Question: How does the objectification of women such as in The Invisible Man negatively impact both young girls and older women, and in what ways does media seek to create such objectifying imagery?

Young black women are among the most oppressed groups of people. These girls fall into discriminatory acts not only based on the color of their skin, but also their sex. Roye is aware of this kind of oppression in Morrison’s The Bluest Eye as she analyzes the characters Pecola and Claudia. The term is coined by Jan Furman, and The Bluest Eye is shown to contain elements of black girlhood. As expected, black girlhood was difficult and painful, as Claudia often describes the tragic life that Pecola suffers from. Being in a society where white and light-skinned children are held at a higher pedestal than others, black girls can find themselves in unfavorable situations.

The Bluest Eye can be viewed as not fulfilling the requirements of a bildungsroman, or a novel seeking to deal with a person’s spiritual education. Roye points out that Pecola fails to “fit the frame” of a bildungsroman while Claudia is purposely rejecting one, which ultimately leads to neither of them meeting that particular goal (Roye, 214). Both of these characters happen to be black women as well, and throughout the novel find themselves struggling with life itself in order to progress and prosper.

Pecola is especially disadvantaged in The Bluest Eye as her existence in the novel is seemingly to be disowned. Roye states that whenever she is brought up in the novel, Morrison seeks to displace her away from each and every person she comes across. She becomes disowned; by her mother, her friends, and the very society that she is supposed to be a part of. This creates a massive fragmentation of her psychology and cements her place as the Other. Her otherness is a critical aspect of the novel because it completes the narrative of awareness to the destruction of black girlhood. Pecola’s actions, reactions, events and punishments are a recurring behavior that cycles near endlessly.

Pecola, now being objectified and othered, is now subject to the complete absence of “human recognition”. She is no longer capable of seeing herself as a human being, as society herself rejects her. Eventually this will destroy her childhood and continue into adulthood, crippling her. Morrison’s characters serve the role of teaching the readers the state of society and the underlying problems, and Pecola serves as a critical example. No longer a person of her own, Pecola represents the loss of girlhood that many black women have experienced, and still do to this day.

Classism is a plague that affects every person alive, and The Bluest Eye is no stranger to it with one of its earlier character introductions. With the first chapter of Winter and the arrival of Winter itself comes a new character named Maureen Peal. She is a rich young girl, “as rich as the richest of the white girls, swaddled in comfort and care” (Morrison, 58). Her presence alone was daunting to Claudia, but her affect on the school was more than apparent. Maureen was shown to be extremely liked by both black and white children, never once having a conflict with any of the students. Simultaneously, it was as though people feared and adored her at the same time, likely due to her socioeconomic status as a rich white girl.

Up until this point, there were seemingly no issues, but the sheer fact that she was rich and had a powerful presence meant that Claudia and Frieda disliked her. Due to this, they silently hated her, and tried to come up with ways to demean Maureen even though she had not done anything directly to them. This is an almost textbook example of classism in the works, as the divide between poor and rich starts to come alive with the inclusion of Maureen.

However, as the story unfolds, the divide between rich and poor begins to close. Maureen’s presence is helpful enough to save a black girl named Pecola from being beaten by one of the other school boys, and Maureen consoles her while befriending her at the same time (Morrison, 64). Her generous act of buying ice cream and talk with Pecola strikes a chord with Claudia and Frieda. Both girls believed  that they were undeserving of her kindness; the same kindness she bestowed upon Pecola only moments before.

This begins a realization for the two girls. They had no exact reason to distrust or dislike Maureen other than her rich status. However, knowing that this novel takes place at the end of the Great Depression, it is understandable why Claudia would harbor intense feelings for a rich girl that she hardly knew in the beginning of Winter. For all they know, she is just a girl like the rest of them, innocent of the realities that the adults face. However, these small but significant interactions between Maureen and Claudia indicate a much larger problem that isn’t outright addressed. This behavior is toxic to say the least, but it is not necessarily Maureen’s nor Claudia’s fault. Rather, it is a larger issue that stems from a history of classism and problems with money.

Making the right choice will often be a difficult task. Characters throughout novels will find themselves in situations that are extremely uncomfortable; ones where they will question the decision they ultimately make, and whether or not it will have the best outcome in the long run. The Invisible Man is also subject to this kind of decision-making, which is especially prevalent in the second half of the novel.

Throughout the story of The Invisible Man, the undisclosed narrator and the characters he interacts with find themselves struggling with the choices that could better himself. The narrator has shown that he greatly cares about his reputation, especially in encounters with the Brotherhood. In Chapter 18, the Invisible Man and his work had been removed from his work in Harlem due to a previous incident that risked damaging the Brotherhood’s integrity. This decision left him scrambling and outraged, as he believed that his work there had been beneficial (Pg. 316 eBook). While this was what he believed to be a terrible decision, it is not one made without justification. The Brotherhood made this decision because of the Invisible Man’s decision to act on his feelings rather than with logic. The risk his actions posed to the organization was harmful and was the reason he was moved.

Later on, the Invisible Man would see himself struggling with the very idea of what had happened. Ellison writes that he “fought desperately for acceptance” when addressed by the Brotherhood, feeling a sort of betrayal that would harm both him and the Organization. He internally battles the decision they made, implying that it was an immoral choice by stating that his work and what he had done was beneficial to the Brotherhood, regardless of what they thought about the situation. While not outright said in the novel, this part surely has small hints of historicism hidden inside.

The Invisible Man is known to be a person of color, just like the author. Black people have historically been battling society and the government to seek acceptance from their fellow people, despite whatever odds were placed ahead of them. The Brotherhood, in a sense, is somewhat of an analogy of the society that the Invisible Man wants to see himself fit into. However, his actions were almost bound to be looked down upon much like the larger society both he and Ellison come from. With this in mind, it becomes clearer what Ellison whats to display whenever the Invisible Man is denied, or has something stripped away from him.

The idea of whiteness has been strongly contested ever since its inception. There are many who both embrace whiteness into their culture, and there are those who very much despise the nature of “whiteness” and how it impacts their daily lives. Whiteness as a concept has been hazardous towards black Americans and black culture due to its intrinsic nature of harming them. However, a more particular area in which whiteness can be seen is in literature. How can whiteness affect what the avid reader may see from time to time? The answer can be shockingly deceptive, but not very surprising.

As seen in On Whiteness and the Racial Imaginary, Rankine highlight how difficult it is to talk about race in the current political climate. She explains that the imagination cannot be free of race and to say that it can be is technically incorrect. To be free of race is to be living a dream, and ahistorical writing is just not possible. Rankine is making a point to say that this kind of thinking is dangerous, and that white writers tend to fantasize this idea of aracial and ahistorical literature.

The major problem with this type of thinking is less about how white writers feel about racial ambiguity in their writings, but how the perceived ignorance affects writers of color. As Rankine puts it in her essay, black writers do not have the same type of luxury as white writers to be free of the past and to be free of color, as they are usually “addressable subjects”. This means that they are often shackled by their color and their history, basically rendering it impossible for their literature and other art forms to be ignorant of the aforementioned things. Whiteness in literature, by attempting to subvert history and color, is not a helpful tool for anyone. Rather, it hurts people of color by persisting a racial power structure.

Rankine states that the ahistorical viewpoint is not only used by white people, which means that its influence has been brought into other works of literature. However, it does not negate from the fact that it is still overall harmful and causes writers to lose their focus. Every person has a background and a history to themselves, which more than certainly carries over into their writing, whether consciously or not. To say that no writing has a history or cultural significance to it is, for better or worse, a falsehood. It is a falsehood that has proven itself multiple times. DuBois often wrote about his childhood, which are moments that are certainly not ahistorical, since his intent is to show the world what it means to be a black person in a country that hates black people. To say that writing has no history is to insult writers like DuBois, subconsciously telling them that they have no reason to bring history or race into the discussion. While some may not see whiteness in literature that way, it is evident that there are silencers that mitigate the struggles of people of color.