Novelist of the Harlem Renaissance Essay

In Nella Larsen’s Passing, racial identity and â€Å"passing,† or traversing the color line, have multiple configurations. Clare Kendry is the character who seems to saunter undisturbed back and forth across the color line. Irene Redfield wants to maintain a strict perimeter around her life, a perimeter far from the ambiguity of the color line. Their reunion starts when Clare introduces herself to Irene at a restaurant and end with Clare’s death. It is easy to read the novel as one where Clare is dangerous to Irene’s life. After all, she brings the color line right to Irene’s doorstep. But Irene seems to be more dangerous at the end of the novel. Larsen raises the question of whether Irene pushed Clare or if she fell. Irene and Clare interpret racial identity in very different ways. â€Å"Passing† is also open to interpretation, not only because racial identity is constructed but, because Irene and Clare also negotiate boundaries of gender and sexuality. Just as she does with race, Irene maintains a strict perimeter around her sexuality and in adhering to expectations of femininity. The abandon with which Clare seems to move back and forth across the color line is the same abandon that seems to inform her sexuality and gender identity. Larsen very skillfully unsettles reader expectations by delineating a rigid character on one hand and a flexible character on the other. Then Larsen undermines those expectations over the course of the novel. A reader’s experience of race is initially confirmed by Irene and challenged by Clare but not all of the pieces of puzzle fit. Class identity, something both Irene and Clare have in common, is a consistent challenge to broad generalizations in the 1920s about what black people could do and be. Because of the way â€Å"class† and socio-economic â€Å"place† for black people was associated with extreme poverty and lack of education, a middle-class black woman could not â€Å"stay in her place. † Works Cited Davis, Thadious M. Nella Larsen, Novelist of the Harlem Renaissance: A Woman’s Life Unveiled. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1996. Doyle, Laura. Freedom’s Empire: Race and the Rise of the Novel in Atlantic Modernity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008. Favor, J. Martin. â€Å"A Clash of Birthrights: Nella Larsen, the Feminine, and African American Identity. † Authentic Blackness: The Folk in the New Negro Renaissance. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999: 81-110. Hutchinson, George. In Search of Nella Larsen: A Biography of the Color Line. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2006. Jenkins, Candice M. â€Å"Decoding Essentialism: Cultural Authenticity and the Black Bourgeoisie in Nella Larsen’s Passing. MELUS 30. 3 (2006): 129-54. Larsen, Nella. Passing: A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Carla Kaplan. New York: W. W. Norton, 2007. Rabin, Jessica. Surviving the Crossing: (Im)migration, Ethnicity, and Gender in Willa Cather, Gertrude Stein, and Nella Larsen. New York: Routledge, 2004. Wald, Gayle. Crossing the Line: Racial Passing in Twentieth-Century Literature and Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000.