Nella Larsen

Nella Larsen is the daughter of Mary Hansen ad Peter Walker. Her mother was a Danish immigrant and her father was a black West Indian. Through her writing Nella Larsen expresses her struggles with 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 for specific circumstances. Nella Larsen was more than a writer. She was a voice, she was one of the voices of the Harlem Renaissance, and a voice of those who had troubles with identity. She expresses her voice and identity through her writing and through her…

In Nella Larsen’s text Passing, our attention is drawn to two childhood friends, Irene and Clare, who encounter each other after 12 years on the Drayton hotel roof, both “passing” as white for entry. Irene Redfield lives in a middle class black society and marries a black man, remaining loyal to her identity but passes only when it is convenient for her. On the other hand, Clare Kendry lives in an upper class white society and marries a white man but abandons her true identity to pass for white…

The book I have chosen for this essay is the Passing by Nella Larsen. Passing is Larsen’s second as well as her last book given that she stopped pursuing her writing career due to others accusing her of plagiarism. Though she was acquitted of such allegations, Larsen stopped writing due to a high level of embarrassment. Passing deals with the topic of race; particularly race being used in one’s decision on whether or not to acknowledge one part of their race. Then, one would make the conscious…

Throughout the Harlem Renaissance, Nella Larson wrote intermittent narratives that emulated portions of her life, such as Passing; these narratives emulate her desire for access to wealth, middle-class comfort, and white privileges. Larsen herself, scuffles with identity after her Negro father from the Virgin Islands dies at her age of two, and her Danish mother marries a man of her race and nationality. At the age of five, Larsen attends a small private school whose pupils were mostly German…

Getting married was not really a choice, but a societal expectation and for Helga it was a way to climb the social ladder and “have” something of her own (relates to the next idea of class). In this argument, I will consider gender by exploring marriage and sexuality. The third source I will discuss is “Black Cosmofeminism: Commodity, Sexuality, and the Transnational Mixed-Race Subject in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand” by Hsiao-Wen Chen. This article supports my arguments concerning marriage,…

In Passing, Nella Larsen’s characters’ Clare and Irene struggle to disentangle themselves from their self inflicted crises and conflate their ontological as well as cultural identities. Larsen employs Clare Kendry to personify the consequences of disconnecting from one's true sense of self. Larsen utilizes the age old cautionary tale to confirm that extricating oneself from predetermined conventional roles in society engenders major conflict, which possesses the potential for catastrophic…

In the novella, Passing, Nella Larsen portrays the multifaceted struggles an African-American woman must delicately balance in order to survive in society in the 1920’s through the character of Irene Redfield. When Irene and her childhood acquaintance Clare Kendry happen upon each other at a restaurant in Chicago, they are both “passing” for white women. It quickly becomes clear that Clare has been living as a white woman, while Irene utilizes her ability to pass exclusively when she needs to -…

culture. They are on two entirely opposite ends of the spectrum. White and black could not mix, except, that is, within the mind and soul of a certain individual named Clare Kendry. A half-African woman masquerading as fully white refuses to conform to societal standards as she merges her African heritage with a white identity. Of course, this woman is fictional, only existing within the context of author Nella Larsen’s Passing. But nonetheless,…

This excerpt of “Passing” by Nella Larsen outlines the major themes of race, class, gender, and character that we continually talk about in class. Clare Kendry is a woman with Negro blood who partakes in the precarious practice of “passing” as a white woman in public. In this section of the story, Clare visits Irene to inquire why she chose not to respond to Clare’s letter. After a heated argument about safety and consequences, Clare invites herself to the Negro Welfare League’s annual dance…

determined by sight, and can be quite fickle. People look for numerous traits that a person has to determine their race; traits that can easily be hidden, or have no truth to them at all, like ones finger nails, palms, ears, teeth or obviously skin colour (Larsen 8). Characters like Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield prove these assumptions of race false when they pass for being white, despite their African heritage, and that there must be instead other ways to dictating ones race. As shown in…