Clare

Nella Larsen is a story of passing. Passing from one race to another, passing as something one is not, or passing into death. In this novel the character Clare Kendry dies, some say she was pushed and some say she committed suicide. It is obvious Clare Kendry committed suicide. There is multiple pieces of evidence that supports the fact that Clare Kendry commits suicide at the end of the novel. The title of the novel itself can be a foreshadowing of this event taking place. The word passing can…

racial identity and class alienation. In 1929, Nella Larsen wrote a novel expressing the struggles of racial identity, this sort was called The Passing. A story of two light skinned women who were childhood friends. The protagonist of the novel are Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield. Just like Nella Larsen, the characters are of mixed heritage and are light enough pass as white. Hence the title, The Passing. Though one character fully commits to passing as white, the other only does it on occasion…

Irene passes as it pleases her while Clare has fully passed over, marrying a white man and almost completely cutting out any relation to her life with the black community from before. At Clare’s tea party, all three women, Clare, Gertrude, and Irene, talk about their children and their perspectives on their children’s skin color. Both Clare and Gertrude express their distress when they were pregnant that they feared their children would be born with darker skin. Clare, having concealed her race…

Irene and Clare, trying to pass off as white people. The story starts off by Irene receiving a letter form Clare, a friend of hers that she wants no part of. From here the story goes into a flashback to Irene’s summer vacation, when she run into Clare in the Dayton, in Chicago. They are both in an all white restaurant, which they got in due to their light skinned color. After this interaction between the two long lost friends, Irene came to the conclusion that she want’s nothing to do with Clare…

Nella Larsen’s Passing leaves us with a big mystery on our hands. That mystery forms from the question, “Who killed Clare Kendry?”. The novel chooses to leave readers with a rather ambiguous ending that never outright answers the question. The answer to this question can be found through in-depth psychological and textual analysis. This analysis will prove that Irene Redfield killed Clare Kendy. Passing takes place from Irene Redfield’s perspective. The novel may not have a first-person point…

faith in him to go to heaven, to help others in hard times [OS]. Tom showed his strong faith as a concern to other people’s faith; he showed his concerns toward Augustine St. Clare and Legree, and motivates them for their doubts and actions [TS1]. After Eva’s death, St. Clare said to Tom that his life is like an empty…

Within Passing it has been believed that the relationship between Irene and Clare extends beyond a platonic relationship. In instances that Irene appreciated Clare’s demeanor, it gave off the suggestion that that was a sexual attraction between the two women. There is also the fact that Irene was incapable of denying Clare anything when in they are in each other’s presence. Throughout Irene’s narrative, she frequently commented on Clare’s looks and…

between what is true and what is perceived for her readers, which on a larger scale, allows Clare to recognize the inherent flaws of the prejudice in her society…

The most prominent example of this is Irene wanting to protect Clare, by not letting John her husband discover Clare’s actual race even though Irene herself disapproves of it and suspects Clare to be having an affair with her husband. Irene feels torn between preserving her race or herself. Double consciousness relates the modernist literature because it provides the multiple…

Angie Thomas', ‘The Hate U Give’ are two works of fiction that depict the society as it is about the position of the black women. The former is plotted in the 1920s America with two women Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield struggling with their secret identities…