Passing Nella Larsen

The writing Passing by Nella Larsen was a different read than we have read before in class. It was a story rather than poetry, but yet still consisted of the symbolic theme that poetry takes on. What i wonder from Passing of course is how it ended. What does Nella Larsen want us to believe? What did she want the reader to take away from this. Nella Larsen herself was a complicated individual coming from a multi-racial background and having a history hinting at homosexuality she was taboo for her time period. So the question i ask in this post is what was Larsen’s intention on leaving the ending to Passing up to interpretation.

I came across this article titled ” The Veils of the Law: Race and Sexuality in Nella Larsen’s Passing” by Corinne E. Blackmer, in which she analyzes the many controversial issues Nella Larsen addresses in this novel, “Passing, in contrast, stresses the interpretive anxieties and sexual paranoias that make convention-bound people reluctant to allow others the freedom to travel freely throughout the many worlds, identities, and sexualities of American society.” She brings up a good point as to relate not only the homosexual context to Irene and Clare’s relationship but also possibly the underlying homoseuxality of Brian Redfield who sleeps in a seperate room and expresses that he does not see Clare, the ever so beautiful woman as attractive. In this article by Blackmer she suggests that Irene was indeed the one to push Clare off the balcony in the end, but that that is not the point of the novel…the point of the novel was to show the importance of conforming to societies norms at this time period and for those who didn’t there risked being complete isolation or even death.” Focussed principally on the operation of chance and accident as well as the epistemological crises of unknowability that result from self-silencing and self-repression, Larsen’s novel ostensibly passes” for a conventional narrative of racial “passing.” “

Blackmer, Corinne E. “The veils of the law: race and sexuality in Nella Larsen’s passing.” College Literature, vol. 22, no. 3, 1995, p. 50+. Literature Resource Center, https://link-gale-com.proxy055.nclive.org/apps/doc/A18110019/GLS?u=durham_tccl&sid=GLS&xid=3e711edd. Accessed 21 Oct. 2019.