Content of the Problem
Larsen goes into a novel that dealt with her own lifestyle. The Climax that Larsen was indeed struggling with her own racial identity half African American/Caribbean and European descent.
Instrumenting a Main Character wrestling with her racial identity “passing for white” and wrestling with a turbulence marriage. All aspects of Larsen’s life. Irene the Main Character and Larsen pending question was “Cannot accept that disruption to her settled life”
The moment of the novel’s climax, when Irene chooses the stability of married life over Clare’s safety, is put in motion by her decision to pass for white when she first meets Bellew, rather than to face the unpleasantness that would result if she had spoken up against his racist comments. Bellew’s belief that she is white sets up the inevitable conflict that arrives when he sees her with Felise. As Larsen points out early in the novel, people like Bellew do not see the Blackness of people who look like Irene and Clare unless they see them with other unmistakably Black people. Seeing Irene with Felise breaks the illusion of her whiteness for Bellew, which in turn causes him to realize that Clare is also Black. Irene understands in that moment, first unconsciously and then clearly, that if Bellew ends his marriage to Clare, Irene’s marriage to Brian will be at risk. Irene cannot accept that disruption to her settled life.
Significance of the Study
Nella Larsen is commonly associated with the Harlem Renaissance, yet she was a Chicago native whose personality was decisively shaped by her youth on the near South Side. The Chicago of her early childhood was a sprawling chaos sprung from the ashes of the Great Fire of 1871 and already surpassing in population every American city but New York. “Think of all hell turned loose,” wrote the newcomer John Dewey to his sister in 1894, “& yet not hell any longer, but simply material for a new creation.” Born in 1891 at 2124 S. Armour Street (Federal Street today) to a white Danish immigrant named Marie Hansen and a man of color named Peter Walker from the then-Danish Virgin Islands, Larsen (initially Nellie Walker) grew up in one of the Western Hemisphere’s most notorious vice districts, the so-called Levee. Prowling the area bordering Nella’s to the north, the young journalist Theodore Dreiser wrote in his first feature newspaper story, “Entering the district at midnight and wandering along the broken wooden pavement, ill-lighted by lamps and avoided by the police, the nerves tremble at the threatening appearance of the whole neighborhood.” He could see only filth, misery, and vice in the area–drunken men and despondent women, children with “wan, peevish faces.”
Peter Walker abandoned his wife and daughter soon after Nella’s birth, and Marie could not legally remarry for seven years, but she took up soon after Walker’s disappearance with a white Danish immigrant named Peter Larsen, and they considered themselves married. Marie gave birth to a second, white daughter when Nella was a year old; both daughters were given the Larsen surname and grew up in a Danish-American home. Residential segregation was already an issue but there was no true “ghetto,” because African Americans were still so few. As of 1890, only one point three per cent of the Chicago population was black. By 1910 the number had risen to just two per cent, but a distinct “black belt” had taken form. As a “mixed” working-class family in rapidly segregating Chicago, the Larsens were forced to live in the red-light district, and Larsen’s relationship to the black community was tenuous. Being born to a white woman was enough in itself to cast suspicion upon her legitimacy. Knowing little about her natural father throughout her life made the situation even worse. White women with mixed-race children were routinely assumed to be prostitutes. For young Nella Larsen, the racial culture of the United States imperiled her primary attachments and vexed every aspect of her family’s life. To be identified with her mother, to be carried on her mother’s hip in the butcher shop, to toddle down the sidewalk at her sister’s side, meant braving catcalls and dirty looks.
For a period of their early youth before starting school, Nella and Anna accompanied their mother to Denmark to live with relatives, apparently for three years, while Peter Larsen moved to the “white” West Side. They returned to Chicago in 1898 after Marie’s mother died and the family promptly moved back
to the vice district at State Street and Twenty-Second Street. Seven months later Marie and Peter Larsen were finally able to legally marry, the seven-year waiting period having elapsed since Peter Walker’s disappearance.
Larsen managed to rise into the black bourgeoisie after a stint at Tuskegee Institute and marry a cosmopolitan man of good family, America’s first black PhD in physics. She then turned to library work, becoming the first black graduate of a professional library school, and found herself, as the Harlem Renaissance took form, on the springboard to a literary career. Her first publications introduced black children to Danish children’s games and rhymes in The Brownies’ Book, a black children’s magazine associated with The Crisis, a journal of the NAACP in New York
Passing earned Larsen a book award from the Harmon Foundation and a Guggenheim Fellowship to travel in Europe and North Africa while working on another novel. She was the first black woman so honored.
Literature Review
Passing is the second novel by Harlem Renaissance writer Nella Larsen. This novel follows the relationship between two childhood friends, one who is proud of her racial heritage and one who has passed into the white world to marry for wealth. Irene Redfield runs into Clare Kendry Bellew on the roof of the Drayton Hotel in Chicago. At first Irene does not recognize the blond beauty, but as they begin to speak Irene realizes exactly who this beautiful woman is. Irene wants nothing to do with Clare, but finds herself pulled in by her charms. Two years later, Irene realizes she is not the only one who is susceptible to Clare’s charms. Passing is a unique novel about race, love and human nature.
Irene Redfield is in Chicago to visit her father while her children are away at summer camp. Overwhelmed by the intense heat, Irene hails a cab and allows the driver to take her to Drayton Hotel where she hopes to enjoy a cool wind along with her iced tea. While sitting at her table, Irene becomes aware of a beautiful blond woman at another table who has taken an unusual interest in her. At first Irene worries that the woman has recognized that Irene is black, but Irene decides this is not possible. Finally the blond woman comes to Irene’s table and calls Irene by name, causing Irene to recognize that this blond woman is her childhood friend, Clare Kendry.
The two old friends sit and talk for hours, both ignoring the fact that Clare is clearly passing in the white world. Clare invites Irene to tea the following Tuesday and Irene agrees so that she will not hurt Clare’s feelings. However, Irene vows not to go. When Tuesday comes around, Clare calls so many times that Irene feels she must go have tea with her. When Irene arrives at Clare’s hotel, she finds her entertaining another childhood friend who also married a white man. The women chat for a time and then Clare’s husband arrives. Almost instantly Irene realizes the man is highly prejudiced against black people. Clare is outraged by his behavior, but she does not say anything in order to protect Clare.
Two years pass and then Irene gets another letter from Clare. After discussing it with her husband, Irene decides not to answer the letter. However, a few months later Clare appears on her doorstep. Clare convinces Irene to invite her to a dance she has helped to organize. After the dance, Clare becomes a regular guest at the Redfield home. In December, shortly before Christmas, Irene becomes aware that her husband has become inappropriately close to Clare. Irene hides the fact that she knows, however, feeling as though she should be able to deal with the pain. However, Irene begins trying to come up with ideas of how to rid herself of Clare. Irene thinks briefly that she might tell Clare’s husband that Clare is really black, but she decides this would not be a good idea because it would be like betraying her entire race.
One after while shopping, Irene runs into Clare’s husband while shopping with a black friend. Irene ignores him and walks away, but finds herself unable to tell either her husband or Clare what occurred. That night, Irene decides she can handle her husband having an affair as long as he continues to come home to her. However, when Clare’s husband arrives at a party that the Redfields are attending with Clare, Irene panics. Irene cannot allow Clare’s husband to divorce her because then Clare would be free to be with Irene’s husband. Without thinking, Irene pushes Clare out of a window.