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The Woman Question

In "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison, the narrator spends a great deal of his time with 'The Brotherhood' dealing with problems of race. However, after an extremely unfair interaction with the committee and Brother Wrestrum, he is moved downtown to deal with something that the Brotherhood calls "the woman question." This appears to be a feminist branch of the brotherhood in downtown Manhattan. However almost as soon as he enters this branch, a couple of things become abundantly clear to the reader. First of all the reader probably notices that the narrator is extraordinarily unqualified to work with feminists as he seems to have minimal interactions with women, let alone actual conversations or other things that would let him understand what feminism is. The reader will probably also notice how fake of a movement this feminist branch seems to be. Very little actually happens in terms of actual organization and the most important thing that happens (at least from the narrator's perspective) is his participation in an affair with one of the members of the group.

The way the feminist branch was portrayed seemed really strange to me and I couldn't really tell what Ellison was trying to say about the feminist movement. I felt like I wanted to believe that he was somehow critiquing how the communists were involved in the feminist movement and that they were doing things wrong like they were with the African American rights movement. However, considering the lack real female characters within the story and the two biggest female characters being pretty bad stereotypes, it seems like Ellison might have more negative views on the feminist movement, or at least not be a strong enough supporter of the movement to make that kind of critique. To me, it seems like it is possible that the section on "the woman question" could be read as Ellison trying to point out flaws in the way communists (or men in general) were involved in the feminist movement. However, it seems more likely that he just wanted to use it as a place to put the narrator for a short time to move the plot along.

Comments

  1. Nina Galvez24 September 2018 at 10:16

    Good post! I agree that it is hard to understand if Ellison included the Women Question as a place to move the narrator or critique the communist involvement in this issue. Given Ellison's portrayal of women thus far, I don't think Ellison is very sympathetic towards the issue. Also the way he describes the scene as unorganized, I'm skeptical of Ellison's feelings about women.

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  2. Tue Do25 September 2018 at 10:22

    It's definitely unclear why Ellison includes the Woman Interlude. I agree with you that it's reflective on Ellison's critique of the feminist movement. And as you pointed out, there aren't any female characters in the book (besides Mary, who we've left at this point) that you really feel any sympathy for. I think that and the lack of detail on Ellison's part of Brotherhood Feminist Ideology all points to an uninterested attitude towards the feminist cause.

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