Novelist of the Harlem Renaissance Essay

In Nella Larsens dismissal, racial identity and passing, or traversing the color line, have multiple configurations. Clare K demolitionry is the eccentric who seems to saunter undisturbed back and away across the color line. Irene Redfield wants to agree a strict edge around her life, a perimeter off the beaten track(predicate) from the ambiguity of the color line. Their reunion starts when Clare introduces herself to Irene at a restaurant and end with Clares death. It is easy to read the novel as one where Clare is terrible to Irenes life.After all, she brings the color line right to Irenes doorstep. entirely 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. Passing is as well as open to interpretation, not only because racial identity is constructed except, because Irene and Clare also negotiate boundaries of gender and sexual urge. 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 unfaltering extension on one hand and a flexible character on the other. Then Larsen undermines those expectations over the course of the novel. A readers 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 more or less what contraband people could do and be. Because of the way class and socio-economic place for black people was associated with extreme poverty and lack of education, a middle-class black woman could not stay in her place . Works CitedDavis, Thadious M. Nella Larsen, Novelist of the Harlem Renaissance A Womans Life Unveiled. Baton Rouge, LA Louisiana defer University Press, 1996.Doyle, Laura. Freedoms Empire Race and the Rise of the Novel in Atlantic Modernity. Durham, NC Duke University Press, 2008. Favor, J. Martin. A Clash of Birthrights Nella Larsen, the Feminine, and African American Identity. Authentic blackamoor 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.Decoding Essentialism Cultural Authenticity and the dumb Bourgeoisie in Nella Larsens Passing. MELUS 30. 3 (2006) 129-54. Larsen, Nella. Passing A Norton fine Edition. Ed. Carla Kaplan. New York W. W. Norton, 2007. Rabin, Jessica. Surviving the traverse (Im)migration, Ethnicity, and Gender in Willa Cather, Gertrude Stein, and Nella Larsen. New York Routledge, 2004. W ald, Gayle. Crossing the Line Racial Passing in Twentieth-Century Literature and Culture. Durham, NC Duke University Press, 2000.