When Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence, he excluded two hugely important groups to the US’s success: African-Americans and women. Throughout history, both groups have been degraded and abused, and have had to fight for the equal liberty and freedom that was handed to white males in 1776. Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man criticizes the mistreatment of and divisions within the black community, but in comparison presents and appears to accept the female characters as holding only sexual importance, and in all other aspects irrelevant. The first woman introduced in the novel is an unnamed white stripper who deliveres the pre-Battle Royal entertainment. Our narrator describes her as a “circus kewpie
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Matty Lou Trueblood is raped and impregnated by her father Jim Trueblood, and instead of supporting and sheltering her, the white community gives Jim “more help than they ever give any other colored man” (67). They offer him money and food and “instead of things gittin’ bad, they got better” (68). Black women seem to not be important enough to warrant the morally and legally correct response to a father raping a daughter. Similarly, at the Golden Day, the black prostitutes are seen as so submissive that they “usually [get] away with things a man never could” (93). The narrator refers to these women being able to speak more freely to an important white man than he feels he, or any other black man, is able to. While there is a fleeting sense of power in this, in the same way the narrator says invisibility “is sometimes advantageous” (3), it becomes clear that the only reason the women are able to say whatever they want is because the white men see them as invisible, dumb, and insignificant; until the black women do their jobs as prostitutes. All men ignore the humanity of the African-American women they encounter, even a black veteran, committed to an insane asylum believes himself, and any other man, to have more importance and power than a woman. He says, “What will be his or any man’s most easily accessible symbol of freedom? Why, a woman, of course. In twenty minutes he can
Matty Lou Trueblood is raped and impregnated by her father Jim Trueblood, and instead of supporting and sheltering her, the white community gives Jim “more help than they ever give any other colored man” (67). They offer him money and food and “instead of things gittin’ bad, they got better” (68). Black women seem to not be important enough to warrant the morally and legally correct response to a father raping a daughter. Similarly, at the Golden Day, the black prostitutes are seen as so submissive that they “usually [get] away with things a man never could” (93). The narrator refers to these women being able to speak more freely to an important white man than he feels he, or any other black man, is able to. While there is a fleeting sense of power in this, in the same way the narrator says invisibility “is sometimes advantageous” (3), it becomes clear that the only reason the women are able to say whatever they want is because the white men see them as invisible, dumb, and insignificant; until the black women do their jobs as prostitutes. All men ignore the humanity of the African-American women they encounter, even a black veteran, committed to an insane asylum believes himself, and any other man, to have more importance and power than a woman. He says, “What will be his or any man’s most easily accessible symbol of freedom? Why, a woman, of course. In twenty minutes he can