In his essay "What America Would Be Like Without Blacks", Ralph Ellison argues that the nation could not survive if deprived of their presence [of blacks] because , due to the irony implicit in the dynamics of American democracy, symbolize both its most rigorous tests and the possibility of its greatest human freedom. While Ellison's novel Invisible Man makes the struggle for social equality visible through the narrative of an invisible black man to demonstrate this point, what about the women in the text whose characters often seem invisible or underdeveloped? Although Ellison's perspective on the so-called women's issue is ambiguous, given her virtual silence on gender equality in her essays and interviews, the female characters in the novel, particularly the white female characters, highlight how the majority in American democracy marginalizes, uses and sacrifices some groups of women. people, especially women and racial minorities. Indeed, despite the lack of development of the female characters who appear to play relatively minor roles in Invisible Man, Ellison's problematization of American democracy as the protagonist, hereafter referred to as I Am, could not work without the female characters who simultaneously constrain the destinies. of the novel's characters together and clarify the gap between democratic ideals and reality. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The function that female characters serve in The Invisible Man can be seen in the recurrence of the trope of the woman as a sex object trafficked throughout the world. novel, as are observations like . . . and how did I imagine there was a woman in it? When I make such statements, he reveals his suspicion that a man, usually black, has identified himself in a particular way or has been persuaded to do something in exchange for another man's woman, most often a white man's woman. In this regard, trafficking in women provides us with a means to understand how I relate to other men in the novel and attempts to identify with them through women and discourses about women. However, while I am's encounters with white women suggest that he views white women primarily as both forbidden objects of his desire and as a means to becoming more like white men, a closer examination of the difficulties of some female characters in the novel indicates that statements like the one quoted above also reveal how women are used or sacrificed by a man for his own ends. Therefore, rather than being negligible, women, despite their invisibility, can be understood as indispensable to the functioning of a white, male-dominated democracy. Because women are assumed to be a common currency that all men are assumed to accept and desire, women are sacrificed, exchanged, and used throughout the novel by men seeking to maintain their privileged position in a supposedly democratic society. their subjectivity by treating black women and men as exchangeable or sacrificial objects, the novel's male and female characters unite. Consequently, as Ellison's novel reveals, this trafficking implicates the humanity of both female and male characters in the novel and highlights how they share a common desire to fully realize their humanity despite racial and/or gender differences. Claudia Tate argues that the narrow margin of difference between I am and female characters helps the Invisible Man on his path to freedom because his interactions with womenthey clarify their shared situation as these women, like me, are the means to another's end. While I don't boldly claim that these characters help me achieve freedom, I do claim that my interactions with the naked woman from the Battle Royal, the Trueblood women, Emma, ​​the Woman Question speech, the unnamed woman I go home after her speech on the woman question, and Sybil illuminates the complexities and shortcomings of American democracy in a way that ultimately allows me to understand democracy as a process rather than a fixed state with a predictable end point. In his essay “In “Initiation Rites and Power,” Ellison's attempt to define democracy as a struggle becomes apparent. Here Ellison argues that the function of literature . . . is to remind us of our common humanity and the cost of that humanity This cost of humanity that Ellison talks about assumes that, although humans are vulnerable by nature, they must persist in the fight for freedom and pressure others to embrace their humanity even in the face of potential defeat. like the female characters in the novel, both vulnerable and subject to sacrifice, he initially lacks perception of this reality, ignoring the way he is used by the Brotherhood and others for someone else's ends although he does not initially realize it how much his situation is linked to that of women, when Ras asks him what the white men of the Brotherhood gave him to abandon the black race, Ras barks: What do they give you to betray their women? Do you fall for it? . . . Women? My God, mahn! Is this equality? Is this the freedom of the black mahn? A pat on the back and a piece of passionless pussy? . . . He takes one of them hoes and tells the black mahn that his freedom lies between her skinny legs "while that son of a gun takes all the power and capital and doesn't let the black man not notice. Because I'm conditioned from the Brotherhood to oppose Ras's policies, he initially lacks the perception necessary to recognize that the trafficking of white women by white men does not serve to transform the black man into white, but rather to test the black man and to keep him in his place, ready to fall into the trap of the white woman or rather, the white man, black men are treated as a suspect class where one wrong move with a woman makes one a criminal once the black man violates the cultural taboo against miscegenation, he is reminded that he is not a real man or human being because he is not white and because trafficked women are not his property and do not share his race or class position. Because some women in The Invisible Man are also vulnerable to being sacrificed and objectified based on their gender, the similar hardships experienced by the female characters and I become apparent as they both must struggle to find a place for themselves in a dominated nation by white men. While Carolyn Sylvander insists that both the white and black female characters of The Invisible Man reflect the distorted stereotypes established by the white American male, I argue that the novel's female characters do not necessarily passively embody these stereotypes. Rather, since the supposedly inferior female characters make them candidates for trafficking by men who stereotype women as passive and inferior to justify the inhumane treatment of women, they highlight the fact that people must struggle both as individuals and as members of a collective group to negotiate their invisibility to demonstrate their humanity and pressure American democracy to accommodate them. What exactly is thisnotion of humanity that Ellison believes all people potentially embody? Why does this article understand Ellison's notion of humanity as universal rather than gendered? Although Ellison never makes his conception of female humanity explicit, we can better understand his notion of humanity by first problematizing Sylvander's understanding of Ellisonian humanity as something that separates the sexes rather than as something that is shared. Because Sylvander examines only one aspect of Ellison's definition of what it means to be human, her argument that Ellison redistributes stereotypes of women in a way that oppresses women proves problematic. Citing Ellison's essay Richard Wright's Blues, Sylvander reveals that Ellison indicates that human life possesses an innate dignity and [the human being] an innate sense of nobility; that all men possess the tendency to dream and the compulsion to dream and make their dreams come true. From this, Sylvander concludes that Ellison denies humanity to the women in the novel because, as he argues, the female characters in Invisible Man do not have the ability to dream. While it may be that the novel's female characters understand themselves and are understood by others primarily in terms of their relationships with men, it is necessary to recognize another aspect of Ellison's definition of humanity that he explains in The Little Man at Cheehaw. Station. Here Ellison explains that we are nothing more than human beings and therefore subject to the fears and temptations of the flesh. From this it seems that because human beings are marked by imperfection, confusion, and desire, Ellison's notion of humanity cannot be truly understood or experienced without exploring sexuality. Significantly, sexuality is something that theoretically all characters in the novel have and must deal with. as they struggle to reconcile the relationship between the political and the personal/sexual. It is precisely this struggle that ensures that the sufferings of heterosexual male and female characters are intertwined. As a result, the role women play in The Invisible Man cannot truly be understood separately from I Am's analysis of relationships with female characters and the animalistic black male stereotypes he must deal with as a black man. While Houston Baker correctly argues that black male sexuality is a central theme in Ellison's novel, he understands this sexuality in rather stable and monolithic terms surrounding the phallus. However, as this article indicates, even in I am's encounters with women, the normative assumptions held by the white male about both black male sexuality and female sexuality, particularly white female sexuality, are problematized. While the black male may prove more dynamic than the one-dimensional sexual creature he is stereotyped as, white female characters are sexualized by others and often sexualize themselves despite the rigid gender roles of the late 1940s and 1950s that required women to contain their sexual impulses and remain in the private sphere with children. The first time I have to deal with his sexual desires for a trafficked white woman in the novel is at the Battle Royal. As it reminds me:A sea of ​​faces, some hostile, some amused, surrounded us, and in the center, facing us, stood a magnificent blonde completely naked. . . Some boys stood with their heads down, trembling. I felt a wave of guilt and irrational fear. . . If the price of looking had been blindness, I would have looked. . . I felt the desire to spit on her as my eyes slowly skimmed over her body. . . I wanted. . . love her and kill her, hide from her, yet caress the spot where, under the little flagAmerican tattooed on her belly, her thighs formed a capital V. I had the feeling that of everyone in the room he only saw me with his impersonal gaze. eyes.The feelings I express here seem to be as contradictory as what the woman herself represents. On the outside, the blonde/America nude may appear to represent the American dream for every man white or black and may appear to symbolize democracy given the American flag tattoo on his belly. If the woman can simply be reduced to a symbol of democracy, why do the men in this scene find her so fascinating? As Tate argues, this woman represents the forbidden white woman. However, this woman is not just any upper-middle-class white woman. Since she is a stripper in this scene, this woman is taboo for both white and black men. Since the woman is a stripper, she is likely from a different social class than the white men in the Battle Royal. As a result, wealthy white men could never marry such a woman; they can only access it by paying for its services that excite them and remind them of their virility. However, because white men pay the woman to arouse her, they can still dominate and exploit her female sexuality since she is of a presumably lower gender and class. I and the other young black men in the Battle Royal, however, this woman's allure is compounded by her white female flesh. She is forbidden not only because she is a white woman, but also because the young men are not white and have not paid for her services. These young people may try to watch it, but as I am pointed out, they are constantly haunted by the specter of Jim Crow laws, which seek to protect the integrity of white womanhood. However, if I and other guys don't look at and recognize their desire for the flesh, they risk the possibility of sacrificing their humanity and manhood. This double bind causes me to experience conflicting desires to touch and possess the woman and destroy her. Since winning over the woman might allow me to become more like white men, he wants what she seems to represent the American ideal. However, he also wants her as a body since such desires are an indispensable component of humanity, particularly for heterosexual males in this case. I might even want to watch it to test the limits of democracy and see if he can violate the cultural taboo against penetrating a white woman with his gaze and survive. At the same time, I want to destroy the degraded humanity and humanity the white man's domination over the sexuality of others that the stripper represents. Citing the terror and disgust in the woman's eyes as she is thrown around by the other men, I seem to identify with her plight as she feels guilt and fear for both violating Jim Crow laws by watching her and seeing her dehumanized by the other. men. My fear may reflect anxiety about violating Jim Crow gender politics, but it may also indicate his apprehension in realizing that the democracy he aspires to become a part of is not as democratic as he imagined. Since both the woman and I are minorities in this scene since neither of us would have been at the all-white male rally if they hadn't been part of the entertainment, I seem to briefly realize that democracy as the South knows it is not embrace true humanity. Indeed, the Battle Royale scene highlights how the white privilege that governs democracy thrives by creating a spectacle of difference be it gender or race (or even a combination of the two, although there are no black women in this scene). . Like Ellisonmakes clear through the white men's subhuman treatment of the black woman and boys in the scene, some people have more access and control over definitions of democracy than others. Just as the woman was asked to strip to entertain the white men at the rally and make the black boys uncomfortable, I and the other young black men were asked to participate in the Battle Royale to entertain the white men who exploit her humanity. . It thus becomes evident that this event represents a ritual that governs behavior. Rituals become social forms. . . the Battle Royal represents a vital part of the pattern of behavior in the South, which both blacks and whites recklessly accept. It is a ritual of preserving caste lines. . . Because white males assert their civilization and superiority by degrading black males across these caste lines, the Battle Royal is akin to castration, excision, or lynching, as Houston Baker argues. Likewise, the white woman, though supposedly paid for her services, is dehumanized and objectified by white men who make a spectacle of her female sexuality and cast her around as the victim of a college hazing ritual. By making black boys and white women spectacular, then, this meeting prevents black women and men from becoming the puppeteers of democracy. While I can't explain how he and the woman are similarly situated and dehumanized, Ellison's inference that the woman is paid to be there and that the boys have to scramble for coins after taking part in the Battle Royale demonstrates how they have both been denied their humanity by these white men who take pleasure in treating them like a spectacle. In fact, when I am told about the woman, I had the feeling that out of everyone in the room she only saw me with her impersonal eyes, implying that they share some sort of bond. Although this woman neither knows nor speaks to I am, her gaze towards him seems to imply her tacit recognition that they face the same struggle to free themselves from white male slavery and make democracy more accessible and accountable. Part of this lack of accessibility can be traced back to the gender politics of Jim Crow, which seeks to prevent I am from fulfilling certain desires by forbidding him from touching, much less looking at, white women. That said, the Battle Royale scene can be read as an explanation that desires are an inevitable and uncontrollable part of the human experience, regardless of what the laws and norms governing a democracy allow and prohibit. If Democracy refused to make I am human at Battle Royale, his struggle to acknowledge his sexual desires might make him feel human for a moment. Perhaps, then, these desires are a natural response to the gap between democratic ideals and reality that Ellison often cites. While most of the trafficked women in the novel are white, two black women, Kate and Matty Lou Trueblood, are trafficked by both blacks. and white men. Famous in their area for their incestuous family, these women embody what Ellison means to be outside the story. Because these women are neither white nor male, they are treated as if they are invisible. Furthermore, although these women are the ones who bear the brunt of Trueblood's incestuous endeavors, they fail to tell their story. Rather, their story is told and spread to other men by their incestuous father/husband. Indeed, the Trueblood women and their story, if only the account of their experience, are trafficked in both implicitlythat explicitly by many different males, including, among others, Mr. Norton who asks and pays Trueblood to tell his story, Trueblood who tells the story, and I am who listens to Trueblood's tale. As Michael Awkward points out, the trueblood's incestuous act is judged almost exclusively by men. This male judgment is offered by a cast that includes black school administrators who wish to remove the sharecropper from the community and Trueblood's white pimps who pressure administrators to allow the sharecropper to remain in his home. . . They are formed. . . an exclusively male evaluative circle that sees Trueblood's act as shamefully repugnant. . . or meritoriously salacious. . . Except for mother Kate's memorable violent reaction to seeing her husband on top of her daughter, the female perspective on Trueblood's act is effectively silenced and relegated to the periphery in the sharecropper's telling of the story. Therefore, although the Trueblood women's pregnant stomachs may be evidence of Trueblood's incestuous act, these women are trafficked to such an extent that Trueblood and Norton take advantage of their hardships as the women bear children they are ashamed of. As Trueblood proclaims, except my wife and daughter don't want to talk to me, I'm better than I've ever been before. Although Trueblood discusses Matty Lou and Kate in his account of his daughter's pregnancy and his wife's response, this statement highlights how he primarily emphasizes his own survival rather than the hardships these women endure. While it is conceivable that the Trueblood women find power in their invisibility as they punish Trueblood by refusing to interact with him, the novel's failure to shed much light on the Trueblood women's version of their experience makes it difficult for the reader to understand how productive this is. candies. Readers may assume, however, that any power these women might wield by distancing themselves from Trueblood does not allow them to rewrite their story for other men to hear as Trueblood circulates his macho account of the family's incestuous history to many other men . .As I listen to Trueblood share her story with Norton, she has yet to realize how much she has in common with the Trueblood women, whose invisibility prevents them from accessing democracy to challenge the dominant male narrative about their history and tell the their story in their own words. Although I share a racial identity with the Truebloods and try to protect them from having to share their story with a white man who will likely shun them, it distances itself from the Truebloods by highlighting the tension between the Truebloods and the people at the border. school. As a result, I fail to grasp how the humanity that Kate and Matty Lou Trueblood's characters implicitly problematize is connected to its own struggle to be recognized, heard, and embraced by democracy. However, just as Trueblood women become invisible when a male chauvinist version of their story is spread to other men, I Am becomes invisible when the Brotherhood deliberates on I Am's fate without sincerely considering her own testimony after she allegedly acted opportunistically in a interview. Just as Kate and Matty Lou's voices are drowned out as Trueblood spreads the incest story to assert his own subjectivity and entertain others, I am's voice is completely ignored based on what the Brotherhood claims about him for the own political goals. First I wonder if others consider him human when he asks: what was I, a man ora natural resource? Why does this question follow Emma's? But don't you think he should be a little blacker, he seems to begin to question his humanity in the North when he meets this woman who grasps his humanity through her agency to speak and ask questions as if she were part of the Brotherhood. While Emma's role in the novel can be understood primarily in terms of her relationship with men, as I Am, Who Is She suggests, Brother Jack's wife, his girlfriend, implies that she is the first woman in the novel who, although trafficked by men, she negotiates her position for her own ends by manipulating the terms of the male/female binary that predominated during the 1940s. Emma's action can be at least partially traced back to her somewhat masculine behavior. Described as an elegantly dressed woman with a hard and handsome face, Emma appears masculine on the outside. Yet, Emma is also a female temptress to whom, I believe, she would willingly surrender, even if she would only do so to satisfy herself. Characterized as a woman who has sexualized herself, therefore, Emma resists the dominant assumptions about femininity that predominated in the late 1940s, when women were urged to repress their sexual desires and avoid promiscuous behavior. By portraying Emma as someone who chooses to have sex for her own pleasure, Ellison questions the gap between the image and reality of American democracy, which sought to define femininity and manhood in narrow terms by projecting rigid gender roles for both the sexes throughout society. during the late 1940s. This gap is complicated because Emma as a woman acquiesces to the masculine ideals of the Brotherhood to lift herself from her subordinate position as a woman. As I've noted, Emma is too sophisticated and adept at intrigue to compromise her position as Jack's lover by revealing anything important to me. As the realization of I am suggests, Emma disciplines herself not to allow herself to become a victim or sacrificial lamb, used by I am or someone else for ends from which she will not benefit. Rather than understanding Emma as a feminine Other, I portray her as someone who is psychically essentially different from the members of the Brotherhood. Sharp and manipulative, Emma would not compromise herself in a way that might force her to sacrifice her privileged position. Instead, his interest is inextricably linked to that of the Brotherhood as his brother Jack states "We are". . . interested 2E. . in his voice. And I suggest you, Emma, ​​make sure you make it your business too. . . suggests. To the extent that Emma sacrifices her ability to exercise free will independent of the Brotherhood's puppeteers, she embodies the Brotherhood's doctrine that Discipline is sacrifice. Therefore, while Emma may try to resist being used by others for ends that will not benefit her, she cannot entirely abandon the male power structure in which she operates as she sometimes benefits from her position in that structure. Indeed, although Emma negotiates her subordinate position by behaving more like a male than a female, the fact that she is still considered a woman can be seen in her relationship with the Brotherhood. Since it seems that the Brotherhood cannot lure me into their scheme without the presence of a woman, the Brotherhood traffics Emma into becoming a brother to me. In fact, since Emma gives I Am the sheet of paper with her new identity, it is in a certain sense the means for her rebirth. Without her I would lack identity. Although Emma may be marginalized to the point that the men in the novel ask her to pour them drinks and deliver to I.