The narrator, rightfully upset by her insinuated stereotype, retaliates by casting her as an undesirable figure “she would soon be a biddy, a stout, with a little double chin and three ply girdle.” He has moved from repressing his feelings of superiority over women and now openly humiliates them. He refuses to enter into sexual intercourse as a way to maintain control over his own identity, while simultaneously defining Sybil’s, he writes “Sybil you were raped” on her stomach and sends her away in a cab. Much like the other women the narrator has met, she is to be discarded as soon as her purpose has been served.
There are several other instances within the novel where critics have the author’s insensitivity and dehumanizing attitude towards women. There is the scene where the narrator is sent to answer the “Women question” as a form of punishment, only to have his confining attitude …show more content…
The prevailing answer comes from two critics; Carolyn Sylvander and Ann Stafford. Sylvander argues that Ellison’s female characters are not fully human, that “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” (Sylvander 77). Stanford, posits the question: “What happens to ‘the second sex’ in a novel as powerful as Ellison’s Invisible Man where the trope of invisibility functions as a critique of racist American society?” (17). Critics like Stanford and Sylvander then beg to understand how Ellison can hope to undo the invisibility that burdens the Black male, if that male is an oppressive force himself. Sylvander accuses Ellison of hypocrisy, she argues that he is guilty of the very fault he opposes: perpetuating stereotypes and thereby perpetuating the oppression of a subjugated
There are several other instances within the novel where critics have the author’s insensitivity and dehumanizing attitude towards women. There is the scene where the narrator is sent to answer the “Women question” as a form of punishment, only to have his confining attitude …show more content…
The prevailing answer comes from two critics; Carolyn Sylvander and Ann Stafford. Sylvander argues that Ellison’s female characters are not fully human, that “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” (Sylvander 77). Stanford, posits the question: “What happens to ‘the second sex’ in a novel as powerful as Ellison’s Invisible Man where the trope of invisibility functions as a critique of racist American society?” (17). Critics like Stanford and Sylvander then beg to understand how Ellison can hope to undo the invisibility that burdens the Black male, if that male is an oppressive force himself. Sylvander accuses Ellison of hypocrisy, she argues that he is guilty of the very fault he opposes: perpetuating stereotypes and thereby perpetuating the oppression of a subjugated