Essay Sample on Passing: Exploring Racism, Belonging & Vulnerability in Harlem Renaissance

Introduction

Nella Larsen's novel Passing is committed to the consideration of the concepts of vulnerability, class differences, and belonging. The story spins around the questions of personality for black and mixed-race women. The historical point of view of "otherness" in Nella Larsen's books makes a difference in considering the marginalization that African-Americans amid the Harlem Renaissance. Undoubtedly, Larsen illustrates that within the period of liberation for colored individuals, they endured numerous discriminations. Larsen's work, Passing, emphasis on the encounter of two biracial ladies whose characters are inherently performative as they explore life with the benefit of Passing as White (Larsen 286). Through this account, Larsen proposes that both racial and gender/sexual identities are inherent. Passing investigates the thoughts of personalities as they exist in a world where Passing is conceivable. The novel assesses racial personality by focusing on the socially-enforced nature of biracial.

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Larsen assaults these essentialist ideas of race by portraying black ladies passing for white, whose physical appearances don't grant a clue of their race. In this manner, the figure of speech of Passing eventually depicts those essentialist ideas as a figment. Larsen scorns the "blood tells" hypothesis with Irene's certainty in her appearance, which does not uncover her race orientation. Larsen, in Passing, illustrates how "racial" groups are not results of their natural legacy but items of chronicled and current social, financial, instructive, and political circumstances. Irene focuses intensely on the thought of uplifting racial referencing and locks her personality as a Black lady. Doing so overlooks the reality that her character is inalienably Black and White. In differentiate, Irene criticizes Clare's choice to pass and lead the advantaged life of a White individual in America, whereas too sporadically locks in with her Dark personality when it suited her. Irene is battling with the central issue of the biracial nature: how one possesses two characters that are broadly considered to be conflicting or contradicting. Both Clare and Irene speak to restricting closes of this ideological range in the exhibitions of their racial personalities, and in doing so, encourage and sustain the socially upheld thought that biracial people must "choose a side" to perform, instead of grasping and playing their biracial character (Larsen 294).

Conclusion

Conclusively, Passing is a novel profoundly concerned with the reality of vulnerability, particularly in terms of character. With the understanding that identity shapes involvement, Nella Larsen makes a story in which styles are constrained by society to select their participation. Larsen investigates exhibitions of character and their impacts on the personal experiences of race, sex, and sexuality. Be that as it may, Larsen moreover appears profoundly curious about how these exhibitions and engagements with externalized character will advise encounters of the eras to come.

Work Cited

Larsen, Nella. Passing. Knopf, 1929, p. 284 - 303.