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Nella Larsen Passing

930 Words4 Pages

In Passing by Nella Larsen, the mentioning of eyes gives the reader an indication of something significant in the text. Passing is told from the perspective of Irene Redfield, an observant mother and wife that accepts her heritage. When Irene re-encounters her old childhood friend, Clare Kendry, at the Drayton Hotel Clare reveals her new life of luxury as a result of passing into the white world. Clare is described as dangerous and mysterious and this re-encounter can bring nothing but trouble into Irene’s perfect life. Throughout the text, Irene regards Clare as something ‘otherworldly’ and even though Irene is described as observant Clare is the only person that Irene is unable to see through. As their worlds begin to collide, Irene always …show more content…

After the realization that the beautiful stranger is her childhood friend, Clare Kendry, Irene discusses all of the events that have occurred without Clare and talk about her passing in general. However, at the end of their mention, Irene continues to focus on Clare’s eyes. Irene says, “And the eyes were magnificent! dark, sometimes black, always luminous, and set in long, black lashes. Arresting eyes, slow and mesmeric, and with, for all their warmth something withdrawn and secret about them” (Larsen, 29). Clare’s eyes always hold an aura of mystery and Irene continues to re-instill the qualities of Clare’s dark eyes. Then, Irene continues to set Clare apart as something ethereal when looking in her eyes at the tea party with Gertrude and Jack. Irene says, “... she turned an oblique look on Clare and encountered her peculiar eyes fixed on her with an expression so dark and deep and unfathomable that she had for a short moment the sensation of gazing into the eyes of some creature utterly strange and apart” (Larsen, 40). Throughout the text, Larsen continues to differentiate Clare from all the others characters in the book because of her eyes. In this quote, Clare is described as an “utterly strange creature” and her eyes are described as “unfathomable and dark.” This relates the idea of Clare’s black eyes showing her impenetrable facade. Her black eyes show her Clare’s true nature and give

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251 Words | 2 Pages

According to Landry, Nella Larsen wrote Passing to furtively cover a subject that was more taboo than the racial issues of the early twentieth century. Specifically the issues that mulatto women faced when assimilating into the white world without self-identifying. Landry states that it was safe for Nella Larsen to write a story about the subject of the mulatto women while interweaving a love affair between two women. Landry argues that “ women of mixed ethnicity fear being defined by other African Americans as race traitors if they resist sexual and gender norms”(26) and that the direct consequence of defying the social norms of the era would be self-loathing and blame. Landry goes on to explain that the negative feelings toward their selves

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1779 Words | 8 Pages

Passing is a novel created by Nella Larsen to create a noticeable resemblance of the past and the present. Within the novel, one can see the distinct differences and similarities of being an African-American in America then and now. Nella Larsen intended to show readers how African-Americans had to, and in some cases still have to, deny their own nationality and ethnicity to appeal to those of whites in America. Passing is the act of portraying oneself as a different ethnicity and completely taking on a new life role. Nella Larsen mentions how the two characters in the story, Irene and Clare, were passing as Caucasian women even though they were African-American.

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575 Words | 3 Pages

1920’s society offered a prominent way for blacks that look white to exploit its barrier and pass in society. Visible within Nella Larsen’s Passing, access to the regular world exists only for those who fit the criteria of white skin and white husband. Through internal conflict and characterization, the novella reveals deception slowly devours the deceitful. In Passing, Clare and Irene both deceive people. They both engage in deceit by having the ability to pass when they are not of the proper race to do so.

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1764 Words | 8 Pages

Nella Larsen’s novel Passing is a brilliant portrayal depicting how light skinned African Americans were able to live their lives as white people if they so wished and the fallout sometimes associated with this racial passing. Although passing may seem beneficial to those who can blend into mainstream society, passing has several negative effects on one’s acceptance in the African American community. Such a negative effects can include the view of passing “as an instance of racial self-hatred or disloyalty” (CITE 2). In a sense, the one who passes can be considered a traitor to their natural race in that they have abandoned their in favor of a less stigmatized race. After all, race plays an important role in the formation of one’s identity

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1095 Words | 5 Pages

I will be taking a postmodern approach to the text and supplementing it with modernism and psychoanalytic theories before stating my final stance that postmodernism may be the most appropriate approach. This approach ensures that different perspectives are present in my analysis and ensures that it is not one-sided. The question that I hope to focus my argument on is “Does the postmodernist approach better emerge the idea of self from racism?” Rottenberg, Catherine. " Passing : Race, Identification, and Desire. " Criticism, vol. 45, no. 4, 2004, pp. 435-452.

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906 Words | 4 Pages

In the 1920s and 1930s, blacks were treated differently, discriminated against, and faced with racism every day. In 1929, at the peak of the harsh treatment towards the blacks, Passing, by Nella Larsen, was published. Larsen demonstrates how blacks were limited in society, since they were constrained by the racism they faced. The favored race, whites, were shown to be supreme to blacks, as Larsen illuminated throughout Passing.

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532 Words | 3 Pages

Seeing The experience of seeing for Annie Dillard (author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek) is not taken for granted. She fully understands the value and depth sight provides. To Dillard, “Seeing is of course very much a matter of verbalization.” She builds on this by saying, “Unless I call my attention to what passes before my eyes, I simply won’t see it.”

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1282 Words | 6 Pages

Irene's marriage with Brian Redfield is empty and unfulfilling. Brian resents Irene because she was the reason why he could not be where he wanted to be, which has led to discomfort and arguments throughout their marriage. Brian very much wanted to be in Brazil, but Irene insisted upon him

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1484 Words | 6 Pages

It is often said that a new definition of a woman arose in the 1920s. But is that true? While most women experienced many newfound freedoms in the 1920s, black women could not explore these freedoms as easily as white women. In the novel Passing by Nella Larsen, Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry grew up in Chicago together and are now both two wives and mothers in New York City during the 1920s, but there is a big difference between them. The novel’s title refers to light-skinned black women masquerading as white women for social benefits.

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981 Words | 4 Pages

Racism was always a big issue and still occurs today. The story “Passing” took place in the 1920’s during the Harlem Renaissance and it spoke about the term “Passing” which indicates that African American’s who looked lighted skin can go to public places without being discriminated. In “Passing” Nella Larsen demonstrates how racism causes jealousy, resentment, and dishonesty in relationships. The idea is conveyed through inner conflict, the conflict between the main characters and how the Harlem Renaissance period inflicts tension in relationships.

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1746 Words | 7 Pages

Their Eyes Were Watching God tells the story of how one man, Tea Cake, changes how a grown woman named Janie views life, opportunity, and happiness. Zora Neale Hurston employs parallelism in order to reveal the dynamic of this relationship between Janie and Tea Cake and writes, “He drifted off into sleep and Janie looked down on him and felt a self-crushing love. So her soul crawled out from its hiding place” (Hurston 128). At the very end of the book, Hurston writes again, “Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net.

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971 Words | 4 Pages

When Mrs. Drover gets in the taxi, she immediately looks at the eyes of the driver, which frightens her. She describes these eyes in the same way she regarded her lover’s, as “spectral glimmers” (Bowen 1408). It would be fair to assume that this was not mere coincidence, that the eyes of the demon in the ballad, which were without soul, matched the eyes of the lover in the story. Since we’ve proven the lady’s lover to show several characteristics of the demon, it’s fair to assume that they’re the same.

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779 Words | 4 Pages

In the beginning she say’s that she liked to see just like everyone else: “Before I got my eye put out – I liked as well to see, As other creatures, that have eyes – And know no other way –”. She talks about different views she misses seeing but then she says that being able to see all of these things can ‘strike her dead’. In the last stanzas she says: “So safer – guess – with just my soul, Opon the window pane, Where other creatures put their eyes – Incautious – of the Sun –”. She is explaining that she is not cautious of the sun’s brightness affecting her sight because she lost her vision

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1334 Words | 6 Pages

The last statement is almost telling how the reader should feel when they think about the old man’s eye.

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1074 Words | 5 Pages

The eye of “all men’s” sees the truth about the woman that the speaker is in love with, and she isn’t as amazing as he sees her to be. “Love’s eyes”, in other words, the speaker’s eyes, have a judgment that is

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