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Reader-Response as a Young, White Female
Ralph Ellison speaks primarily to any young African-American in his novel
Invisible Man. He chronicles the experiences of a young, black male in the 1920s and the
1930s. In this time, blacks were not treated with any amount of respect and were often
looked down upon. I, myself, as a young, white female, do not clearly understand how
they feel. I have never been treated that way. However, I began to understand the
humiliation during the battle royal. There is a young, white female stark naked in the
ring. Her humiliation brought an understanding so prominent, that it became easier to feel
what African-Americans felt at this time in history.
The historical aspect of Invisible Man is important to understand and compare the
trials and tribulations of African-Americans and women during the 1920s and the 1930s.
Although Invisible Man chronicles the experiences of a black man, the novel
“interrogates the diverse means by which people perceive time and attempt to impose
competing narrative, historical, or political structures upon it” (Singer 1). There are
underlying currents in the novel that attack the political structures of the time and also the
role of women. During this time period, it was thought that women should not go to
college and could not perform the same jobs as men. Women were objects in a sexual
nature and not simply as human beings. This notion is somewhat parallel to the treatment
of African-Americans. No black citizen of the United States could vote in any election.
They were not looked at as people. Ultimately, comparing the expectations of white
females to African-Americans in Invisible Man helps to understand the concept of the
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novel for any young, white female who cannot fully understand the problems blacks
faced during this time.
Reader-response criticism focuses first and foremost on the reader and how they
interpret the novel. Without the readers, the text has no meaning because the readers are
there to find their own meaning in the text. Through reader-response criticism, readers
relate their own experiences to many different texts. It has been said that “there are no
determinate meanings and that the stability of the text is an illusion” (Fish 579). Stanley
Fish argues that there are no set rules to interpreting a text. Most people are not truly part
of a specific school or literary criticism. The author’s lives and the time in which they
grew up can have an adverse affect on their writing. Through reader-response criticism,
the reader can research the author’s life to better and fully comprehend the text. In many
cases, the personal experiences of the reader are extremely important to the analysis of
any text. The reader may “pay attention only to individual experience, the communal
basis for the discipline will disappear and literature classes will have nothing to hold
them together” (Bonnycastle 182). However, the more one can relate to some instance in
a novel, the more they can fully comprehend the author’s ideas and he experiences of the
characters. Once the reader can relate to the character, the text has more meaning, and
this is how the reader is the meaning of a text.
In the analysis of Invisible Man, it can be rather complicated if you are not a
young, black male. As a young, white female, I cannot understand the humiliation Ellison
portrays for his title, unnamed character in the novel. The fact that the main character
remains nameless throughout the text’s entirety, relates to a book by John Steinbeck. In
Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck refers to one of the women simply as Curley’s wife. She has
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no name at all and is not treated with any ounce of respect. Similarly, the invisible man
does not get any respect and was completely humiliated. This is where reader-response
criticism comes in. Readers will use other texts they have read to understand a new text.
Similarities throughout different novels play a role in reader-response criticism. As a
female, comparing the ambiguity of Curley’s wife to Ellison’s unnamed title character, I
can understand the idea of invisibility. Without a name, one can feel inadequate, the way
the invisible man does. No one ever makes the effort to learn his name, thus explaining
his feelings of invisibility. Curley’s wife is treated badly in her parts in Of Mice and Men,
and it is very apparent on it’s affect on how I perceived the idea of invisibility in the
novel. On the first page of Invisible Man, the title character, who is also the narrator,
says, “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me” (Ellison 3). In
comparison Curley’s wife is not looked at as a woman, she is simply an object.
Invisibility resonates with the idea of not being see as a person and neither the invisible
man or Curley’s wife are not seen as people.
The Brotherhood is a powerful image in the book. As a woman, I immediately
related that to female sororities. Both the Brotherhood in the novel and sororities
nowadays are very selective and can be very persuasive. When the invisible man meets
Brother Jack, he told that they want him to become the spokesperson for the organization.
Initially, the invisible man turns him down, and Brother Jack says that he is “wise to
distrust him” (Ellison 293). But later, the invisible man changes his mind and heads to the
headquarters of the Brotherhood. Brother Jack explains that the Brotherhood is, “working
for a better world for all people” (304). The Brotherhood, however, has a hidden agenda.
They plan on using the invisible man as leverage because of his superior speaking
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abilities. In addition, the Brotherhood is made up of mostly white men and they want to
use the invisible man as a figurehead for supposedly helping Harlem’s black population.
Similarly, female sororities are selective and, from experience, use people for their
experiences or connections. They do not have to like you. You just have to possess
something valuable to advancing their chapter or something aiding in their own personal
agenda. As a female who belongs to a service sorority that is completely involved in
helping others, I can understand the invisible man’s want to be involved in the
brotherhood. The invisible man himself has good intentions in joining the brotherhood,
but unfortunately, the rest of the organization does not.
As a young, white female, I cannot fully comprehend the way the invisible man
feels. I have a name and I am seen as a person, and not an object. But, I focused on one
particular section early in the novel where the invisible man’s superior public speaking
skills result in an invitation to speak to a group of a wealthy, white men. When he arrives,
he is informed that he must participate in a battle royal with other young, black men. The
boys are forced into the ring amid a mist of smoke and a smell of whiskey. In the center
of the ring stands a beautiful, blonde, white woman. She is completely naked and the
boys try to avert their eyes from her, until she begins to dance. The invisible man notices
a “certain merchant who followed her hungrily, his lips loose and drooling” (Ellison 20).
The woman is now an object. The men outside the ring are looking at her as a sexual
object and not a woman. She becomes humiliated when the men being to reach out to
touch her. Soon, she runs for the door and the invisible man describes the men as “they
caught her just as she reached the door, raised her from the floor, and tossed her as
college boys are tossed at a hazing, and above her red, fixed-smiling lips I saw the terror
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and disgust in her eyes, almost like my own terror” (20). This shows the correspondence
between the naked woman and the invisible man. They both feel the same terror from the
men watching them. The fact that they both share the same horror and disgust and
humiliation, makes it easier for a white female to understand the hardships that the
invisible man is facing throughout the novel.
The woman in this part of the text is the portion where a white woman can feel
the same humiliation as the invisible man. In the book, “the repeated tropes of the
narrative of invisibility find woman as subtext moving with the circle enconched in the
circular boomerang pattern” (Fonteneau 2). The text repeats the ideas of invisibility and it
clearly resonates with the young black male. The invisible man plainly recounts the
events and his feelings about them. Although there is no concrete feelings or statements
from the woman herself, one can imagine themselves in her shoes. I can imagine myself
as the woman being flung around and grabbed at. The narrator says that he “could see
their beefy fingers sink into the soft flesh” (Ellison 20). A woman can put herself into the
character’s position in the text and feel the fingers digging into her skin, making her an
object of sexuality.
As much as it can be through reader-response that I understand the tribulations of
the invisible man and the woman, it is also through a feminist perspective that it can be
shown how the woman is treated in relation to the invisible man, and also men in general.
Feminism began with the rejection of the Freudian patriarchal society. Concepts such as
“penis envy” were appalling to women. Feminist criticism has been described as “that
many feminist critics nowadays are wary of any general claims about women, femininity,
or the female condition” (Felski 1). Feminism is about the portrayal of women in
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literature and debating the sheer and inevitable differences between male and female
characters. Also, there are many different voices in feminist criticism and the school
recognizes the need of the different opinions and voices.
In Invisible Man, the men outside the ring are clearly objectifying the woman in
the ring before the battle royal begins. She is there solely to satisfy the wants of the men
who are staring at her. There is no consideration of her talents and what she might really
be. In “Shakespeare’s Sister”, Virginia Woolf discusses how there were quite possibly
some brilliant women in the time period in which William Shakespeare was writing his
greatest plays. In her essay, Woolf asks, “What were the conditions in which women
lived?” (Woolf 412). The historical aspect of Invisible Man is important in understanding
the invisible man’s feelings about the incidents in the book. Historically, AfricanAmericans were not treated respectfully and were looked upon as far inferior that whites.
In the time Virginia Woolf was writing, which was close to the time of Invisible Man, a
woman was completely suppressed and had virtually no rights. Her thoughts were that
women were most likely as smart and a virile as men, but were shown no appreciation for
it. The treatment of both women and African-Americans was eerily similar and it is a
doorway for any young, white female to begin to relate to the way blacks were treated.
Since Invisible Man deals solely with the feelings of a black man, the correlation with the
hardships of women can help in relating to the hardships of African-Americans. The
treatment of both African-Americans and women in the society and through federal law
are the same. As a woman, one can relate to the treatment of blacks because of the same
experiences and hardships.
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One main aspect of feminism is to expose the method of the patriarchal society. In
the novel, the invisible man is subversive to the patriarchal society, just like women were
during the same time. Virginia Woolf was “impatient with anonymity” (Fernald 2). She
was a prominent figure in the women’s movement in her time. Although she is very
unlike the invisible man in the way she presents herself, they both have the same idea in
rejecting the idea that white males are the most prominent of humans. Freudian
psychoanalysis focuses on men in general, but the idea of white males being the most
prominent within society resonates with African-Americans as well as women. During
this time, blacks had separate places to eat, go to the bathroom, and even use a drinking
fountain. Women were regarded as the person who cooks, cleans, bears children, and
caters to her husbands needs. It was extremely hard for women and blacks to obtain any
job opportunities. All of the jobs went to well-qualified white males. However, some
women and African-Americans could do the job just as well and if they did, they got paid
significantly less for it. Virginia Woolf herself wrote just as good and profoundly as any
male. She did not openly criticize patriarchal society, she opens a discussion and brings
about arguments of her own, validly supporting her ideas. In Invisible Man, the narrator
continues to be repressed in society simply because he is a black man. It is the same for
Woolf who is repressed because she is a woman. The patriarchal society had no
applicable reason for suppressing women or African-Americas.
Without utilizing reader-response criticism and feminist criticism, it would be
increasingly hard to fully comprehend the hardships experienced by the narrator in
Invisible Man. He is seen as invisible because he is black and repressed during this
particular time period in history. Especially as a young, white female, I can identify with
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the woman in the ring during the battle royal because she is completely humiliated in the
ring when the men begin to grab at her. By comparing the feelings and treatment of
women during the time period to that of African-Americans, I can fully understand how
the invisible man feels. His feelings of invisibility and of being inferior to the white man
are felt through the novel when one can put them in the situation.
Being a young, white female, I have become aware of how African-Americans
felt during this time. By using reader-response criticism, I was able to compare the aspect
of history regarding women during the same time. As a white, female, utilizing feminism
and reader-response has made it easier to understand the feelings of African-Americans
during this time.
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Works Cited
Bonnycastle, Stephen. "Reader-Response Criticism." In Search of Authority. 3rd ed.
Ontario: Broadview P, 2007. 182-95.
Ellison, Ralph. The Invisible Man. New York: Vintage, 1980.
Felski, Rita. "Feminist Criticism: More Than One Voice." Chronicle of Higher Education
49 (2003). EBSCOhost. Academic Search Premier. Rohrbach Library, Kutztown.
Fish, Stanley. "Is There A Text In This Class?" Criticism : Major Statements. By Charles
Kaplan and William Anderson. 4th ed. Boston: Bedford/Saint Martin's, 1999.
573-85.
Fernald, Anne E. "A Feminist Public Sphere? Virginia Woolf's Revisions on the
Eighteenth Century." Feminist Studies 31 (2005): 158-82. EBSCOhost. Academic
Search Complete. Rohrbach Library, Kutztown.
Fonteneau, Yvonne. "Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man: A critical reevaluation." World
Literature Today 64 (1990).
Singer, Marc. ""A Slightly Different Sense of Time": Palimpsestic Time in Invisible
Man." Twentieth Century Literature. Vol. 49. Ser. 3. 2003. 388-419.
Woolf, Virginia. "Shakespear's Sister." Criticism : Major Statements. By Charles Kaplan
and William Anderson. 4th ed. Boston: Bedford/Saint Martin's, 1999. 411-21.