In the Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes, our main love interest, Ellen, represents the antithesis of the femme fatale archetype. Instead of a ‘deadly woman’ who seduces the main character and leads them onto a path of darkness, Ellen is an untouchable beauty that Hugh is captivated by. It is through her aid and connections that Hugh is ultimately able to be freed from becoming the “expendable man”. Ellen is without a doubt a benevolent and key figure in this text. But, how does her identity as a privileged black woman complicate her place in this noir novel? When Hugh first sees Ellen, she is wearing a “honey-colored sheath… of some dull clinging material the exact color of her flesh… Instead of the inevitable mink stole, Ellen carried a matching scarf, fully twelve feet long, lined in lynx” (Hughes 48). This initial description of Ellen tells the reader two important things. First, Ellen is wealthy enough to wear the newest fashions and own a lynx-lined scarf. And secondly, the color of her dress is the color of her skin. In other texts we have read, the clothing women wore signaled something about the role they would play in the text. In Farewell, My Lovely, our femme fatale wears all white, contrasting the idea of purity and innocence that stems from our conception of the color white. Unlike in Farewell, Ellen’s appearance signals her beauty and desirability, but also her transparency around the reality of her race. Ellen is white passing based on Hugh’s descriptions, and with her wealth she is shielded from facing any real repercussions of that fact. Ellen says in a conversation with Hugh, she calls herself a “dark diplomat”, in recognition of her race, but she, “somehow I don’t mind invisibility. I’d rather no one saw me as I walk down the street, or pretended they couldn’t see me, than to have people nudging and pointing as if I were a freak. Even within its limitations, I like to live my life without comment” (153). Ellen’s perspective on invisibility as something that is good, contrasts our conception of the color black as darkness and evil. Ellen lives free within the confines of her blackness, and as an antithesis of a femme fatale in this genre, this space she exists in is radical.
(post 6)
I thought your examination of the character of Ellen was really interesting. I thought your analysis of Ellen essentially “freeing” Hugh from the expendable man persona was particularly interesting because it shows black women in a very different role than we have typically seen them in the Noir genre. Instead of being pushed to the margins by black men, as Bob does to Alice in If He Hollers Let Him Go, Ellen’s help is accepted by Hugh. However, I am not sure if this is more indicative of Ellen as a woman versus Alice as a woman, or rather how black men accept the help of women and how they perceive this in relation to their own masculinity.
I wonder if we would even consider Ellen a femme fatale at this point. She never undermines Hugh, and on the contrary, support him despite having just met him a few days prior. And though she is desirable, I don’t believe she uses her sexuality as a weapon as Brigid or Velma did. It is interesting that the books we have read featuring Black main characters and Black females are the ones in which the women are given more positive qualities. Is this trend of the femme fatale being a white woman (or at least a very white appearing woman in Velma’s case) saying something about Caucasian females? Is Noir proving that white women are the root of most evils, whereas black women who understaind their “invisibility” are not a threat?
It is interesting how both Ellen and Skye Houston appear to be comfortable with being invisible, especially in the relative freedom of Arizona. Hugh frequently watches them with an inescapable jealousy; he notes how even Skye’s leather-brown skin from the constant heat of the Arizona sun matches that of Ellen’s honey-golden skin. The two appear to belong together due to their shared class, similar skin tone, and preference in moving through the world without being noticed rather than moving through the shadows of the world that Ellen constantly ascends from.