The hair was yellow like that of a circus kewpie doll, the face heavily powdered and rouged, as though to form an abstract mask, the eyes hollow and smeared a …show more content…
cool blue…I felt a desire to spit upon her as my eyes brushed slowly over her body… [I wanted] to feel the soft thighs, to caress her and destroy her, to love her, and murder her… (Ellison 19).
As the narrator objectifies the dancer, it became obvious that the female character represented a toy for satisfaction. Later on the novel, Mr. Norton mentions yearning remarks of his daughter while talking to the narrator. Which allows the reader to sense Mr. Norton’s obsession over his daughter, signifying that there was something else. Which is that, during the time Mr. Norton’s daughter was alive, he took advantage of his daughter and raped her. Which is a way he can relate to Trueblood when he meets him. After that, Mr. Norton states that his daughter fell ill which caused her to pass away. In Ellison’s novel, the female characters were categorized by their gender not even their race. In Invisible Man, Ellison depicts Mary Rambo “as the most important woman of the novel” (Lavender 149). After the disturbing hospital visit in the factory, Mary assists the narrator during his time of recuperation. Even though, Mary aided the narrator, once he got offered a job by the Brotherhood he decided to leave Mary without a notice. At the time that Mary is introduced to the novel, Ellison does not offer enough background information about her. Which is another way to clue the readers that women are mistreated. Sybil, the wife of one of the higher uppers in Brotherhood, became stereotyped by mankind. At the end of the “Woman Question,” Sybil accompanies the narrator home and attempts to seduce him. “[Once in the home,] Sybil primly whispers obscene proposals, longs to be brutally raped” (Sylvander 78). As drunken Sybil mentions her fantasies, the narrator begins to mock her. Considering that Sybil is unconscious of her actions, the narrator decides to write on her abdomen, “SYBIL, YOU WERE RAPED…” (Ellison 522). Despite the fact that the narrator did not take advantage of Sybil physically, he abused her by taunting her. Ellison elaborated this section to emphasize how men utilized women as useless objects. Basically, Ellison created the character of Sybil to befit the character of ridicule. Which is an irony considering:
The fact that the narrator turns a blind eye to women, the eye of discrimination that he is himself reacting against, unifies Ellison’s larger purpose: to show the pervasive quality of a cultural tendency to objectify minority groups. He is invisible even to himself at first – and this blindness extends not only to himself, but also to those “below” him in the social hierarchy instilled by a patriarchal system of white supremacy. (Elkins 69) In the novel, Ellison does not just compose about the narrator’s mistreatment, but about how society belittled the women’s troubles. Eventually, the Brotherhood sends the narrator to deal with women’s concerns. In fact, instead of the narrator raising his thoughts about the situation to the public, the Brotherhood controlled what he said in his speeches. Though, he is sent to carry out his speech, he became enraged by the fact he dealt with women instead of communication about critical topics. While Brotherhood is thought to be assisting the minorities’ grievances, they do not pay attention to the people. The purpose of Brotherhood involved to aid people in need, but that did not occur. Brotherhood only took interest on themselves and worried on how they were perceived by the significant people. At this moment he realizes how Brotherhood utilized him:
The Brotherhood prepare his speeches because they do not want him to express his own ideas.
This very insignificance provides the narrator with the means to reach his end, conscious recognition of his invisibility. (Lavender 149)
As the narrator grasps the idea, he manipulates his invisibility to shut down the Brotherhood. Ellison created a great portrayal of women being objectified by men. Through the novel, Ellison chose to write about the stereotypes society would impose on women. Throughout Invisible Man, Ellison involved the topics of women being objectified, stereotyped, and their issues being minimized. No women in the novel ever saw that they were mistreated by society, but the narrator was able to acknowledge that the struggles women faced during that time period of invisibility. Without these subjects it would have been difficult to comprehend the issues female characters underwent during this time
period.