In an article from the Journal of Film and Video entitled “The Lethal Femme Fatale in the Noir Tradition,” Jack Boozer writes: “… the femme fatale of the 1940s is a timely indicator of wartime misgivings about sex roles, marriage, and sexuality” (20). These misgivings are apparent in If He Hollers Let Him Go, as Bob’s interactions with multiple women expose a perspective towards the feminine steeped in these “wartime misgivings,” misgivings predicated upon an increased sense of power and agency afforded to women out of wartime need. This increase of power is interpreted by Bob, a working class Black man, as an encroachment, insult, and danger, given his place in society based on the contemporary racial paradigm.
At the beginning of the novel, we’re introduced to one of Bob’s housemates, a married woman named Ella Mae, with whom he’s been having a casual affair. Ella Mae is a Black housewife with a newborn who seems to have genuine, if not complicated, feelings for Bob. Her presence in the novel serves several purposes, especially at its start. First, she represents the ideal or traditional woman within Bob’s worldview: a woman defined by her roles as a mother, a wife, and a sexual partner. Second, she nurtures and feeds into Bob’s masculinity, providing this particular Black man with a Black woman over whom he can feel superior. In the context of a shifting social order around World War II, Ella Mae might represent the ideal, pre-World War II idea of Black womanhood preferred by Black men in Bob’s position.
Madge, a white woman from the south, is able to exert her power and influence over Bob in the workplace, despite Bob having a role above her. The racism inherent to society at-large elevates her status above Bob. Their workplace itself embodies a sense of the masculine, a repairship at a Navy dockyard, yet Bob’s blackness overrides his masculinity when confronted by Madge’s white femininity. The result is an emasculation unique to the shifting social order created in California around World War II.
It is notable that while Ella Mae feeds Bob’s sense of masculinity by fulfilling the role of a pre-World War II wife and mother, she also indirectly contributes to his sense of masculinity by cheating on her husband Henry. There is a general sentiment in this novel that women are to be protected by the men that claim to own them; otherwise, they will be penetrated by other men. Ultimately, the men whose women have been taken from them will be cuckolded. The men who take their women add to their sense of masculinity. In this way Bob continues in his quest to be regarded only as a man, with no mention of his race.