{"id":27006,"date":"2012-12-19T17:15:17","date_gmt":"2012-12-19T17:15:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=27006"},"modified":"2012-12-19T17:15:17","modified_gmt":"2012-12-19T17:15:17","slug":"identity-in-%e2%80%9cpassing%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=27006","title":{"rendered":"Identity in \u201cPassing\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Identity in \u201cPassing\u201d<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Allison Tetreault, Journalist and Student<\/a>
\nNovember 2011<\/p>\n

Allison Tetreault<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nella Larsen\u2019s<\/a> Passing<\/a><\/em> destabilizes the traditional conception of ethnic, racial, and gender integrity, revolutionizing the very idea of an accepted definition of identity. By developing unstable characters, Larsen conveys how easy it is to lose one\u2019s sense of self. Clare Kendry, who breaks the tragic mulatto<\/a> stereotype, never has the chance to align to a particular race because of her untimely death, while Irene Redfield, who becomes obsessed with and jealous of Clare, single-handedly destroys her own sense of self by committing psychological suicide. Nella Larsen herself wrestles with identity, as she was raised in an all-white household after her father, a black West Indian, disappeared from her life; her own struggle identifying with other people leads to a modernist expression of delusion, uncertainty and ambiguity in her novellas. While overtly discussing racial passing<\/a>, the novella also covertly analyzes gender passing, or a person\u2019s ability to reify society\u2019s expectations of a certain gender through physical and behavioral cues. Irene\u2019s relationship with Clare is based on desire, jealousy, and obsession, and she develops an infatuation for her that combats societal expectations. In addition, Larsen attempts to pass not only her characters, but herself as a novelist and her novel as a fiction. By exposing the convention of the mulatto<\/a> as unsympathetic instead of tragic, Larsen ironically captures her readers. She tries to \u201cpass\u201d her novel by writing about something she thinks they will want to read, but destroys their expectations by shattering the mulatto stereotype and concentrating more on gender passing, eventually exposing presupposed identity for what it is: malleable, even nonexistent. Both Clare and Irene fail in trying to pinpoint their identities, and by offering nothing but ambiguity in the point of view and the final scene of the novella, Larsen presents identity itself as ambiguous, transient, and never fully identifiable…<\/p>\n

Read the entire essay here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Identity in \u201cPassing\u201d Allison Tetreault, Journalist and Student November 2011 Allison Tetreault Nella Larsen\u2019s Passing destabilizes the traditional conception of ethnic, racial, and gender integrity, revolutionizing the very idea of an accepted definition of identity. By developing unstable characters, Larsen conveys how easy it is to lose one\u2019s sense of self. Clare Kendry, who breaks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1196,8,6462],"tags":[13118,87],"class_list":["post-27006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","tag-allison-tetreault","tag-nella-larsen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27006\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}