“Mystery Woman of the Harlem Renaissance” Introduction to Nella Larsen and Passing

1. “Mystery Woman of the Harlem Renaissance”Introduction to Nella Larsen and Passing

2. Nella Larsen Controversies In Search of Nella Larsen: A Biography of the Color-line • George Hutchinson (2006) • Larsen never visited Denmark • Lied about her Danish roots to gain status • Lied about a “loving mother” since she was abandoned by her mother • Internalized “white racist attitude” and held ambivalent attitude toward black identity (partly because her mother abandoned her and partly because her husband left her for a white woman) • Was a social climber and socialized with white people to get recognition and status

3. Making of an Author 1891: Nellie Walker born on April 13, 2124 Armour Street (near Red-Light area in Chicago)

4. Making of an Author Nella’s position in the neighborhood • Working class • Immigrant • Absent Father • Lower class white mother • Mulatto child • Concept of “race suicide” & “moral degeneration” 1892 – 1898: • Nella as a threat to the family; “invisible”/passing Negroes (Her stepfather disliked her) • Childhood trauma & attachment disorder • Social issues: absolute “social equality” (Frederick Douglass); Segregationist (Booker Taliaferro Washington)

5. Making of an Author • Clash between black people and European immigrants • Rhetoric of black race pride (racial uplift, racial solidarity, black integrity) • Further exclusion of Nella (mixed parentage, racially mulatto, Negro in official recognition, Danish American immigrant from mother’s side) • Class division among the blacks (black elites vs. working class black people, “native” American black vs. white immigrants or mulattos from white immigrant families) • (1895-1898) Considered as an “exotic” Negro in Denmark. 1899-1907: • The family moved from place to place to find security and conceal Nella; Nella was conscious of her being a threat to her family. • “metaphor of dressing” (Nella’s mother was a dressmaker. Since she could not enjoy proximity to her mother for social reasons, Hutchinson sees this recurrent use of “metaphor of dressing” in Larsen’s novels as a quest for love and a sign of metaphorical proximity to her mother) • Race issue in Wendell Phillips High School • Growth as a writer in school (English class focused on creative writing)

6. Making of an Author • Outcast despite of her brilliant performance at school • The Segregation & further abjection and alienation of Nella • Lack of job opportunity, social acceptance, and marriage opportunity • Family moves to West Seventieth Place in 1907; white immigrant neighborhood, and hostility to blacks • “Chronic fear of abandonment”, “stigma of blackness”, & “stigma of presumed illegitimacy” 1907-1908: • Marginalized status at Fisk University – racially mixed, working class, immigrant background, and from Union household (all these associations were hated by Fisk’s black community) • Fisk at the center of “racial uplift” • Female behavior modelled after white society & “Victorian ideals of womanhood”

7. Making of an Author • Broke dress-code and was thrown out of Fisk 1908-1912: • Went to Denmark • Audited at University of Copenhagen • Disillusionment in Denmark (exoticized as a quintessential Negro female by Danish society) and back to US 1912-1915: • Job crisis for black women • Workplace sexual abuse • Nursing Job – Segregation, growth of new black belt, and rise of “New Negro” professionals • Teaching & Librarianship (Civil service system and legally could not deny the applications from black females) • Daniel Hale Williams (founder & chief surgeon of Chicago’s Provident Hospital) and an advocate of “integrationist ideals”; • Nella was in favor of integration

8. Making of an Author • Nella moves to Lincoln Hospital in Bronx • White nurse vs. black nurse controversy • Nella’s roommate says “she is different, even a bit strange not at all home with those around her” (Hutchinson 84) • Haunting presence of childhood trauma & culture shock (older than rest of the new students; black student population from South; young white male interns getting drunk & abusing black nursing students) 1915-1916: • Tuskegee – Black institution. (“Race consciousness”; harsh accreditation process; cruel to students and teachers) • “culture of moral suspicion” (restriction on women, extremely disciplinary) • Fear of racial extinction • Black female sexuality

9. Nella at Lincoln Hospital and Home Training School for Nurses

10. Making of an Author • Tuskegee “teamwork”, “race consciousness”, threat to individuality and spontaneous joy of working 1916-1919: • Joins Bronx as a nurse • Met Dr. Elmer Samuel Imes (1883 – 1941) in 1918 • Married on May 3, 1919 1919-1923: • Controversies when she started translating Danish games & riddles for Du Bois’The Crisis; defended her work as cosmopolitan • Met important Harlem personalities like Grace Nail Johnson, James Weldon Johnson (Race man), W.E.B. Du Bois, Claude Mackay, Louis T. Wright, Corinne Wright, Walter White (Whitest Negro of Harlem & Voluntary Negro)

11. Making of an Author • Nella as an outcast among Harlem elites (because of her working class and immigrant background) • Disgusted with racial “uplift” ideology as it is condescending & based on melodramatic opposition that does not consider the people in-between • She moved in both black community & mixed ones that include white people • She was more interested to please herself than conforming to any group • First Story, “The Wrong Man” (1926) • Friendship with Carl Van Vechten (notorious for his novel Nigger Heaven) 1921: Larsen worked nights and weekends as a volunteer with librarian Ernestine Rose 1923: Passed certification in Librarianship & worked as a librarian at the Seward Park Branch

12. Making of an Author 1928: Publication of Quicksand 1929: Publication of Passing 1930: Published short story titled “Sanctuary” (Larsen was accused of plagiarism because of this short story’s close resemblance to “Mrs. Adis”, a short story by British writer Sheila Kaye-Smith, published in 1919 in UK) 1930: Received Guggenheim Award 1933: Divorced 1942: Her ex-husband died, she stopped writing, and went back to nursing 1964: Dies in Brooklyn, New York

13. The first African American Female Recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship for Literature

14. Themes of Harlem Renaissance • Double Consciousness (“sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others”, Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk p. 3) • Problematizing stark color line • Anti-class sentiment • Anti-segregationist • Characters with attachment disorder and trauma due to their mixed race background • Liminal space (ambivalent relationship to space) • “New Negro” Movement • Racially conscious feminism (Hutchinson 12)

15. Quicksand (1928), Autobiographical Fiction • Helga Crane’s mixed parentage - Danish American Mother & West Indian Father • Childhood trauma and attachment disorder • Search for “home” • Helga teaches at Naxos, based on Tuskegee Institute • Skepticism about “Racial Uplift” • Booker T. Washington’s racial segregation • Class division within black community • Concept of “Social Equality” • “Racial Exoticism” in Denmark • Problematizes Eugenic ideology • Tragic Mulatta

16. Passing (1929)

17. “Passing” OED meanings • Going past. • (of a period of time) going by. • The passage of something, especially time. • The end of something. • Euphemism for a person’s death. • Transition Historical meaning “Passing”: Practice of crossing the color-line.

18. Themes in Passing • “Passing” (crossing the boundaries of race, gender, class, & sexuality; death) • An alternative representation of “Tragic Mulatto” stereotype • Homoerotic Desire (Irene & Clare) • Re-defining Black Female Body and Sexuality • Power of Female Body (in transcending the boundaries of race, class, and sexuality) • “Female Gaze” • Ambivalent treatment of “Race pride” and “Race Traitor” • “Whiteness” as performance • Countering Eugenic Ideology • Social Critique (Clare’s white relatives) • Social & Sexual Jealousy • Emotional Lynching

19. Themes in Passing • Rhinelander Case Leonard Kip Rhinelander married Alice Jones, a biracial woman from immigrant working class family who passed as white. Even though Rhinelander knew about Alice’s background, when his family threatened him with disinheritance from family property, he said in court that Alice has deceived him. This case is mentioned in Passing to refer to Clare’s and John’s relationship.