a group by means of
stereotyping, he does not apply those correctives to the
women characters of Invisible Man. The narrator of
Invisible Man in fact loses what slight recognition he
has of woman-as-human at the beginning of the novel
as he becomes more closely allied with manhood,
Brotherhood, and his own personhood. Fitting his
patterns of beast, clown, and angel, Ralph Ellison's
women characters are not, in his own analysis of stereo-
typing, fully human.
As described in Shadow and Act, the first step in the
dehumanization process which stereotyping represents
and perpetuates is a denial of full humanity to members
of the oppressed group:
[Stereotypers] forget that human life possesses an
innate dignity and the [human being] an innate
sense of nobility, that all [women] possess the
tendency to dream and the compulsion to make
their dreams reality, . . . and that all [women]
are the victims and the beneficiaries of the goad-
ing, tormenting, commanding and informing ac-
tivity of that imperious process known as the
Mind.... 1
The denial of full humanity is facilitated (perhaps
accomplished) by the power of language.
Perhaps the most insidious and least understood
form of segregation is that of the word ....
For if the word has the potency to revive and make
us free, it has also the power to blind, im-
prison and destroy.2
The dehumanizing idea and psychological justification
are carried out unconsciously and carefully in the
dominant group's literature.
They seldom conceive [women] characters pos-
sessing the full complex ambiguity of the human.
Too often what is presented as the [female]
. . . emerges as an oversimplified clown, a
beast, or an angel. Seldom is [she] drawn as that
sensitively focused process of opposites, of good
and evil, of instinct and intellect, of passion
and spirituality, which great literary art has pro-
jected as the image of man.
("Twentieth Century Fiction," p. 43)
What correctives does Ellison propose to the
oppression of a group by means of stereotyping? The
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For to think unclearly about that segment of
reality in which I find my existence is to do
myself violence, to allow others to go un-
challenged when they distort that reality is to
participate not only in that distortion but to
accept . . . a violence inflicted upon the art of
criticism.
Ralph Ellison, "The World and the Jug"
artist, he says, who points out the limits, laws and
customs placed on the minority group and on the
individual in the minority group but who also goes
beyond to point out the way in which those laws and
customs do not define the human, and then goes even
further to explore the "forms of humanity" in the
minority group, to see "what is worth preserving or
abandoning," is the artist who allows or forces one to
"extend one's humanity and one's knowledge of
human life." 3 While Ellison uses the artist's skill to
depict and explore and evaluate the humanity of Black
men, to thereby confute the effects of stereotyping, he
remains blind to the humanity of his women characters.
The first female character we meet in Invisible Man,
other than the old woman and beautiful young slave in
the dream portion of the Prologue, is the blond nude
dancer, American flag emblazoned on her belly, of the
Battle Royal. This "white bitch goddess America"
threads her way through the book, taking on the form of
other white women, losing bits of human clay on the
way, until the narrator, in his deliberate using of Sybil,
has reached an ultimate rejection of woman as human.
Why did they have to mix their women into every-
thing? Between us and everything we wanted to
change in the world they placed a woman:
socially, politically, economically. 4
The blond nude is described with imagery befitting her
role. Her hair is like a circus kewpie doll's, her face an
"abstract mask," her eyes smeared "the color of a
baboon's butt." Embodying distorted unthinking
animalism, even the beauty she carries is compared to
something male-created: "Her breasts were firm and
round as the domes of East Indian temples" (p. 22).
The narrator's reactions and actions are manipulated
in the Battle Royal, as they are throughout the book of
his learning, with increasing consciousness on his part.
Increasing consciousness, that is, of all the areas of his
concern except, I think, in his relation to women.
Masked and twisted as this dancer is, yet the narrator
recognizes briefly in her a common victim: "above her
red, fixed-smiling lips I saw the terror and disgust
her eyes, almost like my own terror and that which I
saw in some of the other boys" (p. 23). By the time we
reach Sybil, at the end of the book, there is no
recognition of her full humanity -she is pure clown.
As the white female image recurs, so does the
narrator's reaction. Here, in the Battle Royal, he wants
to "caress her and destroy her, to love her and murder
her, to hide from her, and yet to stroke [her] . . . .
Later, at the end of Chapter 11, as he moves through
the subway toward his birth by Mary in Chapter 12, he
briefly encounters the same confusion and temptation.
 Things whirled too fast around me. My mind hood." And I wanted to both smash her and stay
went alternately bright and black in slow rolling with her.
waves. We, he, him-my mind and I-were no (P. 359)
longer getting round in the same circles. Nor His venture into the "Woman Question" provides us
my body either. Across the aisle a young platinum with some answers. The "Question" itself is a
blonde nibbled at a red Delicious apple as station sub-human trap for truth-seeking men: "Why, god-
lights rippled past behind her. (P. 218) damit, why did they insist upon confusing the class
struggle with the ass struggle, debasing both us and
By the time the narrator comes upon his first white-human motives?" (p. 362). Women's re-
them-all
woman-as-equal-to him, Emma, as he is introduced sponses toto the "Woman Question" in Invisible Man
the Brotherhood, he is able to deal with woman as belittle and debase them as human beings. A joke on
subordinate to man, and the glimpse of humanity he the narrator, a joke to readers, the Question is a source
has seen in the masked nude dancer fades and dies in of comic relief in the book, a topic made silly by
his vision. Emma is "smartly dressed," with a "clip of clownish, cock-hungry females.
blazing diamonds" and "exotic perfume." Her face is Sybil is an ultimate image of the narrator's growing
"hard, handsome." insensitivity to the humanity of women. He is not forced
Emma serves him an intoxicant and holds him with to confront her, as he is forced to watch the blond nude;
"a direct, what-type-of-mere-man-have-we-here kind he is not accidentally exposed to her, as he is
of look that seemed to go beneath my skin" (p. 262). accidentally exposed to the platinum blond on the
Emma makes the error of being overheard when she subway and to Emma at the Brotherhood initiation; he
says, "Don't you think he should be a little blacker?" is not sucked into a glowing "feminine fertility, " as he
but our narrator has developed the knack of handling a is sucked into the brief relationship with the unnamed
put-down with a reverse put-down: "Who is she woman who grips his biceps. Rather, he seeks out and
anyway, Brother Jack's wife, his girl friend? Maybe she
chooses to use Sybil precisely because she is "lonely,"
wants to see me sweat coal tar, ink, shoe polish, "misunderstood," "neglected," "wistful." He man-
graphite. What was I, a man, or a natural resource?" ipulates, exposes, and scorns her. "It became quite a
(p. 263). As he is treated as "merely" a man, he finds contest, with me trying to keep the two of us in touch
her identity only in relation to the men she is discovered with reality and with her casting me in fantasies in
with. What was she, a human or a natural resource? which I was Brother Taboo-with-whom-all-things-
And, finally, he pulls out in his head the ultimate male
are-possible" (p. 447).
instrument of superiority, the answer to female threat, Gold hairpin in her teeth, Sybil primly whispers
the assurance of identity: "I'd like to show her how obscene proposals, longs to be brutally raped. "I
really black I am, I thought" (p. 263). laughed inwardly. She would soon be a biddy, stout,
It would be interesting to know whether Ellison with a little double chin and a three-ply girdle" (p.
recognized the beautiful irony of the progression of 449).Sybil has no idea she is being laughed at, made
commands Jack gives Emma. "Emma, the slip of paper fun of, brutalized in a way her life has not allowed her
I gave you. Give it to the new Brother." "Emma, to recognize. She has, after all, no real mind; she is not
please, some funds." "Make it three hundred, "drawn as that sensitively focused process of
Emma. "Emma, how about a drink?" Finally the opposites, of good and evil, of instinct and intellect, of
toast: "To the Brotherhood of man.... To History and passion and spirituality which great liteary art has
to Change" (pp. 268-69). projected as the image of man" ("Twentieth-Century
When the narrator of Invisible Man gains too great Fiction,"
a p. 43). The narrator is right when he writes
prominence and influence in Harlem he is sent with her lipstick on her belly, "SYBIL, YOU WERE
downtown to lecture on the "Woman Question, " givingRAPED . . ." (p. 452). Though he has done nothing to
him a chance to be worshipped by those women who doher physically, Sybil has been raped. Mockingly, he
not, like Emma, find him "merely" a man. His outrage finally sends her away-she is not useful to him after
at the assignment is matched only by that of sensitive all-telling the taxi driver, "Take her straight home
female readers of Invisible Man. and don't let her get out of the cab. I don't want her
I stood there, hearing the rapping of the gavel running around Harlem. She's a precious, a great,
echoing in my ears, thinking the woman ques- lady" (p. 460). Exit Sybil the clown.
tion and searching their faces for signs of The "white bitch goddess America" woman thread-
amusement, . . . stood there fighting the ing through the book is balanced and complemented by
sense that I had just been made the butt of
the opposing "angel" stereotype embodied in Mary
an outrageous joke. (P. 352) Rambo. Mary bears the psychological attitude of the
A bit less direct than Sybil, the unnamed woman oppressor which "compels [men] to impute to [women]
sentiments, attitudes and insights, which, as a group
whom the "Woman Question" speaker accompanies
home after his lecture amuses and shocks him and living under certain definite social conditions, [women]
immunizes him to any germ of consideration he might could not humanly possess" ("Richard Wright's
Blues," p. 97). She is a super-human force of good, of
have for women who will have him.
"Brotherhood, darling," she said, gripping my salvation, of virtue and hope, the means by which the
biceps with her little hands. "Teach me, talk to narrator is born anew into his Brotherhood identity, but
me. Teach me the beautiful ideology of Brother- of no interest in and of herself. Introduced as saint,

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then lied to and abandoned as fallen angel, Mary is not
a person in the book.
Mary, who nurses the narrator in his post-hospital
infancy in Chapter 11, is literally at the center of
Invisible Man. In Chapter 12, which is the central chap-
ter of the book, the narrator emerges into realizations of
manhood, including acceptance of his Blackness- "I
yam what I yam"; he confronts his and his people's
history in the dispossession scene with its voided Life
Insurance policies, yellowed news portrait of Marcus
Garvey, its FREE PAPERS, its Ethiopian flag; and he is
introduced to the Brotherhood. In Chapter 13, he leaves
Mary mentally, defining her to Jack as a "widow" who
is "tough," and formulating in his head the
rationalization for his unexplained departure-to-come.
When he leaves Mary physically in Chapter 15, he
moves one step farther away from recognition of
woman-as-human.
Mary, Mother of God, sanctified as receiver of Male-
God conception; Mary, mother without sexuality,
sanctified because it is impossible that sinless Son be
born of woman with sin; Mary Rambo, with echoes of
Sambo, less advanced in race consciousness than our
narrator -Mary nurses and mothers him until he is able
to break off on his own, when she is promptly dropped.
Mary is not a person, but a link between past and
future. At the point of the narrator's choosing to stay
with her and leave the Men's House ("the meeting
place for various groups still caught up in the illusions
that had just been boomeranged out of my head," p.
223), he places his direction firmly in a struggling past
related to a more positive future.
That same night, I went back to Mary's where I
lived in a small but comfortable room until the
ice came. . . . Other than Mary, I had no
friends and desired none. Nor did I think of Mary
as a "friend"; she was something more -a force,
stable, familiar force, like something out of my
past which kept me from whirling off into some
unknown which I dared not face. (P. 225)
How does one respond to an angelic, non-human
force? The narrator's response seems to me accurate as
response to idealized woman-as-saint, woman-of-the-
male-need. "I was torn between resenting her for it and
loving her for the nebulous hope she kept alive" (p.
225). After the ice of winter arrives, and he makes his
discoveries of racial identity and history and action on
the snowy streets, the narrator returns to Mary's and
has a sudden cabbage-smell whiff of Mary's needs:
"What were Mary's problems anyway; who articulated
her grievances? ... She had kept me going for months,
yet I had no idea" (p. 257). His slight separation from
and objective look at Mother Mary is not a prelude to a
fuller understanding of Mary as a human, though; it is
rather the beginning of a rationalization of his
desertion. By seeing the angel as fallen angel he can
slip out without guilt. The fledgling person flutters in
anticipation of leaving the nest.
By the time the Brotherhood has taken the narrator in
and ordered him to move to new housing, he's ready to
fly. "I might as well admit right now, I thought, that
there are many things about people like Mary I dislike.
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For one thing, they seldom know where their
personalities end and yours begins; they usually think
in terms of 'we' while I have always tended to think in
terms of 'me"' (p. 274). Saints aren't all that much fun
to live with. After while, one begins to feel their very
virtues as unwelcome irritants. The narrator lies to
Mary and leaves Mary. The angel has stepped in and
saved a fallen man and is no longer needed.
Mary Rambo falls into the pattern, based on reality
but over-simplified, of the super-human Black woman,
forced to be especially strong, especially forgiving,
especially self-sacrificing. The white nude, Sybil the
clown, Emma the beast, carry from Ellison's Black
point of view that taboo quality, that unobtainable and
impenetrable coldness placed upon them by the white
man, as well as that prostituted availability, that
hollowness of substance, that surface appeal, and that
inspiration to hatred that results from the Black male's
response to the white male's proscriptions.
It is useless to look for the accommodation tactics or
survival tactics adopted by the oppressed female
characters in Invisible Man. The women are not even
fully developed enough to show us how they have
adjusted to their assigned and limiting roles, nor do any
of them seem to see the limitations placed upon them.
It is because none of this adjustment is suggested in the
book that I come very close to concluding that Ellison's
stereotyped females were not deliberate choices, but
unconscious choices on his part. While minor male
characters -Norton, Young Emerson, Trueblood, Bled-
soe, Jack-are used in a symbolic or widely sig-
nificant way, just as the women characters are, we are
shown the accommodations which they, as individuals,
have used against their own frustrating conflicts with
society's expectations. The male characters are humans
used symbolically. The women, on the other hand,
seem to me to operate as nothing more than symbol;
they are not "the victims and the beneficiaries of the
goading, tormenting, commanding and informing
activity of that imperious process known as the
Mind. . ." ("Richard Wright's Blues," p. 92). They are
not, in Ellison's own analysis of stereotyping, fully
human.
Carolyn W. Sylvander
University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
NOTES
1Ralph Ellison, "Richard Wright's Blues," Shadow
and Act (New York, 1966), p. 92. In order to clarify the
way the analysis can be applied to other oppressed
groups, I have placed in brackets appropriate substi-
tutes for Ellison's choices. Though I hope I do not
erroneously depict his views, I do advise the reader to
return to Shadow and Act for Ellison's statements.
2Ellison, "Twentieth-Century Fiction and the Black
Mask of Humanity," Shadow and Act, p. 42.
3"The Art of Fiction: An Interview," Shadow and
Act, pp. 172 and 175.
4Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (New York, 1947), p.
362. Subsequent references to this book will be
indicated by page number in the text.