Racial Ambiguity, Masking, and Masquerading in the Novels of N. Larsen, J. R. Fauset, and F. Hurst

Diplomarbeit

zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades einer

Magistra der Philosophie

An der Geisteswissenschaftlichen Fakultät der

Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz

vorgelegt von

Kerstin EDLER

Am Institut für Amerikanistik

Begutachter: Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Walter W. Hölbling

Graz, 2009

Table of Contents

1. Introduction ...... 6

2. Racial Ambiguity as the Result of America’s Racial Politics ...... 7

2.1 Historical Background ...... 7

2.1.1 The One-Drop Rule ...... 8

2.1.2 Jim Crow Segregation ...... 10

2.2 The Trope of the 'Marginal Man' ...... 11

3. The 'Mulatto/a' Figure in Literature as a Mirror of America’s Racial Politics ...... 12

3.1 The Trope of the 'Tragic Mulatta' ...... 12

3.2 Ways of Solving the Dilemma of Their Mulatto/a Existence ...... 15

4. The Trope of 'Passing' ...... 16

4.1 'Passing' as a Phenomenon of the 'Color Line' ...... 16

4.2 The Trope of 'Passing' in Literature ...... 18

5. The Trope of the 'Mask' ...... 20

6. The Harlem Renaissance as the Source of a New Black Racial Consciousness...... 22

6.1 Historical Background ...... 22

6.1.1 The Impact of the 'Great Urban Migration' ...... 23

6.2 The Importance of Harlem ...... 24

6.3 The Main Contributors to the Harlem Renaissance Movement ...... 25

6.4 The Origins of the New Negro Movement in Literature ...... 26

6.5 The Term 'Harlem Renaissance' ...... 27

6.6 The Impact of the Harlem Renaissance on Literature ...... 27

6.7 African American Women Writers in the Harlem Renaissance ...... 28

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7. The Importance of Nella Larsen’s Fiction Within the Harlem Renaissance ...... 30

7.1 Larsen, an Acclaimed New Negro Woman Writer ...... 30

7.2 Major Themes in Nella Larsen‟s Novels ...... 31

7.2.1 Racial Ambiguity ...... 31

7.2.1.1 'Passing' ...... 32

7.2.1.2 Mask and Masquerade ...... 33

7.2.2 Sexuality and the Treatment of Sexual Taboos ...... 33

7.2.3 Marriage ...... 34

7.3 Nella Larsen‟s Biography ...... 34

7.3.1 Nella Larsen‟s Own Racial Ambiguity Reflected in Her Fiction ...... 37

7.4 Quicksand ...... 38

7.4.1 A Critical Overview of Quicksand ...... 38

7.4.2 Plot Summary ...... 40

7.4.3 Analysis of Quicksand with Special Emphasis on Racial Ambiguity, Mask, and Masquerade ...... 42

7.4.3.1 The Origins of Helga Crane‟s Racial Ambiguity ...... 42

7.4.3.2 The Various Phases and Roles in Helga‟s Racially Ambiguous Life ...... 44

7.5 Nella Larsen‟s Passing ...... 63

7.5.1 Plot Summary ...... 63

7.5.2 Plot Analysis of Passing with Special Emphasis on Racial Ambiguity, Mask, and Masquerade ...... 65

7.5.2.1 The Influence of Clare Kendry‟s Childhood on Her Racially Mixed Feelings ...... 65

7.5.2.2 The Influence of Irene Redfield‟s Childhood on Her Racial Ambiguity ...... 67

7.5.2.3 The Influence of Irene‟s Marriage on Her Racial Ambivalence ...... 67

7.5.2.4 The Impact of Clare‟s Marriage on Her Racial Ambiguity ...... 70 3

7.5.2.5 The Development of Irene Redfield‟s and Clare Kendry‟s Racial Ambiguity as the Novel Progresses……………………………………………….72

7.5.2.6 Mask and Masquerade in the Novel...... 81

7.8 Conclusion...... 83

8. Jessie Redmon Fauset ...... 86

8.1 Jessie Redmon Fauset: Her Life, Her Career, and Her World Views ...... 86

8.2 Plum Bun: A Critical Overview ...... 88

8.3 Plot Summary ...... 90

8.4 Analysis of Plum Bun with Special Emphasis on Racial Ambiguity, Mask, and Masquerade………………………………………………………………….92

8.4.1 Mattie Murray ...... 92

8.4.2 Angela Murray ...... 95

8.4.2.1 The Process of 'Passing' and the Gradual Expansion of Consciousness ...... 98

9. Fannie Hurst ...... 108

9.1 Life and Career ...... 108

9.2 Fannie Hurst‟s Fiction ...... 110

9.3 Imitation of Life ...... 112

9.3.1 Plot Summary ...... 112

9.3.2 Analysis of Imitation of Life with Special Emphasis on Racial Ambiguity, Mask, and Masquerade ...... 113

9.3.3 'Passing'as the Ultimate Solution to Peola‟s Racial Ambiguity ...... 120

9.3.4 Masking and Masquerading in Imitation of Life ...... 123

9.3.5 Conclusion ...... 125

10. Conclusion ...... 128

10.1 Their Childhood as the Origin of Their Racial Ambiguity ...... 129

10.2 The Way Their Racial Ambiguity Affects Their Relationships ...... 130

10.3 Their Loneliness and Solitariness ...... 132 4

10.4 Their Search for Their 'True' Identity; Their Masking and Masquerading…………………………………………………………………………...133

11. Bibliography ...... 137

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1. Introduction I analysed Nella Larsen‟s Passing while participating in a seminar on American literature a couple of years ago, and the ambivalence of the two bi-racial heroines and the theme of 'passing' fascinated me. As the subject of 'passing' had been dealt with all too often already, I decided to focus my thesis on 'mulatta figures' in literature. With Nella Larsen‟s Passing and Quicksand, Jessie Fauset‟s Plum Bun, and Fannie Hurst‟s Imitation of Life, I soon found what I had been looking for and Prof. Hölbling agreed with "Racial Ambiguity, Masking, and Masquerading in the Novels of Nella Larsen, Jessie Redmon Fauset, and Fannie Hurst" as the title of my thesis. My main argument is that racial ambiguity is deeply rooted in America‟s racial politics in history, and that the mulatto body had a huge impact on American literature. As all three novelists had their novels published during the Harlem Renaissance, I point out the profound importance of that period for many writers and artists, with the three female authors being major contributors to that decade. I discuss the major influence of the New Negro Movement on their racial consciousness, with this unprecedented racial pride being reflected in their approach to the theme of 'blackness'. I then analyse the three novelists individually, starting off with their biographies, the main characteristics of their fiction, and their influence on the Harlem Renaissance. I continue with the chronological analysis of the individual novels with special emphasis on the racial ambiguity of the protagonists and their ways of trying to come to terms with it by adopting various roles; by concealing their identities behind masks and masquerades. I conclude my thesis with an overall view of the mulatta heroines with regard to what they share as far as their racial ambiguity is concerned. And finally, I compare the six protagonists with regard to their different approaches in their attempts to resolve the problem of their racially mixed ancestries.

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2. Racial Ambiguity as the Result of America’s Racial Politics

2.1 Historical Background In 1913, W.E.B. DuBois, one of the leading characters of the Harlem Renaissance and one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (the NAACP, which will be dealt with later), published The Souls of Black Folk, a collection of essays dealing with various subjects of black life. The brief Forethought contains the famous lines: "[t]he problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the 'color line'" (Dubois 1982: 1). In The Souls of Black Folk he also introduced the term 'two-ness'. Being of mixed-race himself, DuBois knew this feeling of 'two-ness', this divided awareness of one‟s identity inherent in people of bi-racial heritage, specifically of black and white ancestry (cf. 1982: 5). The origins of racial ambiguity can be traced back to the times of slavery, when the black race was forced into subordination by white supremacy, which is based on a deeply engrained belief that human beings are by blood divided into a small number of races, of which the white race is superior. Blacks have been victims of racism ever since they were brought to America to work as slaves for whites. Slavery was undoubtedly the worst form of overt racism, together with the beating, lynching, and murder of black men, and the rape of black women, as it was based on the assumption that blacks are less than human. Slavery in the American South was conveniently justified by the assertion of the innate superiority of the white race, as was 'Jim Crow Segregation'. Because slaves were regarded as their property, there was clandestine concubinage and more often forced sex between white slave owners and their black women slaves, resulting in a huge number of illegitimate offspring of mixed blood. Interracial marriage was illegal then; actually, until its legalisation by a Supreme Court decision in 1967, mixed-race children of any union of miscegenation, of sex between the two races, were stigmatised and marginalised as illegitimate 'half-breeds' who did not fit in with any community, either black or white. It was feared that they would not only dilute 'white' blood, but that they would disgrace the family by inheriting and transmitting the bad 7

qualities of the inferior race, including their stigmatised appearance (cf.Tizard 2002: 2). They were considered mentally and physically inferior to pure white race children, although there was no scientific proof for any of these inferiorities. Sir Francis Galton, founder of the eugenics movement, argued that the English, as an intellectually superior race, should not breed with an inferior race, such as Negroes, because that would result in a reduction of average intelligence as well as in a reduction of individuals in the highest grade of intelligence (cf. Wald 2000: 20). As all these people of mixed blood posed a definite threat to the superiority of the white race, it was important to keep it 'pure'. In order to maintain the immaculate dominant position of the race, a rigid classification known as the 'one-drop rule' was introduced; it was a uniquely American regulation, with the USA being the only country in the world to observe it. Originally the antebellum South promoted the rule as a way of enlarging the slave population with the children of slave holders. But by the nineteen-twenties, in Jim Crow America, the 'one-drop rule' was well established as the law of the land. It is to blame for the racial dilemma of millions of racially mixed people in real life, and for the racial ambiguity of many characters in literature.

2.1.1 The One-Drop Rule The 'one-drop rule' – which defines as black any person with as little as a single drop of 'black' blood (cf. Davis 1991: 11).– was introduced in the South in 1890, and became the legal basis for the justification of the inhuman segregation laws. When the significant Plessy v. Ferguson trial (which will be referred to later) took place in 1892, Justice John Harlan was the only judge who could not agree with the Supreme Court decision to legalise segregation, claiming "our Constitution is color-blind" (Appiath 1998: 3). The 'one-drop rule' documents how 'color-blind' America really is. It is also known as the 'one black ancestor rule', the 'traceable amount rule' (used by some courts), or the 'hypo-descent rule'. It made any person with the slightest trace of black ancestry, though very often visibly white, legally black. Charles S. Johnson, a leading

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representative of the Harlem Renaissance, wrote in The Vanishing Mulatto about mixed bloods: [t]hey are suspended between two races – mulattoes, quadroons, musters, mustafinas, cabres, griffies, zambis, quatravis, tresalvis, coyotes, saltaras, albarassadores, cambusos- neither white nor black. (Johnson 1925 quoted in Gurterl 2000: 166)

The examples above and below are to document the absurdity of racial politics in the U.S. with their unlimited number of confusing racial classifications which nourished racial ambivalence as the logical consequence of it: a 'mulatto' was half white and half black. A 'quadroon' was half white and half 'mulatto'. A 'griffy' was half black and half 'mulatto'. A 'metif' was half white and half 'octoroon'. A 'meamelouc' was half white and half 'metif'. A 'quarteron' was half white and half 'meamelouc'. A 'sang- mele' was half white and half 'quarteron', etc. People went as far as to define how much 'black' blood each of these categories possessed: a 'mulatto' had half 'black' blood and half 'white'. A 'quadroon' was ¼ black and ¾‟s white. An 'octoroon' was the child of a 'quadroon' and a white; this person carried less than ¼ of 'black' blood. A 'cascos', who was the child of a 'mulatto' and a 'mulatto', carried less than ½ of 'black' blood. A 'zambo', who was the child of a 'mulatto' and a black, carried ¾‟s of 'black' blood. A 'mustifee', who was the child of an 'octoroon' and a white, carried less than 1 /16 of 'black' blood. A 'mustafino', who was the child of a 'mustafee' and a white, 1 carried less than /32 of 'black' blood etc. (cf. Anglefire) Some of the main problems with this system, including that it was accepted as a system at all, were that many interracial individuals were labelled 'mulatto'. The rest of the labels were used ambiguously; nobody knew if the labelled people were full- blooded or not, and nobody knew if they were already recipients of white genes before they arrived in the United States; even the individuals themselves did not know if their ancestors had been previous 'victims' of hybridisation. The term 'mulatto' was originally used to mean the offspring of a 'pure African Negro' and a 'pure white'. Its degrading meaning is revealed when tracing back the origin of the term to the Portuguese word mule, as such defining the inherent animal characteristic. Later it came to include the children of unions between whites and so- called 'mixed Negroes'. As the term 'Negro' is used again and again in the novels I have to elaborate on, I would like to point out that the word 'Negro' originally came to mean any slave or descendant of a slave, no matter how much mixed. Eventually the terms 'mulatto', 9

'colored', 'Negro', 'black', and 'African American' all came to mean people with any known black ancestry. Mulattoes are always racially mixed, to whatever degree, while the terms 'black', 'Negro', 'African American', and 'colored' include both mulattoes and unmixed blacks (cf. Davis: 1991). It has to be pointed out here that the term 'black' later replaced 'Negro' in general usage in the United States, particularly when the black power movement peaked at the end of the 1960s. However, because of its frequency in the discussed novels, I will be using the term 'Negro' when I analyse these novels. For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, 'mulatto' had even been a separate census category, reflecting the strange marginal position of the generally light-skinned privileged middle class of black America. Claude McKay, who was to become famous with his Harlem Shadows (1922), has a mulatto character comment in his story Never White: "They hate us more than they do blacks. For they‟re never sure about us; they cannot place us" (Bukisa 2009). This attitude towards mulattoes is also confirmed by Henry Hughes, an antebellum sociologist, when he writes: "[i]mpurity of races is against the law of nature. Mulattoes are monsters. The law of nature is the law of God. The same law which forbids consanguineous amalgamation forbids ethical amalgamation" (cf. Hughes H. n.d. quoted in Nakachi 2001: 27).

2.1.2 Jim Crow Segregation After the bloody Civil War between the North and the South, slavery was abolished in 1865 through the 13th Amendment of the Constitution. The end of slavery, however, did not provide equal rights or citizenship. Citizenship for African Americans was only granted in 1868, when all of the states acknowledged the ratification of the 14th Amendment, saying that all black persons born in the United States are guaranteed the same equal rights protection as white citizens under the laws of the Constitution. But in fact blacks, including mulattoes, however light-skinned they were, were not treated equally but rather on the basis 'separate – but – equal' under Jim Crow segregation, which again discriminated them and enhanced their racial ambiguity. The term 'Jim Crow' originated in the 1830s in a song of the white minstrel show entertainer Daddy Rice, who covered his face with charcoal to ridicule black 10

people. As an extremely popular form of covert racism, this Jim Crow character was one of several stereotypical images of black inferiority. In the course of time it became a term synonymous with the inhuman segregation and disfranchisement of African Americans in the late nineteenth century, and by 1900 it was generally identified with all the racist laws that discriminated blacks as inferior beings, and deprived them of their civil rights (cf. Davis R. n.d.). Homer Plessy, a very light- skinned mulatto, went to court in 1892 to protest the Separate Car Act recently introduced in Louisiana because he was not allowed to sit in the white section of public transportation, although he was visibly white. He lost his case against Justice Ferguson of the United States Supreme Court, which held the Louisiana segregation statute constitutional. The Plessy v. Ferguson decision, mentioned above, set the precedent that 'separate' facilities for blacks and whites were constitutional as long as they were 'equal'. The 'separate - but - equal' doctrine was rapidly extended to public schools, restaurants, theatres, and restrooms, though 'equal' always meant inferior to those of the whites. This doctrine was to last until the 1960s. In Passing by Nella Larsen, Brian Redfield, who is a fierce critic of American racial politics, mentions 'Jim Crow segregation' in connection with the National Welfare Dance in Harlem; he also reads out an article about the recent lynching of a black man. Helga Crane in Quicksand for a long time cannot imagine having children, as they would just be "[m]ore dark bodies for mobs to lynch" (Larsen Quicksand: 104), and Angela Murray in Plum Bun learns of a horrifying incident of a dehumanising mutilation carried out by the Ku Klux Klan, the most violent racist organisation. These examples are mentioned with the intention to document that all the shameful discriminatory measures of racist America against blacks are reflected in literature.

2.2 The Trope of the 'Marginal Man' In 1928, Robert Park, a Harvard sociologist, introduced the concept of 'the marginal man' to describe the precarious situation of all those people of racially mixed ancestry who experienced a divided self, "predestined to live in two cultures and two worlds" (Park 1928: quoted in Tizard 2002: 26), like Helga Crane in

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Quicksand, whose life is "divided into two parts, in two lands" (Larsen Quicksand: 125), too. But although marginal people are doomed to live a life of racial ambiguity, Park realised certain benefits in the wake of this dilemma. Park argues that 'the marginal man' has a more detached, and as such a more critical outlook on both cultures, black and white. "His horizons are wider, his intelligence keener, his viewpoint more rational, than those of people who live within one culture" (Park 1928: quoted in Tizard 2002: 26). And Park also created the term 'hybrid' for people living within the frames of two cultures, which makes the mulatto more intelligent, more aggressive (cf. ibid.), but also more ambitious – an allegation for which Clare Kendry in Passing or Angela Murray in Plum Bun are perfect examples. In order to strengthen this argument, he pointed out that the two most important leaders of the New Negro Movement, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois, were both of mixed blood. So were Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr., just to name a few extraordinary representatives of black and white heritage. Nella Larsen as well as Jessie Redmon Fauset, the two famous novelists of the Harlem Renaissance, share the same fate, and display the same qualities as mentioned above. The figure of the 'mulatto/a', particularly the light-skinned mulatto/a – visibly white but legally black, the victim of racism, torn between two racial identities – attracted the undivided attention and interest of black and white novelists. As many African American writers carry the vexing burden of the 'two-ness' themselves, their protagonists‟ lives very often reflect their own racial plight.

3. The 'Mulatto/a' Figure in Literature as a Mirror of America’s Racial Politics

3.1 The Trope of the 'Tragic Mulatta' It was in 1842 that Caucasian writer Lydia Maria Child introduced the 'tragic mulatta' character to literature with the publication of two short stories. In The Quadroons (1842) and Slavery’s Pleasant Homes (1843), she developed the theme 12

of the beautiful black female slave as the victim of rape and concubinage, the helpless victim of sexual exploitation by white slave-owners with no chance whatsoever to escape that nightmare. The purpose of the novel was to make the public aware of the cruelty of slavery and the presumptuous arrogance of white supremacy (cf. Curry 2007: 8). In 1853, William Wells Brown published his novel Clotel, or the President’s Daughter, with which he set a precedent that many would follow, by choosing as his heroine the first light-skinned 'tragic mulatta', the quintessential 'high yeller' woman - beautiful, virtually white, and articulate. She ultimately dies, abandoned and betrayed by the white planter (cf. Fox-Genovese 1996). Many writers took up the trope of the 'tragic mulatta', and it enjoyed great popularity. Initially, the 'tragic mulatta' story was always embedded in stories of slavery of the antebellum South. The mulatta had a skin complexion similar to that of the Caucasian race, which was considered superior at that time. She was an attractive woman who, through the accident of a few drops of 'black' blood, was legally a slave. The notion that a few drops of 'black' blood – which did not leave any visible trace of an external sign – could determine a woman‟s fate, chilled readers. It captured the irrationality of racism, and the absurdity of the 'single-drop rule'. The 'tragic mulatta' developed into a stereotypical character that frequently appeared in American literature of both male and female authors during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Sad, irrational, even suicidal, the 'tragic mulatta' is depicted as the victim of a racially divided, strictly segregated, racist society. Its 'one-drop rule' is a death warrant for any racially ambiguous woman because, despite her white skin, she does not fit in with either the white or black world. 'Tragic mulattas' are vulnerable, feared, or desired, and almost always meet a bad end. As the 'tragic mulatta' is a hybrid character, it has permitted African American women writers of the Harlem Renaissance period to endow their heroines with the sensibility and personal dignity that has conventionally been attributed to white women. Their heroines are beautiful, intelligent, and all-but-white. Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry in Passing, Angela Murray in Plum Bun, Peola in Imitation of Life, and even Helga Crane in Quicksand, although she is a darker mulatta, are all perfect

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examples as far as their beauty, intelligence, and refined manners are concerned. By inviting the white readers to identify with the 'tragic mulatta' – who cannot accept her bi-racial heritage, and who struggles violently to solve her identity problem – "they have lured them into the emotional recognition that skin color counts for nothing" (Jones 1997: 469). They actually rouse so much sympathy for the tragic life of a woman caught by her racially mixed lineage that the reader gets the impression that the heroine could be an ordinary, everyday person. Generally speaking, the 'tragic mulatta' archetype falls into one of three categories (cf. Bukisa 2009):  a woman who has all the physical and intellectual presuppositions to live in the white world, but is nonetheless subjected to slavery;  a woman who appears to be white and of Mediterranean European descent, and enjoys a life free of any hardships until her mixed blood is revealed;  a woman who 'passes for white', falls in love with a usually rich white man, and lives a pleasant life until he eventually discovers her racially mixed ancestry. It has to be mentioned that, according to Toomer, writers use a vast number of variations in their depiction of the mulatta. Even the male character of the 'tragic mulatto' appears in literature. Like his female counterparts, he experiences the same feeling of 'outsideness', of marginality, due to his hybrid state. The mulatto boy in James Weldon Johnson‟s Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man provides a perfect example in literature of how wearing marginality may be, no matter whether male or female:

I rushed into my own little room, shut the door, and went quickly to where my looking-glass hung on the wall. For an instant I was afraid to look, but then I did. I looked long and earnestly. [...] now for the first time, I became conscious of [my beauty] and recognized it. I noticed the ivory whiteness of my skin, the beauty of my mouth, the size and liquid darkness of my eyes, and how long black lashes that fringed and shaded them produced an effect that was strangely fascinating even to me. I noticed the softness and glossiness of my dark hair that fell in waves over my temples, making my forehead appear whiter than it really was. How long I stood there gazing at my image I do not know. (Johnson 1912 quoted in Sheehy 1999: 401, emphasis added)

The young, nameless mulatto boy – who will later become the ex-colored man – watches his image in the mirror, and hopes to find a sign or a mark which might brand him as either black or white. But there are no such explicit signs, and the boy is left in that ambivalent situation of not knowing where he belongs. Does a black man

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look into the looking-glass to find a white man looking back? Or is it the other way round? Johnson never answers these questions, but never stops asking them. The 'ivory whiteness' of skin is a typical feature of 'whiteness'. All the heroines mentioned above, apart from Helga Crane, are endowed with it, whereas mysterious, liquid, and dark eyes characterise 'blackness'. Clare Kendry has the most fascinating "mesmeric" (Larsen Passing: 191) dark eyes of them all, and I guess the most flawless 'ivory whiteness' of skin, too. Scientists‟ fears about negative consequences of interracial unions were reflected in new stereotypes of mulattoes in fiction. A popular theme involved the idea of "racial atavism" (Tizard 2002: 33). This means that, in spite of the 'white' blood these people carried – which normally guaranteed coolness and control of emotions – 'mixed-bloods' were liable at any time to revert to the savage, primitive behaviour of a 'jungle creature' inherent in every black person. To provide an example for this stereotype of the mulatta, I would like to quote a passage from Quicksand, where Nella Larsen describes Helga Crane‟s experience with the nightlife of Harlem:

[t]hey danced [...] twisting their bodies, like whirling leaves, to a sudden streaming rhythm, or shaking themselves ecstatically to a thumping of unseen tom toms [...] [Helga] was dragged, lifted [...] blown out, ripped out, beaten out, [...] And when suddenly the music died [...] a shameful certainty that not only she had been in the jungle, but that she had enjoyed it began to taunt her [...] She wasn‟t, she told herself, a jungle creature. (Larsen Quicksand: 59).

3.2 Ways of Solving the Dilemma of Their Mulatto/a Existence Mulattoes have actually got three choices to find a way out of their dilemma, of escaping that torturing feeling of 'two-ness':  they may decide to become assimilated into the black group; but in order to do this, they will have to overcome their negative feelings towards black people, and they will have to overcome the distrust and hostility of black people towards them;  some may choose to remain marginal, forever condemned to feel isolated and rejected by both groups. In this case they will either despair or become delinquent, while some other individuals will be strong enough to live a life of marginality in both groups, to insist on both strains of their ancestry, and to refuse to deny any (cf. Wald 2000: 27);

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 or they decide to become fully absorbed in the white group by 'passing as white' wherever possible, which eventually depends on the lightness of their skin. But even 'passing' entails rather ambivalent consequences, and will be analysed in the next chapter.

4. The Trope of 'Passing'

4.1 'Passing' as a Phenomenon of the 'Color Line' The idea of 'passing' is a uniquely American notion. It refers to a black person‟s successful attempt to 'pass as white'. It is much more a social phenomenon than a biological one, reflecting the nation‟s absurd definition of what makes a man black. It is inextricably linked with 'the one-drop rule' and the 'color line'. Derived from the Latin word passus ('to step or pace'), 'passing' connotes transience, the sense of being between places, of being neither inside nor outside (yet both inside and outside) a particular space and grouping (cf. Tosh 2008: 57). Understood in the light of history, 'passing' offers a problematic but potentially legitimate expression of American individualism, one that resists segregation‟s one-drop logic, and thereby undermines America‟s consciously constructed ideology of racial difference (cf. Pfeifer 2003: 2). Centuries of miscegenation in American history since the beginning of slavery had produced an amazing number of racially mixed people, marginal people endowed with this fundamental ambiguity as far as their racial identity is concerned. It was in The Souls of Black Folk (1913) that W.E.B. DuBois first articulated this feeling with the term 'double-consciousness', which he asserts as the sine qua non of all African American experience (cf. Sheehy 2008: 406):

[t]he Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second sight in this American world – a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double- consciousness, this sense of always looking at one‟s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one‟s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness – an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled

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strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body; whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. (DuBois 1982: 4)

The mulatto boy in James Weldon Johnson‟s Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man is another perfect example, actually the epitome of racial ambiguity:

[it] is the dwarfing, warping, distorting influence which operates on each and every colored man in the United States. [...] he is forced to take his outlook on all things, not from the viewpoint of a citizen, or a man, or even a human being, but from the viewpoint of a colored man [...] And it is this, which [...] gives to every colored man, in proportion to his intellectuality, a sort of dual personality. (Johnson 1912 quoted in Sheehy 2008: 406)

It is the 'two-ness', the 'dual personality' inherent in those physically white yet legally black Negroes that made many of them transgress invisible boundaries, and 'pass for white'. Thousands and thousands of mulattoes were able to do that; "so much did color and features overlap between those who were mixed and those who were purely white" (Williamson 1995 quoted in Gosselin 1998: 48). In Why I Remain a Negro, Walter White comments on the 'passing' phenomenon:

[e]very year approximately 12,000 white-skinned Negroes disappear – people whose absence cannot be explained by death or emigration. Nearly every one of the 14 million discernible Negroes in the United States knows at least one member of his race who is 'passing' – the magic word which means that some Negroes can get by as [w]hites, men and women who have decided that they will be happier and more successful if they flee from the proscription and humiliation which the American color line imposes on them. (White 1947 quoted in Singh 1976: 92)

Yet 'passing' implied more than the act of transgressing a racial boundary. It questioned the racial boundary itself. The act of 'passing' suggests that all racial categories are arbitrary and ultimately untenable. Trying to 'get by as whites', an umpteen number of light-skinned Negroes transgressed the 'color line'. The mulatto had always been the shameful symbol of white transgression of racial and sexual taboos in American history, but the 'passing mulatto' challenged the stability of the notion of race. It became a threat to the racial hierarchy, which gives moral superiority to 'whiteness'. 'Passing' reached its peak by 1925 because from then on a great number of lighter-skinned Negroes opted for remaining within the black community due to the new racial pride triggered by the New Negro Movement of the Harlem Renaissance.

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4.2 The Trope of 'Passing' in Literature 'Passing' is generally considered as life under a 'mask' because one must mask one‟s racial identity. The 'passing figure' chooses to disguise him- or herself to gain economic advantage and pleasure. 'Passing' can be a burden, but it can also give pleasure to the 'white body wearer' (cf. Nakachi 2001: 83). The mulatto‟s place in American society has never been fixed or certain; 'passing' is "but a tangible illustration of this legal and social fluctuation" (Pfeifer 2003: 74). Modelled on real life, the theme of 'passing' was a frequent topic of black and white writers during the 1920s and early 1930s, a period when black life fascinated the American imagination. These novels depict mulatto/a protagonists inevitably and tragically wavering between two worlds and "unable to come to terms with their multiethnic and multicultural allegiances" (Gallego 2003: 5).To understand the ideology underlined in the African American 'passing' novels, it is important to understand the fact that the popularity of 'passing' novels coincides with the period of the Harlem Renaissance, the black literary and art movement that created a completely new racial awareness, as will be pointed out in the next chapter. One of the major tasks of the Harlem writers and artists was to forge African American identity through "the deep sentiment of race" (Locke 1968 quoted in Nakachi 2001: 29). African American 'passing' novels, therefore, often made the light- skinned characters return to the black community, and attributed the most important component of racial identity to racial loyalty, attempting to stem the tide of 'racial passing' in order to build solidarity for the New Negro Movement. Many of the 'passers' are women, in both male- and female-authored novels, and many of the unprecedented number of black female writers who emerged in the post- Reconstruction period dealt with the trope of 'passing'. The appearance of so many 'passing' novels during the 1920s is evidence of its middle-class orientation, as 'passing' was relatively a non-issue among lower-class blacks. The three major novels of 'passing' are Walter White‟s Flight – actually also the first novel on the theme of 'passing' – Jessie Fauset‟s Plum Bun, and Nella Larsen‟s Passing. All reflect the same pattern in their 'octoroon' heroines‟ lives. They all yield to the temptation of 'passing as white', and finally return to the black community when they begin missing the warmth, the colour, and the vivacity of black life. 18

White authors use the theme of 'passing' differently from black authors. In white narratives of 'passing', plots are "typically predetermined […] presuppos[ing] that characters who 'pass for white' are betrayers of the black race" (Smith 1994 quoted in Gosselin 1998: 48). They depend almost inevitably upon the association of 'blackness' with self-denial and suffering. White writers use the 'passing' narrative to exploit the threat of 'invisible blackness'. African American 'passing' novels question the essential notion of racial identity, too, but no literary work depicts a 'passing' story subverting the racial dichotomy. Many of the 'passing' figures in the end therefore return to the black world. Jean Toomer, the author of Cane, argues that

[...] passing is only the most superficial and unstable and idiosyncratic form of breaking the bonds of blackness. It also serves as the most concealed manner of proving the quality of black folk [...] passing is the most paradoxical resolution of the social problem of blackness; it is self-assertion as self-denial, self-annihilation as self-fulfilment. (Toomer 1923 quoted in Cooke 1984: 33)

African American novels can be defined as the most valid expression of 'double- consciousness', a hybrid genre born out of the convergence of two traditions – Western and African. Thematically, they stick to the literary tradition of depicting a character 'passing' from a black to a white identity. From a generic standpoint, they draw on many other literary genres, from the autobiography through satire, to romance, fairy tales, and others. The 'racial passing' novels of the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries variously feature 'passing' as • a strategy of survival, for which Helga Crane in Quicksand is a perfect example if we add 'racial' and 'geographical passing' to the trope of 'passing for white';  a means of economic gain, "shed[ding] the identity of an oppressed group to gain access to racial and economic opportunities" (Ginsberg 1996: 1). Clare Kendry in Passing, Angela Murray in Plum Bun or Peola in Imitation of Life reflect this approach;  the "wicked realization of a savage and diabolical desire to play a practical joke on white society" (Johnson 1912: 3 quoted in Elam 2007: 749). Clare Kendry and Mattie Murray need to be mentioned here, as they really enjoy

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fooling the white society with their perfect performance, their unrevealing mask, and deceptive masquerade. 'Passing for white' has long been viewed as an instance of racial self-hatred or disloyalty. The 'passers' were seen as renouncing 'blackness', their "authentic identity" (Butler 1993: 2), in favour of 'whiteness', an "opportunistic" (ibid.) one. But 'passing' does not necessarily mean a denial of 'blackness'. The 'passing' figure often demonstrates ambivalence about 'whiteness' as well as 'blackness', and many 'passing' narratives focus on the experience of disconnection between a character‟s inner (supposedly black) self and his or her outer (ostensibly white) self. All the protagonists of the four novels of my thesis are torn by that racial ambivalence, actually haunted. And the theme of 'passing' is not only used to criticise America‟s racial politics. However different the approach of the three authors, the narrative of 'passing for white' is always embodied in the trope of the 'tragic mulatta'. It is a figure characterised by betrayal to the race and race-denial on the one hand, but haunted by racial impurity, self-doubt, and racial ambiguity on the other hand.

5. The Trope of the 'Mask' 'Passing for white' entails hiding one‟s true identity, a life of "self-concealment, self-effacement, and shame" (Cooke 1984: 45). It requires "self-veiling or an unassertive [...] adaptation to the environment" (1984: 35). This, according to DuBois,

[...] results in a double veil: the one the society interposes between the black person and full participation in its resources and opportunities, and the other assumed by the black person in any particular encounter with that society. (Cooke 1984: 35)

In The Souls of Black Folk DuBois continues that he has often watched with interest and sometimes amazement that the coloured man "under cover of broad grins and minstrel antics maintains this dualism in the presence of white men" (Sheehy 1999: 406). The 'passing' Negro maintains the 'color line', veiling his 'blackness' not under the cover of "broad grins and minstrel antics [...] [but under] a veneer of a constructed whiteness" (ibid.), which he must articulate with every gesture, every utterance, every thought. As he is incapable of convincing himself that he is white, and unwilling to accept that he is black; he kind of lives in the "zero space between the poles of his 20

and society‟s construction of race" (ibid.). Alice Walker calls self-veiling "a form of masochism rooted in the despair of color" (Cooke 1984: 41). Clare Kendry in Passing is the embodiment of 'constructed whiteness'. In African American literature, the trope of the 'mask' – deliberately acting in a manner that is expected – reflects a political and cultural strategy developed to cope with racial oppression, and it is a recurring motif. Paul Laurence Dunbar‟s poem We Wear the Mask brilliantly verifies this:

We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,- This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise, In counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see us, while We wear the mask. (Dunbar n.d. quoted in Rampernsad 2006: 107)

Elaine Ginsberg in Passing and the Fictions of Identity says that a Negro can only become a white man "by the deception of white people with whom the 'passer' comes to associate and by a conspiracy of silence on the part of other Negroes who might know" (Ginsberg 1996: 45). In order not to be discovered, he always has to wear a mask to be able to deceive the white society he wants to live in. At the same time he has to rely on other Negroes‟ discretion in order not to be betrayed. A splendid example of this very situation is depicted in Nella Larsen‟s Passing when Clare Kendry invites her mulatta friends Irene and Gertrude to tea, and her racist husband appears and starts insulting 'niggers'. On the one hand, they all conceal their rage behind an unrevealing mask, thus deceiving Jack Bellew, who is white, by pretending to be white themselves. On the other hand, Clare relies blindly on the discretion of her friends as they all know that she has 'passed for white'. Only her husband does not.

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6. The Harlem Renaissance as the Source of a New Black Racial Consciousness

6.1 Historical Background The Harlem Renaissance (also known as the Black Literary Renaissance and the New Negro Movement) emerged out of changes that had taken place in the African American community since the abolition of slavery. Several factors laid the groundwork for the movement. A black middle class had developed by the turn of the century due to increased education and employment opportunities following the American Civil War (1861-1865). Social and intellectual upheaval in the early twentieth century also contributed to its coming into being. World War I became a major factor in the African Americans‟ new awareness of themselves and their relationship to American democratic ideals. The war industry provided plenty of new industrial work for unskilled workers, and lured hundreds of thousands of Southern blacks to Northern cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and New York City. Coming from the economically depressed, agricultural rural South, the black sharecroppers and farm labourers hoped to escape poverty as well as the violence of racial bigotry. During this migration – which became known as 'the Great Urban Migration' – 1.5 million Southern blacks moved to cities between 1915 and 1920. Chicago‟s population grew by 148 percent, Cleveland‟s by 307, and Detroit‟s by 611 percent (cf. Digital History). During the war, black troops marched and fought alongside white Americans to make the world 'safe for democracy'. But the Negro‟s experience abroad revealed the discrepancies between the promise of freedom and his own status in America, categorising him as an inferior being, miles away from equality. The blacks became embittered when they realised that the whites were determined to keep the Negro in his place more than ever, and they decided to fight for their rights, a decision which escalated into serious race riots and other civil uprisings in more than 25 cities across the US during the 'Red Summer', or 'Bloody Summer' of 1919.

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6.1.1 The Impact of the 'Great Urban Migration' The urban migration had a huge impact on the racial consciousness of African Americans, and was to change social, economic, political, and cultural structures completely in the years to come. Confined to strictly segregated all-black neighbourhoods, African Americans created cities-within-cities during the 1920s. The largest was Harlem, in upper Manhattan, where 200,000 African Americans lived in a neighbourhood that had been virtually all-white fifteen years earlier. At first the migrants were confronted with poverty, disillusionment, and misery in the industrial North, but – living together with other blacks – they gradually became aware of a power they had never felt before, and they soon developed a new self-respect and racial consciousness. Segregation in this case had a positive effect in so far as it stimulated the growth of a black middle class, and by providing services mainly for the black communities in which they were located, a large variety of businesses evolved, ranging from barber shops, restaurants, shoe repair shops, beauty shops and funeral parlours to employment agencies. Gradually a 'new elite' – the black bourgeoisie – evolved producing teachers, doctors, insurance and estate agents, ministers, newspaper editors, and businessmen who all attempted to meet the needs of the black community that whites were often unwilling to serve (cf. Calloway 2003: 22-23). The black middle-class professions Landry enumerates are solidly represented in the characters of Nella Larsen and Jessie Redmon Fauset, as both authors are deeply concerned with the presentation of this new black middle class. It has to be mentioned that – despite all those advantages – the black community was confronted with negative side effects as well. Apart from the white hostility that threatened the existence of black neighbourhoods, the overcrowding led to disease and crime, and, particularly when blacks of different background were thrown together, interracial conflicts were sometimes unavoidable. But, when summing up the impact of the 'Great Migration', it may be said that it redefined how America – and the world – viewed the American population. The migration of Southern blacks to the North changed the image of the African American from a rural, undereducated peasant to one of urban, cosmopolitan sophistication. This new identity led to a greater social consciousness, and African Americans

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became players on the world stage, expanding intellectual and social contacts internationally.

6.2 The Importance of Harlem Harlem, in New York City, was just another of the new black neighbourhoods in a Northern city with all the positive as well as negative features mentioned above. Yet it differed in that it developed from a once exclusive white middle- and upper middle-class suburb with stately houses and grand avenues, abandoned by the native white middle class during the enormous influx of European immigrants at the end of the nineteenth century, and not from a poor, rundown white area, as was usually the case. Soon Harlem became a symbol of elegance and distinction, attracting even more migrants from all parts of the USA, the West Indies, and even Africa, which in turn led to the growth of a highly race-conscious, sophisticated black community unprecedented in American history. And as Harlem magnetically started to attract black writers, painters, actors, and other well-educated and socially conscious blacks from all over the country, it soon developed into the new cultural and political capital of black America. The urban setting of rapidly developing Harlem provided a venue for African Americans of all backgrounds to appreciate the variety of black life and culture. By sharing all these cultural experiences, a consciousness sprung forth in the form of a united racial identity. To document the fascination of Harlem, I would like to quote a few passages: for Rudolph Fisher‟s literary protagonist, King Solomon Gillis, Harlem was "frighteningly wonderful" (Gutler 2002: 50); Alain Locke in The New Negro describes Harlem as the space where race is indefinable, a hybrid space, diverse in nationality and class:

[i]t has attracted the African, the West Indian, the Negro American; has brought together the Negro of the North and the Negro of the South; the man from the city and the man from the town and the village; the peasant, the student, the businessman, the professional man, artist, poet, musician, adventurer and worker, preacher and criminal, exploiter, and social outcast. (Locke 1925 quoted in Chapman 2001: 515)

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Nella Larsen is particularly fond of describing Harlem as a place of 'hybridity' in terms of race and nationality. In Quicksand, Helga Crane experiences Harlem as a place of confusion of racial identity based on physical appearance:

[t]here was sooty black, shiny black, taupe, mahogany, bronze, copper, gold, orange, yellow, peach ivory, pink white, pasty white. There was yellow hair, brown hair, black hair; straight hair, straightened hair, curly hair, crinkly hair, woolly hair. She saw black eyes in brown faces and blue eyes in tan faces. Africa, Europe, perhaps with a pinch of Asia, in fantastic motley of ugliness and beauty, semi-barbaric, sophisticated, exotic, were here. (Quicksand: 59-60)

A rather similar description of "teeming Harlem" (Passing: 234) is to be found in Passing, when Irene Redfield "lets her gaze wander over a bright world" (ibid.).

6.3 The Main Contributors to the Harlem Renaissance Movement Along with the awakening of a new racial consciousness, a new political movement advocating racial equality had arisen in the African American community in Harlem at the beginning of the twentieth century. W.E.B. DuBois was to become the leading advocate of social justice. The Souls of Black Folk marks the beginning of his transition from a scholar to an activist, and in 1905 he formed a civil rights organisation, 'The Niagara Movement', a precursor of the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which was founded in 1909 to promote the rights of the blacks. Its publication The Crisis – a monthly journal edited by DuBois – and Opportunity – an official publication of the National Urban League – became essential for voicing black grievances and hopes. Both papers employed Harlem Renaissance writers on their editorial staff, among them Jessie R. Fauset. Another influential advocate of racial consciousness was Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican-born black nationalist whose Harlem-related 'Back to Africa' mass movement inspired racial pride among blacks everywhere in the United States. Garvey‟s message was that black was superior to white, and that the destiny of the Negro race lay in Africa, not in America. With his charisma he was able to convince masses of ordinary black men and women of their collective potential. Although not all of Garvey‟s followers agreed with his message, they found in the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) a much-needed outlet for racial pride and self- assertion to obtain greater opportunities for black American citizens (cf. Singh 1976: 10).

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The 1920s in American history were marked by a socio-cultural awakening among African Americans. More and more blacks participated in the arts, and their numbers increased steadily throughout the decade. Magazines and journals, black as well as white, helped to support and transport this new black self-expression. In keeping with the political thinking of organisations such as the NAACP and the National Urban League, black culture enthusiasts advocated racial pride and racial expression. They emphasised race differences with the definite objective to obtain racial co-operation and harmony in a culturally pluralistic American society.

6.4 The Origins of the New Negro Movement in Literature The Harlem Renaissance was the logical extension of the New Negro‟s racial, cultural, and political thinking in the areas of art, music, and literature. Arna Bontemps traced the origins of the Renaissance to the year 1917, when Claude McKay published a poem entitled Harlem Dancer (cf. 1976: 13). In the same year a serious dramatic presentation with a black cast appeared on Broadway for the first time. Soon after, many black artists and musicians – including Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong – came to public attention. The first stage of the Harlem Renaissance in literature culminated in the events that led to the publication of The New Negro in 1925, in which the concept of the 'Negro Renaissance' was propounded by Alain Locke. Describing himself as a "midwife" (1976: 2) to the younger generation of black writers of the twenties, this anthology contained the recent work of young black writers, and encouraged others to express their newly-found racial consciousness and pride. Together with Walter White, Charles S. Johnson, Jessie Fauset, James Weldon Johnson, and W.E.B. DuBois he provided valuable guidance and encouragement to young black writers. Carl Van Vechten was the major contact to white journals and white publishers. His Nigger Heaven made many black writers aware of the commercial possibilities of depicting primitivism associated with blacks. It had a tremendous impact, but made it more difficult for the Harlem Renaissance to develop into a literary movement. Black writers of the Renaissance depended on white publishing houses and white-owned magazines, and as such tried to satisfy the taste of their white patrons. Jessie Fauset once complained of the hard time she had publishing 26

her four novels portraying middle-class blacks. The publishers‟ comment was: "[w]hite readers just don‟t expect Negroes to be like this" (1976: 25). But there were other black writers like Langston Hughes (Not Without Laughter), Countee Cullen, and Jean Toomer, who simply refused to fight for recognition of 'blackness' by representing 'blackness'. Cullen declared on behalf of the entire group: "[w]e black writers have the right to do, write, and create what we will, our only concern being that we do it well and with all the power in us" (Cullen 1918 quoted in Cooke 1984: 32).

6.5 The Term 'Harlem Renaissance' Some scholars and critics have questioned the use of the term 'Renaissance'; nevertheless, it is firmly established as a descriptive label for the emergence of creative activity among black American intellectuals and artists during the nineteen- twenties. It comprises the period between the end of World War I and the Depression in 1929 – a period also known as the 'Roaring Twenties'. It is a time of flourishing business and unlimited consumerism – well documented in literature by Nella Larsen‟s heroines who are all obsessed with fashion as well as an accumulation of pretty things – stopped fiercely by the Wall Street Crash. The term 'Harlem Renaissance' reflects the profound new racial awareness documented in the New Negro Movement, and gives Harlem credit for its contributions.

6.6 The Impact of the Harlem Renaissance on Literature In the early 1920s, three works signalled the new creative energy in African American literature. McKay‟s volume of poetry, Harlem Shadows (1922), became one of the first works by a black writer to be published by a mainstream national publisher. Cane (1923), by Jean Toomer, was an experimental novel that combined poetry and prose in documenting the life of American blacks in the rural South and urban North. Finally, There Is Confusion (1924), the first novel by writer and editor Jessie Fauset, depicted middle-class life among black Americans from a woman‟s perspective.

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The Harlem Renaissance with its new racial consciousness of blacks is marked by the intense interest of African American writers in coming to terms with their peculiar racial situation in the United States. It explores their emotional and historical links with Africa and the American South, which makes it unique in the cultural history of America. Like all people of African American descent, African American artists have inherited a double, often contradictory consciousness. Though stigmatised by whites as members of a subordinated population, both elements – white and black, Western and African – form a complete whole. Without this awareness it is impossible to understand African American literature and, more specifically, the literature produced by African Americans during the Harlem Renaissance. The dualism implicit in DuBois‟ term 'double-consciousness' is at the very root of the cultural and literary movement. As far as the general representation of the Negro in literature is concerned, it has to be pointed out that the relation of the black intellectual elite to the common black people changed drastically due to the historical changes taking place. Before World War I, the overwhelming majority of blacks were in the South, a vast distance from those intellectuals who represented the interests of the race. After the war, black intellectuals had to confront the black masses of rural black Southern workers destined to become an urban proletariat on the streets of their cities, and as such responded in a different way. Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man), James Baldwin, Wallace Thurman (Infants of the Spring and The Blacker the Berry), Claude McKay (Home to Harlem), Rudolph Fisher (The Walls of Jericho), George Schuyler (Black No More), and Countee Cullen (One Way to Heaven) have to be regarded as leading poets and novelists among other male writers already mentioned above. But this new racial consciousness was not restricted to male writers. Women generally speaking, but black women in particular, started to pave their way to emancipation. And the Harlem Renaissance produced some outstanding female black writers, among them Jessie Fauset, Nella Larsen, and Zora Neale Hurston.

6.7 African American Women Writers in the Harlem Renaissance It was particularly difficult for female African American writers to be recognised because they carried the double burden of being women and of being black. Already 28

endowed with that 'double-consciousness', that 'two-ness' inherent in every black body from the moment of their birth, women were endowed with a "double-double- consciousness" (Gallego 2003: 33), as DuBois coined it. But during the Harlem Renaissance they began to raise their voices to question the dominant racial and sexual order, and to suggest alternative definitions of their black identity. They encountered manifold obstacles especially because of their gender, which relegated them to a secondary category in the social and intellectual hierarchy of both communities – black and white. Since African American women had been systematically excluded from the feminine ideal embodied by white women, they were forced to devise a series of strategies in their works to mask and disguise their blunt rejection of derogatory images of their femininity. They successfully use race and sex to dramatise their messages. In her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston – one of the outstanding literary figures – records the view that black women are the 'mules' of the world, being the ones who must carry the burdens that all others, even black men, can foist off (cf. Fanon 1967: 7). Corresponding to the popular taste of her time, she was seen as a distinct literary figure, while both Nella Larsen and Jessie Fauset were very often dismissed as less important. This is probably due to the fact that they did not quite meet the taste of the white readership, as they responded to their racial and sexual positions as black female intellectuals. Racial protest is part of every Renaissance novel, but Jessie Fauset makes a special effort to integrate it into her novels:

[a]nd behold he is not so vastly different from any other American, just distinctive [...] he is a dark American who wears his joy and rue as does the white American. (Fauset The Chinaberry Tree: XXXI quoted in Singh 1976: 41)

[t]hose of us who have forged forward are not able as yet to go our separate ways from the unwashed, untutored herd. We must still look back and render service to our less fortunate, weaker brethren. And the first step toward making this a workable attitude is the acquisition not so much of a racial love as a racial pride. (Fauset Plum Bun: 218)

The majority of black Americans during the twenties were working-class or common folk, but a distinct black middle class already existed. All the novelists of the Harlem Renaissance came from middle- or upper middle-class backgrounds, and most of them had received college and graduate school education at prominent universities around the country. Therefore it does not come as a surprise that the

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majority of Renaissance novels by black writers concern middle-class characters, very often light-skinned mulattoes. The Harlem Renaissance novelist most dedicated to the depiction of the black middle class is Jessie Redmon Fauset. In her novels, Fauset pictures middle-class black Americans – their values, manners, emotions, activities, and dilemmas – with conscious emphasis on similarities to their white counterparts. She particularly emphasises the absurdity of the 'color-line' that all too often thwarts the plans of her protagonists. W.E.B. DuBois, Alan Locke, and many others praised Fauset for her sympathetic understanding of educated, middle-class blacks. The portrayal of decent, respectable black Americans satisfied a deeply felt need of the black bourgeoisie. It affirmed their values, and it compensated them for their inferior status in American society. Some white critics dismissed her novels as simply boring, though. Nella Larsen‟s characters are well-educated women of the black middle and upper-middle class too, but Larsen has a more critical approach. Particularly in Quicksand, she sharply criticises the black middle class for its hypocritical race consciousness, for preaching racial pride but aping white values instead. Fannie Hurst is the exception to the rule. She is not of African American origin, but an established white writer, who is yet very familiar with the problem of the New Negro‟s plight of his 'double-consciousness' and his position within the American society due to her close friendship to Zora Neale Hurston, which will be pointed out later. She portrays the issue of the 'color line' from the point of view of a sympathetic spectator.

7. The Importance of Nella Larsen’s Fiction Within the Harlem Renaissance

7.1 Larsen, an Acclaimed New Negro Woman Writer Larsen achieved extraordinary success in writing, and was one of the leading writers of the Harlem Renaissance despite her disadvantage of being female and mixed-race. Her literary success, however, does not indicate that the messages of

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her novels were fully accepted by society. She desired fame and success as a compensation for her own wretched life marked by racial ambiguity. She skilfully took up the literary trends of her time, but her novels reveal that questions about her own racial identity drove her into writing, and that she was critical of the Harlem elite‟s obsession with racial pride. But despite her racial criticism, her two novels Passing and Quicksand were praised for their artistic complexity, which actually functioned to conceal her real messages. Passing, for example, challenges the Harlem Renaissance notions of racial pride and motherhood, but the death of the heroine Clare Kendry – who questioned all the values of the New Negro Movement – allows the reader to interpret her death as the punishment for being disloyal to the black race. As a result of this, The Crisis in July 1929 mentioned Passing as a work of "consummate art" (Eaton n.d. quoted in Nakachi 2001: 56), and W.E.B. DuBois wrote about Quicksand:

[i]t is, on the whole, the best piece of fiction that Negro America has produced since the heyday of[Charles] Chesnutt, and stands easily with Jessie Fauset‟s „There is Confusion‟, in its subtle comprehension of the curious cross currents that swirl about the black American. (Davis 1984 quoted in Nakachi 2001: 55)

The most important characteristics of her novels are that they challenge American racial and sexual politics from a mixed-race as well as from a feminist perspective.

7.2 Major Themes in Nella Larsen’s Novels

7.2.1 Racial Ambiguity Larsen, a light-skinned mulatta, the illegitimate offspring of miscegenation, was destined to live in an in-between space – the 'hybrid' space – herself, both racially and culturally. Like her heroines, she questions identity by depicting racially ambiguous characters torn and haunted by their double ancestry. Their search for their racial identity is definitely Nella Larsen‟s major concern in all her novels, combined with a sharp criticism of prevailing racial policies and the hypocrisy of the black middle and upper middle class. She uses the following themes to deal with the subject of racial ambiguity:

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• 'passing' • 'masking' • 'masquerading'

7.2.1.1 'Passing' With her novel Passing, Nella Larsen is considered one of the most important writers of the 'passing novel', a popular genre among African American writers. Like James Weldon Johnson, Charles Chesnutt or Jessie Fauset, she depicts light- skinned mulattas as her heroines. The interracial 'mulatta' was an ideal character to analyse the paradox of colour prejudice in America. 'Passing' was connected with disloyalty towards the black race, and ultimately placed the mulatto/a on the black side. Nella Larsen, however, rejects American racial politics that did not allow existence between the borders, and describes the anxieties and feelings of guilt her mulatta heroines experience crossing over the racial line – the 'color-line'. Most critical evaluations contend that Larsen‟s texts treat 'passing' in a negative way. Some argue that Larsen‟s characters deny their black histories; others claim that Larsen equates 'passing' with a "stifling emptiness or death" (Cutter 1996: 98) or sees it as "an obscene form of salvation" (1996: 98). But 'passing' can also be more than a racial strategy, as the quotation below indicates:

I was determined […] to be a person and not a charity or a problem, or even a daughter of the indiscreet Ham. Then, too, I wanted things. I knew I wasn‟t bad-looking and that I could „pass.‟ (Larsen Passing: 188)

'Passing' can be a strategy to be a person, but 'passing' becomes liberating for the individual character only when "avoiding the enclosures of a racist, classist, and sexist society" (Ginsberg 1996: 75). In Nella Larsen‟s fiction, all heroines, however different they are, have several things in common:  they are all mulattas;  their tragedy is that their racial ambiguity is so dominant that they cannot possibly find self-definition;  her mulatta women are not 'tragic mulattas' in the original meaning; they are not the victims of circumstances, powerless to resist the multiple degradations 32

of a racist society. Nella Larsen‟s mulattas are responsible for their fates themselves, because they have the option to choose and determine their future themselves;  Nella Larsen‟s 'tragic mulatta' figures are more sophisticated than those of her literary predecessors;  despite the fact that they are highly intelligent women, they all fail in the end, which makes them 'tragic mulattas' in the traditional meaning. What I have listed here are the impressions I gathered when reading her novels. But I have to add that some critics interpret much more from Larsen‟s fiction. Deborah McDowell, an African American feminist, for instance, argues that if readers concentrate too much on the depiction of the 'tragic mulatta', they miss the "more urgent problem which Larsen tried to explore: the pleasure and danger of female sexuality" (Calloway 2003: 93). She even went so far as to interpret the text of Passing not only as a story of racial transgression, but also of sexual transgression, seeing racial issues as a 'masquerade' for lesbian sexuality, though not all critics agree (cf. Nakachi 2001: 58).

7.2.1.2 Mask and Masquerade De Lauretis coined the two similar but different terms, 'mask' and 'masquerade':

[t]he former is there to represent a burden, imposed, constraining the expression of one‟s real identity; the latter is flaunted, or, if not, at least put on like a new dress which, even when required, does give some pleasure to the wearer. (De Lauretis 1984 quoted in Nakachi 2001: 82)

Larsen brilliantly displays this technique in all her protagonists. Although her heroines use 'mask' and 'masquerade' rather differently – which I will elaborate on when analysing the novels – they all share their obsession with fashion and dressing, the most pleasurable form of 'masquerade'.

7.2.2 Sexuality and the Treatment of Sexual Taboos In fact, one the most prominent characteristics in Larsen‟s writing is her treatment of sexuality and sexual taboos. A victim of her own past, marked as an illegitimate child by her birth, Larsen is particularly sensitive as far as this subject is

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concerned. In her novels she is rather critical of, actually obsessed with, sexual taboos such as miscegenation, adultery, and sex outside wedlock. Larsen sees women as victims of a patriarchal society, and criticises this society which labels women who violate sexual norms as loose, and which tries to exclude and repress people who do not fit in with its norms. The main problem with representing black women‟s sexuality was that it had been equated with being primitive or exotic by racist sexual ideologies, portraying the black woman as a rampant sexual being. In response to this, black female writers either defended their morality or – in the case of Nella Larsen – depicted black females who repressed or denied their sexuality. A perfect example of this is Helga Crane in Quicksand, who burns with sexual desire but represses it in order not to be classified as a "jungle creature" (Larsen Quicksand: 90). Irene Redfield is another example of a woman who lives a very restrained life, and whose frigidity nearly ruins her marriage.

7.2.3 Marriage Marriage has a special meaning in the African American women‟s historical context, for black women could not get legal protection of their sexuality in the system of slavery. Thus marriage was considered the legitimate sanctuary of sexuality. Larsen, though, is very critical of marriage, even revolutionary, as she presents marriage within the black race as another trap for African American women. As soon as Helga Crane gives vent to her sexual desires, which she had repressed for so long, she is doomed, fated to a slow death. Larsen does not agree with the statement that "the only condition under which sexuality is not shameless is if it finds sanction in marriage" (McDowell 1986 quoted in Nakachi 2001: 101). Marriage, in Larsen‟s eyes, is not the sanctuary of sexuality. It is a "disastrous disappointment" (Kamme-Erkel 1989: 98), and stands for the exploitation of female sexuality by men.

7.3 Nella Larsen’s Biography When studying her biography there are actually two rather interesting aspects that have to be mentioned. First, Nella Larsen‟s biography includes several vague 34

details due to incorrect recordings concerning her date of birth, her parentage, and her childhood, and due to the attempt to conceal painful events of her private life herself. Second, her biography reveals many astonishing parallels to the female protagonists of her novels, particularly to Helga Crane in Quicksand. Her hazy origins and almost traceless 'disappearance' at the end of her life differentiate Larsen from other authors of the Harlem Renaissance. Until the publication of the biography by Thadious Davis in 1994, Nella Larsen‟s life was shrouded in silence. Davis‟s project was "to remove the aura of mystery" (Larsen: xix) from Larsen‟s life. Often misinterpreted by critics as "inscrutable Other" (xix), Davis reveals that Nella Larsen‟s longing for being recognised as a writer was nothing but craving recognition which she had never received before. Although Nella Larsen always claimed that she was born in Chicago in 1893, a close friend of the Larsen family for nearly fifty years disclosed that Nella‟s mother told her on several occasions that Nella was born in New York in 1891. Her mother, Mary Hanson, was a Danish immigrant, and her father, Peter Walker, of African American descent. Her Danish mother gave birth unattended by a physician or a midwife, and the baby, Nellie Walker, was designated coloured at birth. Her mother married Peter Larson, a white man, in 1894. Larson later changed the spelling of his surname to Larsen, and surprisingly Nella Larsen frequently changed her name, too, calling herself Nellie Walker, Nellie Larson and Nelley Larson. She was the only coloured child of the Larsen family, and as such she violated a social taboo. This ambiguous situation deeply affected her novels, which are preoccupied with the subjects of race and marginality. Unloved and unwanted, Larsen was excluded from her family and sent to Fisk Normal School in Nashville when she was only fifteen. Mary Larsen did not report her dark daughter‟s existence to census takers in 1910 (cf. Davis 1991: 27), and much later her half-sister maintained that she did not even know that she had a sister. The years 1908 to 1912 of Nella Larsen‟s life remain largely a mystery. Thadious M. Davis, Larsen‟s biographer, only speculates that she obviously tried hard to conceal details of that period of her life. But according to Davis, she began her ascent into the black middle class all alone. What is known is that Nella Larsen was an extremely educated woman. From 1909-1910 she attended Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, the most 35

prestigious African American university of the time, whose graduates – among them W.E.B. DuBois – were basically educated to be race leaders. "The psychological impact of its race-centeredness on Larsen cannot be underestimated" (1991: 53). She then continued her education at the University of Copenhagen from 1910 to 1912; in 1912 she entered New York‟s Lincoln Training Hospital as a student nurse, and in 1915 she started to work at the Tuskegee Institute Training School for Nurses in Alabama as the head nurse. But she returned to New York after only one year, as she could not cope with the challenges there. Her leaving this institute reminds us again of Helga Crane in Quicksand, who had difficulties in adapting to the militant life in Naxos. Nella Larsen was appointed a district nurse in the New York Department of Health in 1918. She was dedicated to her career, and frequently rewarded for her efforts. In 1919 she married physicist Elmer Imes, Ph.D., a member of the African American elite; marriage to him was definitely a social move upwards into a privileged black class. In 1921 she resigned from the New York City Department of Health, and started to work at the New York public library. She decided to attend the Library School, and became a certified librarian in 1923. In these years of her librarianship, Nella Larsen had close contact to novelists of the Harlem Renaissance – such as Walter White, Jessie Fauset, Carl Van Vechten, and Dorothy Peterson. She became an excessive reader, and finally started to write herself. In 1920 she had actually already published a magazine for black children, called The Brownies’ Book, edited by Jessie Fauset, but in 1926 she published two short stories – The Wrong Man and Freedom – in Young Magazine under the pseudonym Allen Semi. It did not take long and she was recognised as a representative writer of the Harlem Renaissance. Her novel Quicksand was greatly praised by W.E.B. DuBois, and she was awarded a bronze medal from the Harmon Foundation in 1928. The year 1929 is marked by the publication of her novel Passing. It earned her a position among distinguished New Negro authors, and she won a Guggenheim scholarship for creative writing, which she invested into a third journey to Denmark. She tried to conceal it, but her experience there is reflected in Quicksand. Her mother‟s home country is a place free of racial prejudice and racism for both Helga Crane and Nella Larsen, although it reminds them of their "unloved, unloving, and unhappy childhood" (Larsen Quicksand: 62).

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By the age of thirty-eight, Nella Larsen had achieved everything that most middle-class African American women would have wished to achieve: she had become one of the most significant writers of the Harlem Renaissance, but also well established in the African American elite as the wife of a successful man. She was beautiful, elegant, sophisticated, witty, and cultured. And yet she was a sad and lonely woman, and her life was often covered by shadow. One such tragic year was 1930. She discovered that her husband, a womaniser who loved white women, had had another affair with a white woman, and she was accused of plagiarism after publishing her short story Sanctuary, which was to become her last work as a writer. She finally divorced Imes in 1933, childless, and by the 1940s she had completely withdrawn from the literary world. She lost contact to novelists and publishers and, although there is no evidence, M. Davis writes in her biography that "[r]eportedly, Larsen had jumped, or had fallen out of a window and done herself bodily harm" (Pfeifer 2003: 140). Whether this was attempted suicide or not remains unanswered, but there is undoubtedly a parallel to Clare Kendry‟s 'disappearance' at the end of the novel Passing, which will be analysed later. For the rest of her life she supported herself by working as a nurse again, but she shunned the public, and did not associate with people outside the hospital. Like her protagonist Helga Crane in Quicksand, she slipped into a kind of living death. With this striking parallel, together with many others, Helga may be seen as a "thinly disguised portrait" (Larsen: xx) of Larsen herself. When Larsen died on March 30, 1964, her body remained unfound for a week, and only a few of her colleagues and acquaintances attended her funeral.

7.3.1 Nella Larsen’s Own Racial Ambiguity Reflected in Her Fiction Although Nella Larsen was considered legally black, she wanted to be able to identify herself with both races, black and white. Nella Larsen‟s racial ambiguity haunted her throughout her life, and she remained the unhappy victim of her 'black' blood. Davis reveals that she "was deeply scarred by the reality of racism" (Davis 1991: 10). Already in her childhood her black ancestry excluded her from her own family, and the later failure of her marriage was accelerated by the overt antipathy of 37

her light-skinned mother-in-law, not just her husband‟s preference for white women. She attributed her inability to find her racial identity "to her inability to be sufficiently white" (Larsen xx). For Nella Larsen the divorce ultimately contained the message "to turn white or disappear" (Fanon 1967: 100). As Nella Larsen was writing Passing in 1929, the year when she first discovered her husband‟s affairs with white women, it does not come as a surprise that Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield reveal astonishing parallels to her own life. Both are haunted by racial ambiguity, by the same desire to be recognised, and the same fear of being rejected. Their marriages fail, too, and apart from issues like gender and sexuality, it is their inability to escape those racial borders classified by a white racist society which determines their lives. It finally leads to Clare‟s 'disappearance' and Irene‟s 'living death' – further parallels of Nella Larsen‟s life. Nella Larsen‟s work contains an overall view of a black world from a woman‟s perspective. It seems that she was not satisfied with just being a member of the black elite. She wanted more. From my perspective, she displays the same irrational behaviour as Helga Crane, the same kind of self-destruction. But I do agree with critics who claim that Nella Larsen was a great writer, whose literary career was too short to express all her talent.

7.4 Quicksand

7.4.1 A Critical Overview of Quicksand As Quicksand appeared in the period of industrialisation, Hazel Carby says that Larsen‟s Quicksand is "the first text by a black woman to be a conscious narrative of a woman embedded within capitalist social relations" (Carby 1987: 170). It can be categorised as an African American migration novel. In Quicksand, Larsen fundamentally questions the relation between race and subjectivity. Helga Crane, a mulatta woman born of a white mother and a black father, is described as a figure torn between two racial identities. Helga‟s split identity is emphasised by her love of travelling between boundaries. Larsen uses this strategy intentionally to signify Helga‟s ambivalent status as a mulatta woman who 38

belongs neither to the black nor to the white race. In constant search of a place to which she can belong, she constantly 'passes' or 'crosses the line'. Critics have argued that the metaphor of geographical boundaries is used by Larsen to represent the idea that white and black are living in different spaces, that there is a rigid boundary between the two races, and that Helga, the mulatta woman, transgresses geographical and at the same time racial boundaries (cf. Kawash 1997 quoted in Nakachi 2001: 60). Helga does not really cross the 'color line', but she is perpetually torn between her black and white ancestries, and symbolically crosses borders as a means of finding her 'true' identity, which she never actually does. Helga Crane is called "the foreign other" (Kristeva 1993 quoted in 2001: 61). She is a being neither absorbed by nor assimilated into society, a constant threat, a danger to white supremacy, "the hidden face"(Larsen Quicksand 2001: 42), repressed by American identity politics to maintain a strictly segregated society. She is a "disturbing factor"(ibid.) for the community she lives in. She is "feared and hated"(41) with the "antagonism [being] mutual"(ibid.). She antagonises her white relatives because in the white community her illegitimacy can be seen as a symbol of the black man‟s assault on white womanhood. Since violation of white womanhood by a black man caused great anxiety in the white society – which escalated to the lynching of innocent African American men still in the early twentieth century – a woman like Helga could evoke fear and anxiety in the black community too. Helga is the symbol of a violated taboo, and represents exactly what neither the black nor the white society wants to face. Helga‟s hybrid body functions also as a sexual threat in the novel. Her mulatta body is the symbol of racial and sexual transgression, and as such her sexuality and sensuality evoke anxieties in people‟s minds. Anne Grey, for instance, is afraid of Helga‟s unusual sexual charm which may evoke a "nameless, shameful impulse"(95) in her husband‟s cold "asceticism"(ibid.). Helga herself finds her own sexuality frightening, and she always tries to repress any sexual desire, fearing that she might succumb to the lures of her 'black' blood. Thus Helga, who does not belong anywhere, is always marginalised by society, and inevitably marginalises herself. In constant search of her 'true' identity – what Ginsberg calls a "unitary sense of identity" (Ginsberg 1996: 75) – Helga 'passes' for many things: 39

 a committed teacher (in Naxos)  an exotic 'other' (in Denmark)  an art object (in Copenhagen)  a proponent of racial uplift (in Harlem)  a devout Christian (as a preacher‟s wife in Alabama)  a dutiful mother And yet she is always only one of these things at any given point in her career because she cannot resist the enclosures of her world. She finally becomes trapped in a very stifling and constricting role – that of a poor rural preacher‟s wife.

7.4.2 Plot Summary The protagonist of the novel Quicksand is Helga Crane, a beautiful, highly intelligent woman of mixed-race; a black Danish American without any family connections. The novel starts off in Naxos – a black middle-class community in the South – where Helga has taken up the job as a teacher at the sophisticated school for Negroes. She is not at all satisfied because she cannot identify with the hypocrisy of Naxos, whose main objective is to create black elite students by imitating white middle-class values in a rigid, militant way. She feels completely displaced. Neither her engagement to her colleague James Vayle, nor Dr. Anderson, the school‟s principal, can prevent her from leaving. She feels oppressed and frustrated. Driven by an inner force, she spontaneously decides to actually flee without considering the consequences of having no reference and no money. She makes up her mind to go to Chicago, where she was born, to see her white mother‟s brother, who had taken care of her after her mother‟s death. Turning up unexpectedly, Uncle Peter‟s new wife asks her indignantly never to come back, as her presence is not wanted. Taken aback and devastated, she tries to get any job she can, but without much success. Through the YMCA she is finally offered the job of a travelling companion for Mrs. Hayes-Rore. It is her job to correct the speeches to be delivered by Mrs. Hayes-Rore at several meetings of the Negro Women‟s League of Clubs. When Helga reveals her dreadful childhood experiences to her, Mrs. Hayes-Rore feels pity for her. She promises to find her a place to stay in Harlem, as

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well as a job. She also introduces her to her niece, Anne Grey – a Harlem socialite – who eventually invites Helga to share her home in Harlem. After an initial dislike for New York, she feels peace and contentment. She enjoys the liveliness of Harlem, makes new acquaintances, meets sophisticated people, goes to parties, and soon forgets that feeling of humiliation and inferiority that had encompassed her in Naxos. What is more important, she experiences the joy of finally belonging somewhere. She dreams of marrying and having a family one day, but soon she is overwhelmed by a feeling of discontent and being trapped. After receiving a remarkable sum of money from Uncle Peter, she decides to revisit her Aunt Katrina in Copenhagen, hoping that Denmark – without any Negroes and any racial prejudice – will solve all her problems. She really enjoys her uncle‟s and aunt‟s generosity, and she is enthusiastic about the attention she causes as the alien from America. She is the centre of attraction and admiration, but in the second year of her stay in Denmark, she comes to experience the same restlessness and discouragement she had felt in Harlem. Neither elegant parties, nor flattering compliments, and not even the proposal of the famous painter Axel Olsen can keep her in Denmark. She realises that she is homesick for Negroes, that despised race that made her leave Harlem. She decides to go back to America to attend Anne Grey‟s wedding to Dr. Anderson. For the very first time she feels the bonds that tie her to the black race. She imagines that she might be able to solve her problems by constantly moving between the two continents of Europe and America according to her needs. At one of the parties in Harlem she meets her old love James Vayle again, but she rejects him when he asks her to marry him. In the same night she bumps into Robert Anderson, who has always felt a deep admiration for her. When he suddenly kisses her, Helga feels an ecstasy she has always tried to repress, but when he apologises to her the following day, blaming his rude behaviour on too many drinks, she is devastated. Soaking wet, she accidentally ends up in a Negro church. Black people are praising God ecstatically, cheered by the preacher Reverend Mr. Pleasant Green. When they finally beg God‟s mercy for her soul, she is overwhelmed by a sensation of happiness she has never felt before. She now believes that God will lead her way. She seduces the preacher hoping that he will offer her security and permanent happiness in God. After that 41

night of conversion she marries the grandiloquent Mr. Green, and settles down in a tiny impoverished Alabama town. Starting off her new life with great expectations and enthusiasm, she enjoys being the pastor‟s wife. She is at peace and secure, but too busy to recognise that her life has become reduced to pregnancies and childbirth. For some time she does not question her situation, relying on God and his almighty wisdom. But after a while she realises her real plight. She shamefully has to admit that God does not exist for black people. She is trapped, with no way out. At the end of the novel, Helga is preparing herself for her fifth pregnancy, which may terminate her life.

7.4.3 Analysis of Quicksand with Special Emphasis on Racial Ambiguity, Mask, and Masquerade

7.4.3.1 The Origins of Helga Crane’s Racial Ambiguity

My old man died in a fine big house. My ma died in a shack. I wonder where I‟m gonna die, Being neither white nor black? (Hughes L. 1926 quoted in: Root 1992: 24)

This stanza of the poem Cross of course reflects the situation that so many unwelcome offspring of racial miscegenation in slavery times have encountered, but it also highlights the pondering question of all those unhappy mulattoes who cannot come to terms with their mixed ancestry. Helga Crane is a "despised mulatto"(51) – light-skinned with a "pale amber […] face"(47), yet too dark to 'pass for white' – unable to find her niche in the world. Her racial ambivalence is firmly rooted in the unresolved conflict with her white Danish mother, who had a short, passionate affair with a "gay suave scoundrel"(56) – her black father – a "gambler who deserted"(55) her and her mother.

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Helga‟s white mother, Karen Nilssen, died of an undisclosed cause seven years before the novel opens, when Helga was fifteen years old, but she maintains a disturbing presence throughout the novel. Helga‟s obsessive thoughts of her mother resurface again and again in times of psychological distress caused by her racial dilemma. But interestingly enough, she never attempts to resolve that inner conflict by trying to locate her biological father, which might have solved her plight. Helga romantically envisions her mother as

[...] a fair Scandinavian girl in love with life, with love, with passion, dreaming, and risking all in one blind surrender. A cruel sacrifice. In forgetting all but love she had forgotten, or had perhaps never known, that some things the world never forgives. (56)

She consistently characterises her mother as having been victimised and degraded by her father, who belonged to the black race – a "despised race"(86). According to Helga, her mother was "gently bred, fresh from an older, more polished civilization"(56), and she was "flung into poverty, sordidness, and dissipation"(ibid.). Helga conceives 'blackness' as an assault on white purity, and her inferiority complex stems from the fact that she is the product of shameful illegal sex between two different races. When her mother eventually marries a bigoted white man, Helga accepts it as a "grievous necessity [as] even foolish, despised women must have food and clothing; even unloved little Negro girls must be somehow provided for"(ibid.). But she suffers terribly under the "savage unkindness of her stepbrothers and -sisters and the jealous, malicious hatred of her mother‟s husband"(ibid.), although she remembers that "the antagonism was mutual, or, perhaps, just a little keener on her side than on theirs. She pitied and despised them"(41). But instead of blaming her "beautiful, unhappy"(ibid.) mother, she scapegoats herself for her black skin. Her reminiscences of her unhappy childhood are marred by the depressing feeling of being unloved and unwanted – a feeling which is heightened by the gnawing uncertainty how and where to find a place to belong to. They have a traumatic impact on her for all her life, as the novel clearly reveals. The only happy time of her childhood was the time when Uncle Peter – "her rescue"(57) – sent her to a school for Negroes, "where for the first time she could breathe freely, where she discovered that because one was dark one was not necessarily loathsome, and could, therefore consider oneself without

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repulsion"(ibid.). But "as she grew older, she became gradually aware of a difference between herself and the girls about her"(ibid.). This was probably the moment when she became fully aware of what it meant to be a racially mixed person in America, "the most toxic of environments into which to thrust a black person" (Calloway 2003: 103). Later on in her life, in Denmark, Helga has a sensation of disturbing nausea when she recalls the shame and absolute horror of the black man‟s existence in racist America:

America, where they hated Negroes! [...] America where Negroes were allowed to be beggars only of life, of happiness, of security. America, where everything has been taken from those dark ones; liberty, respect, even the labor of their hands […] America, where, if one has Negro blood, one mustn‟t expect money, education […]. ( 111)

Helga‟s life is an incessant series of ups and downs, of hope and disappointment, of self-confidence and self-consciousness, of racial stability and turmoil, of racially ambiguous doubts and frustration. It is like a roller-coaster ride with the constant threat of being derailed. The rather depressing fact is that Helga always starts off with great enthusiasm, absolutely convinced that the future will hold the solution to all her problems, but unfortunately ends up disillusioned, frustrated, shattered, and usually fleeing from the places she has been to. Helga is a tragic person, whose one and only dilemma is her racial ambiguity, and her incapability of defining her identity. She is looking for a unitary sense of identity, and repeatedly tries to find her 'true' identity, only to learn that no such thing exists, only a variety of roles, each of which requires a mask. But she can never identify herself with any of the roles given. As she just pretends to be the person everybody expects her to be, she is actually always wearing a mask which she adapts according to the situation. With her craving for colours, clothes and fashion in general, she embellishes these masks through masquerade – which really gives her pleasure. But a glittering façade cannot silence the voices of her 'mixed' blood, cannot provide a solution to her racial ambivalence.

7.4.3.2 The Various Phases and Roles in Helga’s Racially Ambiguous Life • In Naxos: Helga‟s acquaintance with black racial consciousness The novel starts off in Naxos. It already reveals a lot about Helga‟s racial ambiguity, her materialism, her love of fashion and masquerade, her repressed 44

sexuality, as well as her incapability of establishing relationships and finding a place to belong to, as a result of her racial doubts. Helga is employed as an English teacher at the local school of Naxos, actually "the finest school for Negroes anywhere in the country"(37). She is a

[...] slight girl of twenty-two years, with narrow sloping shoulders and delicate […] arms and legs […] [with] an air of radiant, careless health. [Her] penetrating dark eyes […] a pretty mouth [with] sensitive and sensuous lips […] [and] skin like yellow satin […] were the features [of an] essentially likeable and charming personality. (36-40)

Helga initially enjoys working there as a teacher, but soon realises the hypocrisy behind the façade of racial consciousness. Founded to breed a black elite, Naxos – an anagram of 'Saxon' – becomes a "showplace in the black belt, exemplification of the white man‟s magnanimity […] smug and fat with self- satisfaction"(39), "a place of shame, lies, [...] cruelty, servility, and snobbishness"(48). Helga feels compassion for the Naxos students – "those happy singing children"(40) – which indicates that being black can mean happiness for her. But she cannot identify with the ideology of the school any more. She feels only deep hatred and frustration, as the following passage underlines: "[l]ife had died out of it. It was […] now, only a big knife with cruelly sharp edges ruthlessly cutting all to a pattern, the white man‟s pattern"(39). And to Dr. Anderson, the principal of Naxos, she says "I hate hypocrisies"(53). Helga‟s hybrid perspective reveals that the strong black racial consciousness the school externally exposes is in reality an imitation of white ideology. Under the pretext of racial pride and uplift, they ape white values, and Helga detests that. It is a betrayal of values inherent in the black race. And she hates the rigid, militant system at Naxos, which tolerates "no innovation, no individuality"(39). Another annoying situation Helga simply cannot cope with is the dress code in Naxos. At the beginning of the novel, Helga is described sitting in her room in "vivid green and gold negligee and glistening brocaded mules"(36). She loves "elaborate clothes and […] luxurious fabric"(51), but in Naxos

[...] they felt that the colors were queer; dark purples, royal blues, rich greens, deep reds, in soft, luxurious woollens, or heavy, clinging silks […] [o]ld laces, strange embroideries […] Her faultless slim shoes made them uncomfortable and her small plain hat seemed to them positively indecent. (52)

Helga loves bright colours, and she is obsessed with fashion, but her taste in clothes is much closer to that of a white woman. Helga‟s preoccupation with fashion reflects 45

not only the mood of the 1920s – the 'Roaring Twenties' – the time of consumerism Helga is definitely a victim of. It also reflects Helga‟s special situation as a woman of mixed-race. By wearing expensive clothes, she "make[s] an impression"(103); she achieves the status of a lady who attracts attention and admiration, which is best depicted during her stay in Copenhagen. Helga‟s obsession with wearing beautiful clothes is nothing but masquerade. And as 'ladyhood' can be constructed by dressing in the proper way, 'white womanhood' can be imitated and performed. Apart from clothes, Helga loves all kinds of pretty things, as the following lines reveal:

[m]ost of her earnings had gone into clothes, into books, into the furnishings of the room which held her. All her life Helga Crane had loved and longed for nice things. Indeed, it was this craving, this urge for beauty, which had helped to bring her into disfavour in Naxos - “pride” and “vanity”, her detractors called it. (41)

She is a materialist, an obsessed consumer who spends her last wages on beautiful things. This craving for things has to be accounted for in two different ways. For one thing, it reflects the consumerism of the Harlem Renaissance mentioned above. But as far as Helga‟s split personality is concerned, it is also her craving for stability and security which makes her accumulate lots of pretty but unnecessary things. It is a compensation for all those things she misses in her life – happiness, relationships, and a 'true' identity. As far as her racial ambiguity in Naxos is concerned, Helga reveals astonishing sympathy for the black race with hardly any racial doubts. Identifying herself strongly with 'blackness', she simply cannot stand that all the beautiful characteristics of her race – the black race – are suppressed and sacrificed for 'white' ideals, which is clearly documented in the passage below:

[t]hese people yapped loudly of race, of race consciousness, of race pride, and yet suppressed spontaneous laughter. Harmony, radiance, and simplicity, all the essentials of spiritual beauty in the race they had marked for destruction. Its most delightful manifestations, love of color, joy of rhythmic motion, naïve, [...]. (51)

Helga praises the spiritual beauty of the black people, their joy of life, and their happiness. She is proud of all their racial attributes, and she even considers "joy of rhythmic motion"(51) as something positive. She experiences "some unanalyzed driving spirit of loyalty to the inherent need for racial gorgeousness"(ibid.). She hates the idea that all the beauty of the black race and the race consciousness black people had been struggling to achieve since the days of slavery were "marked for

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destruction"(45), with the black community aping white values – an inconsistency she cannot cope with. It has to be noted that Helga‟s ambivalent attitude towards 'blackness' changes drastically according to the distance of her own emotional involvement. Within the safe boundaries of Naxos, without any personal involvement, Larsen allows Helga to claim her 'blackness', and to identify herself with it. In the course of the narrative, she regards all the characteristics mentioned above as negative, utterly frightening, and appalling. Particularly lascivious movements of the body when dancing – which imply sexuality – terribly frighten her, and fill her with shame, because being "in the jungle"(89) in these moments reminds her of the 'primitive' nature seen as inherent in every black person. But Helga does not only rebel against the hypocrisy of this "educational machine"(50). Her discontent inner self, her racially ambiguous nature, starts revolting. She feels "[t]he people here don‟t like [her]"(53). Naxos is hardly a place at all. It is more like some loathsome venomous disease"(ibid.). She does not "seem to fit here"(52), she is "a disturbing factor"(42). And she also feels that something inexplicable – a strange, unknown power within herself, "some formidable antagonist, nameless and un-understood"(44) – is taking hold of her:

[t]here was something else, some other more ruthless force, a quality within herself, which was frustrating her, had always frustrated her, kept her from getting the things she wanted. (44)

Her position would provide her "material security, gracious ways of living […] lovely clothes, and a goodly share of envious admiration"(45). And yet she cannot silence that inner voice. Perhaps her Uncle Peter was right with his "oft-repeated conviction that because of her Negro blood she would never amount to anything"(41). It is like quicksand. It devours Helga‟s spirit. It is a destructive force she cannot escape. It prevents her from taking rational decisions. It will haunt her for the rest of her life. Thus, not even her engagement to James Vayle – a member of a "first family" (43) who can offer her the stability and security – can keep her there. She knows that leaving James "would most certainly be social suicide"(ibid.), but she also knows that his family will never accept her because her

[...] own lack of family disconcerted them. No family. That was the crux of the whole matter. For Helga, it accounted for everything, her failure here in Naxos, her former loneliness in 47

Nashville. It even accounted for her engagement to James. Negro society, she had learned, was as complicated as […] white society. If you couldn‟t prove your ancestry and connections, you were tolerated, but you didn‟t “belong”. (43)

"[T]here had been always a feeling of strangeness, of outsideness"(57), "of loneliness and isolation"(77). From the very beginning of her racially ambivalent life, these feelings exemplify Helga‟s marginality. She has neither the protection of a family nor of a racial community. Helga‟s contradictory self is splendidly displayed in her final talk with the principal of Naxos, Dr. Anderson. She secretly adores him, although she does not know it, or would never admit it. She is desperate not to establish any close – meaning sexual – relationship, as she instinctively feels from the bottom of her 'black' heart that her own sexuality would destroy her. When Dr. Anderson finally reveals his secret admiration for her by saying, "You‟re a lady. You have dignity and breeding"(54), she intentionally destroys all her chances. Driven by her inner "ruthless force"(44), she discloses her shameful origin:

[i]f you‟re speaking of family, Dr. Anderson, why, I haven‟t any. I was born in a Chicago slum. (54) […] My father was a gambler who deserted my mother, a white immigrant. It is even uncertain that they were married. As I said at first, I don‟t belong here. I shall be leaving. This afternoon. Good morning. (55)

Later, she bitterly regrets that she has "lost temper and given away to half- truths. Angry half-truths"(59). When Helga accidentally meets Dr. Anderson later in Harlem, she becomes aware of the same vague yearning for this man rising in her again. She is bewildered by this "strange ill-defined emotion"(82), but is unable to define what is going on in her. Dr. Anderson seems to provide the answer to her problem by saying, "‟You haven‟t changed. You‟re still looking for something‟"(ibid.). And she really has not changed as far as her search for her own identity is concerned. Helga‟s major problem as a mulatta is her "impossibility of self-definition" (Ginsberg 1996: 76). James Vayle, as well as Dr. Anderson, would provide her entrance into the black social elite. James Vayle has influential family connections, and he would give her the feeling of security that comes from having a family, which she desperately longs for. But her desire to fit into a particular social group would require defining herself, finding her 'true' identity – that is exactly what she is not able to do.

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It is the same with Dr. Anderson. He is attracted by her beauty as well as by her intellect, and her commitment as a teacher:

[w]hat we need is more people like you, people with a sense of values, and proportion, an appreciation of the rarer things of life. You have something to give which we badly need here in Naxos. You mustn‟t desert us, Miss Crane. (54)

He offers her a bright future and a unique position in Naxos, but Helga does not want to "be made over"(42), realising that she simply does not fit into the "Naxos mold"(ibid.). She feels smothered by the prospect of having to adapt herself to a particular social role. She wants to retain her identity, although she cannot define it. She actually dreams of a life among approving and admiring people. She wants to be appreciated and understood. She wants to get rid of the mask she always has to wear in order to play the role the others expect from her, but this is incompatible with her split identity.

• In Chicago: Helga‟s attempt to reconcile herself with her place of birth Helga is glad that she can leave "the cage Naxos had been to her"(59), but the "dirty, mad, hurrying city"(ibid.) where she was born does not welcome her with a home – Helga‟s most desirable goal. Helga is immediately confronted with racist America when Mrs. Nilssen, Uncle Peter‟s new wife, with "latent antagonism"(61) disillusions her by telling her that she "mustn‟t expect anything"(61), reminding her that her husband is not her uncle, since his sister, Helga‟s white mother, never married. Helga is "torn with mad fright" (ibid.). She feels "as if all the bogies and goblins that had beset her unloved, unloving, and unhappy childhood had come to life with tenfold power to hurt and frighten"(62). She has experienced that outrage all too often in her young life, and she knows "but two weapons"(61) to fight against this emotion: "to kick and scream, or to flee"(ibid.). Faced with those stinging memories of her miserable childhood – the source of her plight, her loss of identity – she starts to scapegoat herself again. Completely devastated, she sympathises with Mrs. Nilssen‟s point of view, as she had always been able to understand her mother‟s, her stepfather‟s, and his children‟s point of view. She sees herself as "an obscene sore in all their lives, at all costs to be hidden"(62). "Always on the verge of weeping"(66), Helga experiences a loneliness that "grew to appalling proportions, encompassing her, shutting her off from all the life

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around her"(ibid.). This loneliness – resulting from having no identity and no family – is tremendously increased by Helga‟s inability to reach out to people, an inability that is deeply rooted in her childhood, too. It has made her unconscious of the fact that her "offishness repelled advances"(ibid.), and that her "arrogance […] stirred in people a peculiar irritation"(ibid.). Her masquerade, her 'white' ladylike façade – due to the transforming power of fashion, which is a recurring topic throughout the novel – makes people in the streets admire her clothes, but her "self-sufficient uninterested manner adopted instinctively as a protective measure for her acute sensitiveness, in her child days, still clung to her"(ibid.), and it prevents her from initiating and sustaining any lasting close relationships. After several rather disappointing, nerve-racking weeks in Chicago, Helga is finally offered a job through the YMCA. She is introduced to Mrs. Hayes-Rore, a "prominent „race‟ woman"(70) who hires her to travel with her to New York. Helga enthusiastically accepts the offer. She feels reborn with her decision, and begins happily to "paint the future in vivid colors […] Even the advertisements in the shop windows seemed to shine with radiance"(67). Being able to leave the place of her dreadful childhood memories behind makes her forget her racial dilemma, but she will soon learn that she cannot escape it.

• In Harlem: Centre of the 'black' world – centre of her 'geographical passing' On the train to New York, Helga reveals "plain horrid"(71) details about her past to Mrs. Hayes-Rore. Her racial self-confidence is again thoroughly undermined by Mrs. Hayes-Rore‟s reaction when she advises Helga not to mention that her people are white as

[...] race intermingling and possibly adultery [were] beyond definite discussion. For among black people, as among white people, it is tacitly understood that these things are not mentioned – and therefore they do not exist. (72)

What Helga learns is to put on a mask again, to pretend to be somebody different, and to conceal her racially mixed identity behind a socially acceptable façade. By denying her white relatives, and wearing this mask she is advised to wear, Helga

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'passes' as black. Traditionally, 'passing' refers to blacks becoming whites. But Helga reverses the traditional notion of 'passing' by pretending to be a 'purely' black woman. She quickly becomes engrossed in her new cosmopolitan lifestyle. She enjoys "teeming black Harlem [lulling her into] she was certain, peace and contentment"(75). She loses that "tantalizing oppression of loneliness and isolation which always, it seemed, had been part of her existence"(77). White New York is near, but so distant to her at the same time. She feels comfortable and at ease in Harlem. She tries to erase white people from her memory:

[s]inister folk, she considered them, who had stolen her birthright. Their past contribution to her life, which had been but shame and grief, she had hidden away from brown folk in a locked closet, „never‟, she told herself, „to be reopened‟. (77)

She nurtures these romantic fantasies of a domestic haven in a black community. She is sure that someday she will marry "one of those alluring brown or yellow men who danced attendance to her […] to have a home and perhaps laughing, appealing dark-eyed children in Harlem"(ibid.). Even money has lost its importance to her with this delightful vision of an agreeable future. She feels freedom and release from the hostility she encountered in her childhood among white people, and release from the snobbish black folk in Naxos. Her racially split soul has found peace, at least for some time. But this state of bliss does not last very long. She starts feeling restless, discontent, and even frightened. This inexplicable ruthless force inside her grips her again. It fuels her racial doubts. She is afraid of herself. Whatever party or gathering she attends, people keep talking about Negroes and the race problem, and she suddenly feels

[...] shut up, boxed up, with hundreds of her race, closed up with that something in the racial character which had always been, to her, inexplicable, alien. Why, she demanded in fierce rebellion, should she be yoked to these despised folk? (86)

Shortly afterwards, she hates herself for having thought like this, and she keeps repeating, "[t]hey‟re my own people, my own people. I can‟t go on like this […] I simply can‟t"(86). She is bewildered. She feels like a traitor. She knows that she belongs to 'these despised folk', as far as her racial origin is concerned. And yet she realises that she has nothing in common with them, as far as her racial identity is concerned. Tormented by self-reproach, she finally states that she

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[...] didn‟t, in spite of her racial markings, belong to these dark segregated people. She was different. She felt it. It wasn‟t merely a matter of color. It was something broader, deeper that made folk kin. (86)

Helga is terribly torn between a strong attraction to the black people and simultaneous repulsion. But worst things are to come when visiting a Harlem nightclub. Harlem is a hybrid place, placed between Helga‟s black world (Naxos, Chicago, Alabama) and her white world (Denmark). Harlem is presented as the space where race is diverse, fluid, unstable, and indefinable. Opposite qualities such as ugliness and beauty, barbarism and sophistication coexist. And Helga succumbs to the lure of black Harlem when dancing ecstatically at one of the clubs she frequents, forgetting everything around her. When the music dies, she kind of awakens from a trance-like state intoxicated by the rhythm, and feels nothing but shame. She realises all of a sudden that she had enjoyed this excursion into 'the jungle'; that the 'tomtoms' of her ancestors – her father‟s legacy – had taken her way back to the primitive origins of her race, but she suppresses these taunting feelings by telling herself, "She wasn‟t […] a jungle creature"(90). This scene explicitly displays Helga‟s split racial consciousness. She is overwhelmed by this ecstatic feeling aroused in her by the beat and the music of Africa, and at the same time profoundly ashamed of succumbing to its lure. While Helga has praised positive characteristics of the black race so far, she now focuses on the inherent 'primitive', animalistic side. Helga‟s simultaneous admiration for and consternation over the nightclub experience, illustrate the battle that rages in her. She is afraid of surrendering to the rhythmic beat of the African music, the ecstatic movement, as it threatens to devour her like quicksand. She is afraid of her own body. Female 'blackness' is equated with sexuality and sex- immorality, and "Larsen‟s women are fated to the realm of the body" (Branzburg 1984: 98). Physically, Helga succeeds in 'passing as black'. But mentally she fails. Unable to resolve her racial plight, fearing to lose control of herself, she takes her Uncle Peter‟s money and his advice to travel to Denmark. As usual, she daydreams of a brighter future and a new life, with "no Negroes, no problems, no prejudice"(87). She actually hopes to escape all the lures of her 'black' blood, the black ancestral

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urges which had so shamefully wrapped her in the jazz cabaret, by fleeing to her mother‟s people – the homogenous white society of Copenhagen. Significantly, Harlem functions as the core place of Helga‟s 'geographical passing', which in her case can be classified as 'racial passing'. It occurs again after her journey to Copenhagen when Helga has enough of 'whiteness', and longs for her 'black folk'. Changing places, fleeing from trying to come to terms with her racially ambivalent feelings, and seeing the world through rose-coloured glasses the moment she can put off a final decision, is typical of Helga‟s irrational attitude towards solving her racial dilemma.

• In Denmark: Trying to find answers in the white world "Again she had put the past behind her with an ease which astonished even herself"(94). Helga enjoys this new life of pure white capitalism. She experiences a materialistic life she had always wanted. Life in Copenhagen is the realisation of Helga‟s dream: "[a]lways she had wanted, not money, but the things which money could give, leisure, attention, beautiful surrounding. Things. Things. Things"(97). She is really spoiled by her relatives. They buy her expensive dresses and "bright things to set off the color of [her] lovely skin. Striking things, exotic things [to] make an impression"(98). Helga "was incited to make an impression, a voluptuous impression. She was incited to inflame attention and admiration"(103). And she does make an impression. "She is a novelty; the object of massed curiosity and interest, so discreetly hidden under the polite greetings"(100). She is no more "plain Helga Crane, of whom nobody had ever heard"(43). Helga becomes aware of the transformative power of fashion as a means of expressing her subjectivity. She realises that dressing allows her to create a new self. Her new existence is intensely pleasant to her and heightens her self-importance. She feels like a lady, and for quite some time she can silence the disturbing, upsetting thoughts of her racially mixed ancestry, particularly of her 'black' blood. She starts to consider Negroes in America as "something inferior"(104), and never ever wants to go back to America,

[...] where every dark child was handicapped at the start by the shroud of color! She saw, suddenly, that giving birth to little, helpless, unprotesting Negro children as a sin, an

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unforgivable outrage. More black folk to suffer indignities. More dark bodies for mobs to lynch. No, Helga Crane didn‟t often think of America. It was too humiliating, too disturbing. (104)

In spite of its glamour, existence in America, even in Harlem, "was for Negroes [...] something not to be endured for a lifetime if one could only escape"(125). She is convinced that she can leave the land of her black forefathers behind, and shake off her all her racially ambiguous feelings. And she will not give birth to helpless Negro kids who are doomed to racial doubts and unhappiness from the moment they are born. Helga is fully conscious that she has a chance to escape, and she now sincerely believes in a law of compensation. She feels recompensed for all the humiliations and frustrations she had to endure, and she feels nothing but peace; no mental difficulties, no questioning, no black family, no unhappy black children. Gradually, Helga comes to realise that she is only "[a] decoration, [a] curio, [a] peacock"(103) in the sophisticated white world of Copenhagen. And yet she gives herself up to "the fascinating business of being seen, gaped at, desired"(104). She knows that she is attractive, but in an "unusual […] exotic, almost savage way"(100). And it is exactly her touch of savageness, of exoticism – of Africa – which attracts the attention and admiration of many gentlemen, among them Axel Olsen, a famous painter. He is lured and stunned by her exotic beauty, and even tries to enhance it by choosing the most fascinating dresses with voluptuous, tropical, and animalistic images in "screaming colors"(103). Fashion, in this case, is a dangerous trap that tries to confine Helga to the image of the animalistic black beauty. Helga is given a mask to wear from the moment she arrives, and in the end she feels trapped. Her aunt determines the social role she has to play – that of the exotic 'other'. Helga 'passes' for something she is definitely not, and phrases like "Fru Dahl gazed penetratingly into her niece‟s masked face"(109), or "Helga‟s smile […] a fixed aching mask"(ibid.) indicate this in the narrative. Her feeling of superiority vanishes completely the day she visits a night club with white friends, specifically at the moment when two Negro dancers appear on the stage "throwing their bodies about with a loose ease"(112). She is terribly ashamed of her race, but particularly afraid that her Danish friends, who applaud enthusiastically, might "look upon something in her which she has hidden away and

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wanted to forget"(ibid.). She simply hates the idea of being classified as a primitive sexual being. Having enjoyed her carefree, actually 'race-free' existence to the full, she is confronted with her racially ambiguous past again. It is a vicious circle she apparently cannot escape. Apart from her fear of being reduced to black sensuality, she is painfully reminded of her parents‟ act of miscegenation by her white Danish relatives when they suggest marrying any of the influential white businessmen who would guarantee her all the privileges of a white upper class. Helga is completely surprised at their unbiased acceptance of an interracial marriage, but categorically rejects such an idea, as she does not believe in mixed marriages. She knows but all too well from bitter experience that they bring only grief and sorrow. And Helga is even more surprised – and troubled at the same time – when she hears her aunt say that her mother was selfish and a fool. Her aunt admonishes her not to be the same fool, and her uncle encourages her by saying that in Denmark there "isn‟t this foolishness about race"(120). They reveal to Helga that they would have accepted her mother and her black baby without any reservations, but that it was Helga‟s mother who would not listen. She learns that it was not her black father but her white mother who had made her so unhappy. What eventually confuses and bewilders Helga, is her aunt‟s disclosure that her mother Karen "was always stupid. If you‟ve got any brains at all they came from your father"(108). This revelation probably helps her to reconcile herself with the image of her father later. The next bolt out of the blue comes when Axel Olsen proposes to her. She had actually expected a proposal much earlier, as he blatantly never concealed the "deliberate lure of"(116) her, but she is upset when he approaches her saying:

[y]ou know, Helga, you are a contradiction […] You have the warm impulsive nature of the women of Africa, but, my lovely, you have, I fear, the soul of a prostitute. You sell yourself to the highest buyer. (117)

Confronting her with the stereotypical image of black women being primitive with their inherent sexuality and immorality, she bluntly refuses him. He had already aroused similar feelings of anger and bewilderment with a humiliating portrait of her in which he distorted her into "some disgusting sensual creature with her features"(119). Helga knows that accepting would mean that she would be constrained forever, doomed, and reduced to her black sensuality and sexuality; a sexual commodity

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available to a white man, although she knows at the same moment that "in the end, in some way, she would pay for this hour"(117), which she actually does. Despite her conviction of taking a decision she will regret, she carries on, explaining to him that she could never marry him:

[y]ou see, I couldn‟t marry a white man. I simply couldn‟t. It isn‟t just you, not just personal […] It‟s deeper, broader than that. It‟s racial. Someday maybe you‟ll be glad. We can‟t tell, you know; if we were married, you might come to be ashamed of me, to hate me, to hate all dark people. My mother did that. (118)

It is again this inner voice, stronger than any rational thought that influences her decision. It has already repeatedly taken hold of Helga – too difficult to explain, "too mortifying"(118). It is a feeling she cannot name; it is just "something deep inside [her]"(121). At this moment, Helga realises that she is bound by 'race', and she comes to identify herself as a 'black' woman who can never ever marry a white man, although her conception of racial ties is too vague for her to come to terms with it. And as usual, whenever she feels trapped and confined, she starts a new roller- coaster ride of racial turmoil. Helga‟s split identity keeps preventing her from taking a decision that might give her restless racially ambivalent nature peace. Her inner voice is calling her again, and irrationally she begins to welcome the thought of a return to America, despite the plea that she would never ever do that again. Obviously, the white world has become too refined, too controlled, too formal, and too materialistic; she starts daydreaming of Harlem teeming with happy black people. She realises that she is not homesick for America, but for Negroes whom she used to call "despised folk"(86). What is even more surprising, Helga feels sympathy for her black father for the first time. She now understands that he was unhappy himself with her "formal calm mother"(122), that he yearned for the "inexhaustible humor and the incessant hope of his own kind"(ibid.). It was nothing material, but "indigenous to all Negro environment"(ibid.). Now that the "irresistible ties of race"(ibid.) drag at her own heart, now that she meets only pale serious faces although she longs for brown laughing ones, she can understand him. And it is of almost "sacred importance" that she can forgive him. On the pretext of returning to America only to see her friend Anne again, who is now married to Dr. Anderson, she says good-bye to Denmark with the intention to return after some time.

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• In Harlem: Reunion with her black race Strolling through the streets of Harlem, Helga is enthusiastic when she finds herself surrounded by thousands of dark-eyed brown folk:

[t]hese were her people. Nothing, she had come to understand now, could ever change that. Strange that she had never truly valued the kinship until distance had shown her its worth. How absurd she had been to think that another country, other people, could liberate her from the ties which bound her forever to these mysterious, these terrible, these fascinating, these lovable, dark hordes. Ties that were of spirit. Ties not only superficially entangled with mere outline of features or color of skin. Deeper. Much deeper than either of these. (125)

From my point of view, this is one of the most significant passages to reveal Helga‟s racially ambiguous nature. Despite the overwhelming joy of seeing 'her' people again, despite the realisation that nothing can ever break these strong racial ties, despite the enlightenment that these ties go beyond colour, these black people are yet mysterious and terrible to her. They fascinate and frighten her at the same time. As they remain a mystery to her, she will never be able to identify herself fully with them. Helga will always be doomed to struggle for her real identity, and after a short time of perfect bliss, she starts to realise that she will always be missing something. She is uncomfortably aware that her life is divided into two parts, in two lands – into "physical freedom in Europe, and spiritual freedom in America"(125). And rather unrealistically, she mentally caricatures herself

moving shuttle-like from continent to continent. From the prejudiced restrictions of the New World to the easy formality of the Old; from the pale calm of Copenhagen to the colorful lure of Harlem. (ibid.)

But as both options will never be available at the same time, she will have no chance of escaping the vicious circle of racial ambiguity she is captured in. She will never be able to resolve the problem of her 'true' racial identity. At the beginning of her return to Harlem, she still feels a "slightly pitying superiority over those Negroes who were apparently so satisfied"(126), but soon "an acute feeling of insecurity for which she could not account"(ibid.) takes hold of her. It is a feeling that almost amounts to fright. And she ponders why she has not married Axel Olsen, only to find the rather disillusioning answer, "[b]ecause I‟m a fool"(ibid.). Instead of trying to resolve her racial dilemma, Helga takes up the same preoccupation with fashion which she had been so fond of in Denmark. She is keen on attracting attention by wearing courageous clothes, and deliberately tries to lure male admiration, finding out that this masquerade is as effective in New York as it

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had been in Denmark. She enjoys playing with her femininity, although she knows that this is the most dangerous thing for her to do. But despite her apparently positive attitude towards life in Harlem, where she is rather popular at parties again, she absolutely dismisses her previous plan to have a home and a family. When she accidentally meets her former boyfriend James Vayle, who still would like to marry her, she rebuffs him by snarling at him:

[m]arriage – that means children, to me. And why add more suffering into the world? Why add any more unwanted, tortured Negroes to America? Think of the awfulness of being responsible for the giving of life to creatures doomed to endure such wounds to the flesh, such wounds to the spirit, as Negroes have to endure. (132)

As she is not able to come to terms with her own 'blackness', she simply would not want to give birth to any 'wretched' little Negro babies who would have to suffer physically and mentally throughout their lives like their mother. At one of the parties in black Harlem, Helga„s observing eyes pick out a few white people, to the open disapproval and discomfort of her friend Anne. Among the guests there is also Anne‟s pet aversion, Audrey Demney, "posed, serene, certain, surrounded by masculine black and white"(128). Audrey, an openly sensual character, is a very light-skinned mulatta with a "peculiar, almost deathlike pallor"(91). According to Anne, she ought to be "ostracized"(ibid.) for her magnetic attraction to, and preference for white men, and for the fact that she abandoned Harlem in favour of living in a predominantly white New York neighbourhood. Helga feels envious admiration for her because "this beautiful, calm, cool girl […] had the assurance, the courage, so placidly to ignore racial barriers"(92). Helga envies her because she is able to embrace both components of her racial identity simultaneously, and to indulge in her own desires – something Helga has never been able to do. Audrey is actually the only legally black person in this novel who can 'pass for white', and switch her racial identities according to her mood. Helga could never 'pass for white' because of her dark complexion. She envies Audrey, but her self-conscious, irrational, and indecisive character would never allow it anyway. She would always be plagued by racial insecurities and doubts. Slowly but gradually, a change in Helga‟s personality is taking place. She enters her road to perdition when she subconsciously starts giving vent to her 'black' blood by allowing feelings to surface she has always suppressed.

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When she literally bumps into Dr. Anderson at the party, he kisses her passionately on impulse. Helga‟s first instinct is to resist him, but "strangely, all power seemed to ebb away, and a long-hidden, half-understood desire welled up in her with the suddenness of a dream"(133). This kiss rouses in her a dormant emotion. It is a very familiar feeling, but up to that moment she had never been able to recognise it as physical desire. Helga had never felt such an irrepressible and irresistible longing. She takes this kiss very seriously, but Dr. Anderson apologises to her the following day. He thereby deeply undermines her self-esteem and self-assurance when blaming his loss of control on a few "rotten cocktails"(136). She experiences such a mortifying feeling of ridicule and self-loathing that she even wishes to die. And yet this new desire has been awaked, burning in her flesh with "uncontrolled violence"(137). In a daze Helga wanders into a Harlem church, where a black church service is being held by Reverend Mr. Pleasant Green, a "fattish yellow man with huge outstanding ears"(139). The atmosphere inside the church captures her: all the black people are enthusiastically singing songs Helga is conscious of "having heard years ago – hundreds of years"(ibid.); they are observing rites of a "remote obscure origin"(141), and an "instinct horror of an unknown world"(ibid.) creeps upon her. In a "savage frenzy"(142) they pray for Helga‟s soul, and she feels "an echo of the weird orgy resound in her heart"(ibid.). She knows that if she stays, she will be lost, but she cannot escape that spell. Instead, Helga comes to feel "a miraculous calm […] a supreme aspiration toward the regaining of simple happiness […] the mysterious grandeur and holiness of far-simpler centuries"(ibid.). Succumbing completely to the spirit of the black soul – to the very origins of 'blackness' – Helga has finally arrived at a point of no return. She still cannot define what power – maybe the grandeur of religion – has taken hold of her, but she becomes fully aware that with every hour she is moving a little further away from this "soothing haziness"(144) inside her. This uncertainty of her 'true' identity had been comforting to her. It had kind of prevented her from having to arrive at a final decision. But that is exactly what her inner voice now urges her to do – to take a decision; to shake off all her racially ambivalent feelings, and to opt for black. Impressed by the rhetorical power of the "grandiloquent"(145) Reverend Mr. Pleasant Green, she decides to seduce him. She is convinced that he cannot resist her sexual power, which she is determined to invest if necessary. She imagines that 59

with a man of God she takes a "chance at stability, at permanent happiness"(144). She plunges into marriage, absolutely sure that "[t]his time it will last"(146). Accepting her sexuality and realising its power signifies her acceptance of being black, as does her faith in God. Helga is now willing to accept 'blackness' without hesitating. Her inner voice does not interfere any more.

• In Alabama: Doomed to 'blackness'. This marriage head over heels will actually be Helga‟s final ride on the metaphorical roller coaster that reflects her ups and downs. She derails, never ever to recover. Helga settles down in a tiny Alabama town where her husband is "pastor to a scattered and primitive folk"(146) and where she, as the wife of the preacher, is a person of relative importance. Like in Denmark, she feels compensated for all the previous humiliations and disappointments caused by her racially mixed lineage. She is fascinated by the novelty of things, and in her usual initial enthusiasm she actually ignores reality. She is convinced that "this one time she had not clutched a shadow and missed the actuality"(ibid.). She is proud that a man of such verbal extravagance is her husband; she is proud that she can live a life with God; she is proud of every brown child in the parish as an "emblem of the wonder of life, love, and of God‟s goodness"(149). She embraces all the values of a black community. Closing her eyes to reality, she fails to see the squalor around her, the shabbiness, the dreariness, her husband‟s disgusting filthiness, and the atmosphere of self-satisfaction. If doubts and uncertainty try to surface, she dismisses them as her ingratitude towards God. She blindly trusts him and is grateful that he has saved her soul from hellfire and eternal damnation. When she eventually stops viewing her new life through rose-coloured glasses, it is already too late. Fated to one harassing pregnancy after the other, each of them endangering her life, she shamefully has to admit that her life is nothing but debris. She feels only disgust and deep, contemptuous hatred for her husband. The "luster of religion had vanished, too"(156). She now knows that God does not exist at all, at least for Negroes:

[l]ife wasn‟t a miracle, a wonder. It was, for Negroes at least, only a great disappointment. Something to be got through with as best as one could. No one was interested in them or helped them. God! Bah! And they were only a nuisance to other people. (157) 60

She has to admit that she has come to realise that it is the white man‟s God. Being black means misery, poverty, disillusionment, disappointment, wretchedness, and hopelessness. Religion only blunts perception:

[h]ow the white man‟s God must laugh at the great joke he had played on them! Bound them to slavery, then to poverty and insult, and made them bear it unresistingly, uncomplainingly almost, by sweet promises of mansions in the sky by and by. (160)

What Helga regrets most of all is the fact that her two sons and her daughter will have to grow to manhood and womanhood in this "vicious, this hypocritical land"(157), where black people do not count. The novel finishes with a rather disillusioning review of her life. During the long process of healing after giving birth to her fourth child, she sums up the biggest mistakes she has made in her life. She now realises that she has ruined it. With her marriage she has spoilt every opportunity to do the things again she wants, have the things she loves, mingle with the people she likes. She has to admit mercilessly that she has been a fool, the "damnedest kind of fool"(159). Helga has to acknowledge that she has repeatedly made the same mistakes and experienced the same "feeling of dissatisfaction, of asphyxiation"(ibid.) again and again without changing anything. "In Naxos. In New York. In Copenhagen. This differed only in degree"(160). It is even more discouraging for her to find out that she alone is to blame for this wretched marriage of hers. She has nipped all he chances she has had in the bud, and is now severely punished with that disgusting "fattish, rattish [...] man"(143) whose touch makes shivers run down her spine. Always having idealised 'blackness' – believing in the spontaneous laughter of the black folk, and the serenity and simplicity of black life – she now hates their "raucous laughter, their stupid acceptance of all things, and their unfailing trust in „de Lawd‟"(161). Helga again irrationally contemplates the idea of leaving everything behind, of getting herself "out of that bog into which she had strayed"(160). But she knows that she will never be able to leave voluntarily because of her children. She recollects her own lonely and unloved childhood, and tries to comfort herself by pretending that her children‟s situation is different, as there is not "the element of race, of white and black. They were all black together. And they would have their father"(161). She loves her children, and she cannot desert them, although motherhood is a huge burden that she cannot really cope with. The troubled

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unresolved relationship with her own mother, and the constant thoughts of miscegenation have left their traces. Even when Helga tries to soothe her conscience by pretending that with her children it is not a question of race, she knows at the bottom of her heart that at least her girl – the child of hers she likes the least – will be haunted by the thought that she has inherited her mother‟s 'white' blood, as she herself was haunted by those harrowing thoughts throughout her life. She will be caught in the same vicious circle of racial ambiguity. Helga is desperately trying to find an escape from the "oppression, the degradation that her life had become"(ibid.). She dreams of freedom and cities, clothes and books, of smoky nightclubs and sophisticated music. And at the same time she realises that it will be impossible to find a "feasible way of retrieving all these agreeable, desired things"(162) because it means competing against a "formidable antagonist […] a ruthless force […] which had always frustrated her, kept her from getting the things she wanted"(44). As she is still too sick, too weak, she puts the idea of leaving off. "Later. When she got up. By and by"(ibid.). As usual, for the very last time, she seems to draw the blinds to shut out reality. But reality is catching up with Helga, who is already pregnant with her fifth child. Helga can be seen as a 'tragic mulatta'. Not in the original meaning, having no choice at all, being the mere victim of circumstances. Helga is a 'tragic mulatta' in so far as she is the victim of herself. It is her dilemma that she cannot silence that quantum of 'white' blood that she has inherited from her mother, and in this way she is forever unable to resolve the problem of her racial identity. It is her dilemma that she is always torn between the mind and the body; between the lures of the cool, sophisticated, and rational white bourgeois world – and the attractions of the emotional, sensual black world. Helga feels a desire to be part of the black race, as it is warm, alive, and passionate; and at the same time she feels a need to escape from it, so as to not be victimised by both gender and race. As long as there is this 'soothing haziness', she has a chance to escape her racial boundaries. By constantly switching countries and societies, by trying desperately to avoid being constrained, she can always opt out. But being fixed to marriage and motherhood in the end, there is no meaningful option left. The 'choice' left to her is death; either real death when giving birth to her fifth baby, which is most

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likely, or a living death with an incessant series of childbirths, which will suffocate her in the end as well. Helga is in constant search of her 'true' identity, which she actually never finds. She just believes to have found it in each role she is playing. Finding out that she cannot identify herself with the corresponding role, she changes places and roles, shifting between the white and the black world. With her racially ambiguous nature she cannot settle down, as her merciless inner voice keeps preventing her from accepting both her 'white' and her 'black' blood. But fleeing does not liberate her from her gnawing doubts of where she belongs. Whenever she abandons a particular role, she always feels a terrifying sense of apprehension, of nausea, and even vertigo. Throughout the novel such moments of vertigo mark Helga‟s abandonment of a specific social role. Helga experiences only horror, fear, and a sensation of falling. Because of these recurring disturbing feelings, she starts questioning whether she actually has an 'essential self' to discover, and is afraid of a power inside her, a power she cannot define. And as each role is never her 'true' self, she is actually always wearing a mask behind which her 'true' identity is hidden and never revealed. Through these masks she hopes to avoid the enclosures of society and racial barriers to find a role that corresponds to her inner self. Driven by incessant racially ambiguous feelings, Helga moves from identity to identity, but she does not realise that she is always on 'quicksand', doomed to be devoured by whatever decision she takes.

7.5 Nella Larsen’s Passing

7.5.1 Plot Summary Passing, as the title implies, is primarily a novel of 'passing', of transgressing the 'color line'. Its protagonists are Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield. Both are beautiful and sophisticated, and they share two things: friendship from childhood, and skin pale enough to allow them to 'pass', to live at will in the white world. Clare Kendry has married a rich white man, resides in Europe, but is on a visit to Chicago. She has 'passed for white' out of a taste for adventure as well as material advantage.

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Irene Redfield, on the other hand, has remained in Harlem, and is married to a black physician. She is well-established in the black upper middle class, and 'passes' only occasionally to satisfy her longing for shops, theatres, and restaurants. Both women seem to be satisfied with what they have achieved, although they differ completely in their attitude towards their conception of life. Irene focuses on stability, security, and permanence, while Clare yearns for changes and adventures. Irene Redfield is on a visit to Chicago, too. She enjoys those visits far away from home to 'pass as white' in complete anonymity. On one of her illicit excursions into the white world, she happens to meet Clare on the roof top of the noble Drayton Hotel after twelve years of not having heard anything from her. Clare had suddenly disappeared after one of her visits to the South Side, with unconfirmed rumours circulating that she has 'passed for white'. Irene is fascinated by Clare‟s charismatic appearance and, despite an inner repulsion, starts telling her about her family and common acquaintances, while Clare remains silent most of the time, not giving away any personal detail. She thus rouses Irene‟s curiosity, and they decide to meet again. A strange friendship develops in the course of time; very reluctantly on Irene‟s side, much more willingly on Clare‟s side. Tension and trouble surface rapidly when Clare takes to visiting Harlem secretly, drawn by its familiarity and her newly discovered desire to return to her black community. Clare, who has always appreciated a certain amount of danger in her life, is married to a man who hates Negroes, and who does not know that his wife has Negro blood in her veins. Danger heightens when Clare and Brian, Irene‟s husband, are drawn to each other. Irene is more and more annoyed by Clare‟s presence, as she threatens to destroy her comfortable life. Clare‟s husband, who has become suspicious of his wife‟s frequent absences, eventually learns the truth about her 'passing', and trails her to a private penthouse party in Harlem, where the novel reaches its melodramatic climax. Clare falls out of a floor-to-ceiling window that Irene had opened some time earlier. Her tragic death is never explicitly revealed to be suicide, an accident, or murder, but it conveys the message that 'passing' is disloyalty to one‟s own race, and has to be punished.

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7.5.2 Plot Analysis of Passing with Special Emphasis on Racial Ambiguity, Mask, and Masquerade On the following pages I analyse the racially ambivalent feelings of the two protagonists Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield from different angles. First, I point out the influence of their childhood on their racially mixed feelings. Second, I evaluate the impact of their marriage with regard to their racial consciousness. Finally, I investigate the development of their racial ambiguity as the plot of the novel progresses.

7.5.2.1 The Influence of Clare Kendry’s Childhood on Her Racially Mixed Feelings Clare Kendry is the product of miscegenation of a "pasty-white father"(173) – a light-skinned mulatto – and a black mother. She grows up in Harlem in miserable, shabby conditions. Very early in life she learns to look after herself, as her father is an uncultivated drunkard who rages around threateningly when drunk. He is finally killed in a saloon fight when she is only fifteen years old. As her mother, who "would have run away if she hadn‟t died"(182), leaves her too, she is taken care of by some of her father‟s racist white relatives whose existence she had not even known about until they turned up at his funeral, and who obviously ignore the fact that their 'darling brother' was a mulatto himself:

[t]he aunts were queer. For all their Bibles and praying and ranting about honesty, they didn‟t want anyone to know that their darling brother has seduced – ruined, they called it – a Negro girl. They could excuse the ruin, but they couldn‟t forgive the tar brush. (189)

She is forbidden to mention Negroes to the neighbours, or even mention the South Side. She is shamelessly exploited by her Bible-bashing white aunts and cousins. She has to do endless domestic chores, like a slave. As Clare has got Negro blood in her veins, hard labour is good for her in the eyes of her bigoted relatives who "belonged to the generation that had written and read long articles headed: “Will the Blacks Work?”"(188) Thus Clare is very soon given the impression that she is something inferior, despite her ivory face and flawless white skin. As she has got "brains of a sort, the kind that are useful too. Acquisitive, you know"(249), she is determined to get away, to be a person, "not a charity or a problem"(188).

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Torn between two worlds, Clare, for about a year or more, occasionally steals herself away from her new home in order to visit friends and acquaintances on the South Side. With each succeeding visit there, she is "taller, shabbier [and] more belligerently sensitive"(181). One day she disappears completely. There are rumours, vague suspicions, sightings of Clare with unmistakably white and evidently rich men, and people reacting with lurking undertones of regret or disbelief, saying:

[p]oor girl, I suppose it‟s true enough, but what can you expect? Look at her father. And her mother, they say, would have run away if she hadn‟t died. Besides, Clare always had a - a – [sic] having way with her. (182)

A characteristic feature of Clare is 'her having way'. In order to get what she wants, she can be merciless. "Why, to get the things I want badly enough, I‟d do anything, hurt anybody, throw away anything, throw anything away"(240). Even as a little girl she makes sure that she gets what she wants, if only a "pathetic little red frock"(172), to be nicely dressed for her Sunday school picnic. Clare can be impulsive, affectionate, and soft, but at the same moment hard, rash, and malicious. She has a "strange capacity of transforming warmth and passion"(172) on the one hand, and on the other hand she is selfish and cold, fighting fearlessly and "savagely"(173) if necessary. Her „savageness‟ as well as her warm and passionate nature are stereotypical images seen as black, while selfishness and coldness may be attributed to her white genes. All these features reveal a rather ambivalent character. But Clare does not seem to have any racially ambiguous feelings. At least she suppresses them all. She has no moral doubts. She withdraws from all her childhood friends. She severs all racial ties. She disregards all the rumours circulating. She is determined to 'pass for white' to escape the degrading and humiliating conditions under which she has to live with her white relatives. But she demands more from life. She envies Irene her carefree childhood in wealth and prosperity, and wants to have her share. She is fully conscious of the fact that she is white and beautiful enough to be able to take the risk. And taking the risk is not really important to her, as she loves danger and challenge – which 'passing' necessarily involves. Facing danger and coping with it is another essential feature of Clare, who is "always on the edge of danger. Always aware, but not drawing back or turning aside"(172). For Clare, changing her racial identity is the only way out of the racial hell she has to grow up in

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on the one hand, and the entrance ticket into a wealthier and more pleasant life on the other hand. And nothing can prevent her from achieving her goal.

7.5.2.2 The Influence of Irene Redfield’s Childhood on Her Racial Ambiguity Irene‟s childhood is completely different from Clare‟s. There are hardly any details mentioned. Only that she grows up on the South Side in a black upper middle- class community. As the daughter of the elite Westovers, she is comfortable and secure. Her parents‟ origins are never revealed, but Irene is light-skinned enough to be able to 'pass as white'. Only her "warm olive cheeks"(174) and her brown eyes are indications of her mixed heritage. Her father knows Clare‟s father Bob Kendry very well. It is through this acquaintance that Irene gets to know Clare, who is a welcome guest at the Westovers‟. The two girls spend their childhood together. Nella Larsen does not provide any specific clues, but the friendship to Clare Kendry undoubtedly influences Irene subconsciously. There are some hints that Irene envies Clare her being so resolute, so determined to get what she wants. It is particularly Clare‟s determination to 'pass for white' that has a major impact on her. She secretly envies Clare, although she would never admit it. Clare vanishes very soon, but even without Clare‟s dominant presence Irene‟s ambiguous attitude towards her racially mixed heritage grows stronger and stronger in the course of time, when marriage and motherhood make her observe life in a different way.

7.5.2.3 The Influence of Irene’s Marriage on Her Racial Ambivalence As the daughter of the wealthy and influential Westovers, Irene is courted by the young doctor Brian Redfield. He proposes to her, and she finally marries him, as he can offer her the social status, the stability and security she is used to. She is well- off and well-established in the black upper middle class. In Irene, 'white' features prevail on the surface. She is a cool, rational person, dominated by the mind – hiding, concealing, and pretending all the time. She pretends to be content with her family, her social standard, and her commitment to various social activities. But this is actually a mask she is wearing. Behind this 67

façade, there lures the temptation to "break away from all that [is] familiar and friendly to take one‟s chance in another environment"(187), although she automatically associates this breaking away with the possibility that it might not be "entirely strange, but also not entirely friendly"(ibid.). She simply has not got the courage, the "little nerve"(ibid.), as Clare Kendry calls it. Irene would never risk her social position. Stability and safety are her major concerns despite the fact that she is not happy with them. She is torn between two lives. She is torn between two identities. She just pretends to be fully rooted in her black community. It is nothing but pretending and wearing a social mask. The hints Nella Larson drops are manifold. Irene‟s thoughts or statements are always connected with feelings of anger, scorn, fear, disturbance, and annoyance – emotions typical of a person utterly depressed and frustrated. In order to break out of that cage of black bourgeois complacency and boring monotony, she satisfies that quantum of 'white' blood in her by temporarily transgressing racial and social borders. Her racial ambivalence, whose origins are never mentioned, influences her to take this illicit step. It has a "fascination for her, strange and compelling"(190):

[i]t‟s funny about „passing‟. We disapprove of it and at the same time condone it. It excites our contempt and yet we rather admire it. We shy away from it with an odd kind of revulsion, but we protect it. (216)

Irene‟s husband supports her in her activity as the committee of the Negro Welfare Dance, which has the racial uplift of Negroes as its major objective. This role provides a splendid façade in the black community, but does not really give her satisfaction. But she is definitely proud of her two sons, one of whom is black, and the other one white – both the living testimony of her racially mixed lineage – although she is overburdened as a mother. Her husband Brian is a very tolerant person – which makes their marriage appear happier than it is – but there are a few instances where Irene‟s racially ambivalent character causes major trouble. One reason for constant "disastrous"(218) quarrelling is the education of their two sons. "I do wish, Irene, you wouldn‟t be forever fretting about those kids"(219), Brian Redford complains, and accuses her of mollycoddling them as far as certain subjects like sex and Negrohood are concerned. And this is exactly the point where Irene and Brian display their completely different attitudes with regard to their racial consciousness. Irene tries to

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reduce these topics to non-existence. She is not willing to talk about them, shutting off reality. Sex is a particular taboo subject. Like Helga Crane, Irene represses her sexuality so as to not be reduced to her sensual, animalistic, and primitive black roots. Brian, on the other hand, suffers from her frigidity, and appeals to her not to make such a fuss about sex when their younger son reports about dirty jokes at school. "Well, what of it? If sex isn‟t a joke, what is it? [...] The sooner and the more he learns about sex, the better for him"(220). Another absolute taboo topic is Negroes. Her own racial ambivalence has obviously made her so sensitive to the racial situation in America that she simply refuses to accept the inferiority of black people as shameful reality. But reality is catching up with her, and teaches her a lesson. Always having tried to avoid words like 'Negro' and 'nigger' when her kids are present, their younger son is completely upset when he is called a 'dirty nigger' at school one day. Brian, who detests the degrading and inhuman American racial classification system, but who faces reality, reproaches her:

[w]hat was the use of our trying to keep them from learning the word „nigger‟ and its connotations? They found out, didn‟t they? Because somebody called Junior a dirty nigger. (263)

But even this reproach does not help to convince Irene of her wrong attitude. "Just the same, you‟re not to talk to them about the race problem"(263), she tells her husband off. When arguing that she just wants to see her children happy, Brian cannot help using harsh words:

[a]t the expense of proper preparation for life and their future happiness, yes. And I‟d feel I hadn‟t done my duty by them if I didn‟t give them some inkling of what‟s before them. It‟s the least I can do. I wanted to get them out of this hellish place years ago. You wouldn‟t let me. I gave up the idea, because you objected. (264)

Brian is particularly angry because Irene fails to prepare their sons for life. Stubbornly, Irene has always rejected his intention to emigrate to Brazil to escape that racial madness in America, although she herself suffers terribly from racial inequality. "If, as you are so determined, they‟ve got to live in this damned country, they‟d better find out what sort of thing they‟re up against as soon as possible"(263), is Brian‟s harsh answer. And if Irene had been willing to leave Harlem and racist America, they could have avoided a question like that of their son Ted when Brian

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speaks bitterly about a lynching in the newspaper: "[d]ad, why is it that they only lynch colored people? [...] [W]hy are they afraid of „em?"(262-263) Brian faces reality; Irene ignores it in a very selfish way. Although she suffers from racially ambivalent feelings in a racially unfair environment, and although 'passing as white' constantly burdens her conscience, and endangers her privileged position, she is mainly concerned about her own security and stability, which is definitely guaranteed within her black community. And in a very hypocritical way she pretends to have 'her brethren‟s uplift' in mind.

7.5.2.4 The Impact of Clare’s Marriage on Her Racial Ambiguity Clare‟s marriage is entirely different. "[I]ntelligent enough in a purely feminine way"(248), she seizes the first opportunity to escape the ordeal of her white relatives. When Jack Bellew turns up from South America "with untold gold"(189), he falls in love with Clare. As nobody mentions that disgusting word 'Negro' in Clare‟s presence, but only "the severity and the religiousness of Aunt Grace and Aunt Edna"(ibid.), Jack Bellew marries Clare secretly when she is eighteen. "Nothing could have been easier"(183). Marrying a rich white international banking agent, and being tremendously good-looking, with not a single trait of 'blackness' – apart from her almost black eyes – Clare 'passes for white' and lives in Europe, at a safe distance from America. She enjoys wealth and comfort, and luckily has a white daughter, although her whole pregnancy is a single nightmare, as she is constantly afraid that a black baby might destroy all her illusions of a better future. The reason for her fear is her own husband, who knows nothing about her racially mixed origin, and who profoundly hates 'niggers', those "black scrimy devils"(202), as a few quotes below will prove. When Clare invites Irene and her friend Gertrude to tea, Jack Bellew turns up and shocks Clare‟s guests by welcoming her with "Hello Nig!"(200). Particularly Irene is mesmerised and flabbergasted, and cannot understand that Clare allows that "ridiculing of her race by an outsider"(ibid.); this insulting, offensive behaviour in the presence of "three black devils, drinking tea"(202). Clare plays it down, and asks her husband why he calls her like that.

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Well, you see, it‟s like this. When we were first married, she was as white as - as – well [sic], as white as a lily. But I declare, she‟s getting darker and darker. I tell her if she don‟t [sic] look out she‟ll wake up one of these days and find she‟s turned into a nigger. (200)

Jack Bellew displays a rather weird perception of race. He does not mind if Clare looks like a Negro, as long as he feels sure that her blood is not contaminated with a single drop of 'black' blood. When Clare asks him, "What difference would it make if, after all these years, you were to find out that I was one or two percent colored?"(201), Bellew in a definite and final gesture declares:

[o]h, no, Nig, nothing like that with me. I know you‟re no nigger, so it‟s all right. You can get black as you please as far as I‟m concerned, since I know you‟re no nigger. I draw the line at that. No niggers in my family. Never have been and never will be. (201)

It must be terribly disappointing for Clare to find out that only racial heritage counts for her husband; that all the years they have spent together, and their common daughter Margery, would mean nothing if he found out. When Irene asks Bellew if he dislikes Negroes, he answers:

[n]othing like that at all. I don‟t dislike them. I hate them. And so does Nig, for all she‟s trying to turn into one. She wouldn‟t have a nigger maid around her for love nor money. Not that I‟d want her to. (202)

Clare cleverly refuses to employ a black servant to satisfy her husband‟s dislike for 'niggers', but also not to be reminded of her own racial ties, as she can never rid herself completely of her black roots. Bellew terrifies Clare‟s guests when he carries on saying that he is glad never to have met any Negro. It is enough if he reads about them in the newspaper, "[a]lways robbing and killing people. And worse"(202). Bellew‟s hatred of the black race is so fierce that Clare has to be on the lookout all the time so as to not be detected. She later admits to her friends that she

[...] nearly died all the nine months before Margery was born for fear that she might be dark. Thank goodness, she turned out all right. But [she]‟ll never risk it again. Never! The strain is simply too much. (197)

And Clare adds, "It‟s only deserters like me who have to be afraid of freaks of nature. As my inestimable dad used to say, ‟Everything must be paid for‟"(198). Clare has to pay for her betrayal to the black race by living in constant fear of being detected – despite the fact that she is perfect at concealing – and by being isolated from everything that is familiar and black. But the more she is excluded from black people, the more she starts yearning for them. She cannot stand this feeling of 71

loneliness and isolation any more. She confesses to Irene that she has missed her terribly ever since she last saw her. "I‟ve been so lonely since! Not close to a single soul. Never anyone really to talk to"(227). Clare finally feels such a deep hate for her husband that she violently admits: "[d]amn Jack! He keeps me out of everything. Everything I want. I could kill him. I expect I shall, someday"(231). Jack Bellew has actually never made a secret of his racist attitude, but for years Clare has simply ignored it just to achieve her own goals. This dangerous situation even excited her. And in the safe distance of Europe, living as a white woman among white people, racism was no subject. And loyalty to the black race was no subject either. But back in America, Clare is fully confronted with her racially mixed heritage. This new situation is doomed to provoke escalation. And Clare realises that danger is flaring up. She finally admits to Irene, "Rene, I‟m not safe"(240), which implies that she is fully aware of the threat exercised by her husband, but it also implies that Clare is aware of the threat inherent in her. She will not stop at anything to pursue her aim, which is now mixing with black people again.

7.5.2.5 The Development of Irene Redfield’s and Clare Kendry’s Racial Ambiguity as the Novel Progresses The novel starts off with Irene Redfield receiving a letter. The description of the paper already includes a list of ambivalent hints:

[…] its almost illegible scrawl seemed out of place and alien [...] there was something mysterious and slightly furtive about it. A thin sly thing, which bore no return address to betray the sender. (172)

This letter – it turns out to be Clare‟s – indicates a cautious attitude to conceal any information about the person involved, so as to not be detected. The handwriting appears to be 'alien', from an outsider of this society. And the content of the letter reveals that its sender Clare is utterly unhappy in the world she is forced to live in. She admits that she hates

[...] this pale life [of hers] [...] all the time seeing the bright pictures of that other that [she] once thought [she] was glad to be free of […] It‟s like an ache, a pain that never ceases. (174)

It discloses that she is desperately yearning to return to the black community which she decided to leave in order to gain freedom and wealth. But she is suffering

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terrible, incessant pain instead. She is haunted by memories of a happier time. She definitely wants to see Irene again, certainly as a connecting link to the black world, but Irene is not really keen on meeting her, and forgets about it. One day Irene Redfield is on a visit to Chicago. There she can satisfy her longing for all the materialistic values the white society provides, without anybody knowing her. Though Irene embodies perfect womanhood within the black community, displaying correctness and integrity, she cannot resist transgressing illegitimate borders every now and then to satisfy the 'white' blood in her. But she maintains that she 'passes as white' just for the sake of pleasure in order to enjoy the things Negroes are excluded from:

I don‟t believe I‟ve ever gone native in my life except for the sake of convenience, restaurants, theatre tickets, and things like that. Never socially, I mean, except once. (260)

Having enjoyed her excursion into the white world, as usual, she decides to finish off her shopping tour with a cup of tea on the roof top of the noble Drayton Hotel. She is sitting there elegantly dressed with flawless make-up – her masquerade to round off the impression of a perfect white lady – when she feels being intensely watched by an attractive woman with dark, almost black, "strange languorous eyes"(178). Irene notices her ivory skin and her extravagant clothing. Knowing that she is doing something illegal, an "inner disturbance, odious and hatefully familiar"(ibid.) rises in her, which indicates that she has already experienced that feeling of insecurity and exposure before, and that she has already 'passed' before. She blushes under the continued inspection of the other woman, and makes sure that her 'masquerade' is fixed. Irene hardly dares to do so, but when she looks up for a moment, her brown eyes return the look of the other woman‟s black eyes, "which never fell or wavered"(ibid.). Irene is absolutely fascinated by her beauty and simply cannot resist the lure of her eyes:

[a]nd the eyes were magnificent! Dark, sometimes almost absolutely black, always luminous […] Arresting eyes, slow and mesmeric, and with, for all their warmth, something withdrawn and secret about them […] Ah! Surely! They were Negro eyes! Mysterious and concealing. And set in that ivory face there was about them something exotic. (191)

Nothing can express Clare‟s racially mixed heritage more than her mysteriously dark eyes in her ivory face, both of which can be seen as the 'perfect' attributes of each race.

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It is interesting to compare the reaction of the two women when they observe each other. It shows how differently they handle their racially ambivalent nature when transgressing the 'color line'. Clare does not reveal a single sign of embarrassment. Her eyes don‟t fall or waver. But turbulent feelings arise in Irene when she looks into Clare‟s eyes:

[d]id that woman, could that woman, somehow know that here before her very eyes on the roof of the Drayton sat a Negro? Absurd! Impossible! White people were so stupid […] They always took her for an Italian, a Spaniard, a Mexican, a Gipsy. Never, when she was alone had they even remotely seemed to suspect that she was a Negro. (178)

Irene, who believes that the woman looking at her is white, is more or less sure that she cannot know that she is a Negro woman who just 'passes as white', because white people would never ever suspect her of being black. They, in Irene‟s eyes, are stupid enough "to identify black people by the typical stereotypes of fingernails, palms of hands, shapes of ears, teeth, and other equally silly rot"(178). And she feels anger, scorn, and fear slide over her. She pretends not to be ashamed of being a Negro, which is not true, but what she really fears is being thrown out of the Drayton. However polite and tactful that would be, she would not be able to stand the shame. The way in which she keeps looking at Irene manifests that Clare has got used to being stared at, without any shame or pangs of conscience, while Irene has not, and probably never will, as her blushing proves. Clare, despite her irresistible charm and her warm-heartedness, is an unscrupulous woman who pursues her goal until she gets what she wants, and she does this with consistency and conviction. Irene does not express her thoughts, but she is fascinated by some "quality, an intangible something, too vague to define, too remote to seize, but which was, to Irene Redfield, very familiar"(180). This is again an allusion to the racially ambivalent nature of both women; an allusion that they share something that they both try to conceal. Irene soon learns that the charismatic woman is Clare, her childhood friend from days long gone. Irene starts telling Clare about the past twelve years; her marriage, her family, her friends and acquaintances. She observes that Care "drank it all in, these things which she had wanted to know and hadn‟t been able to learn"(184), and that she is listening with radiant, glistening, and happy eyes. It signifies how lonely Clare apparently feels despite all the riches she has accumulated, and the description of these illuminated eyes proves that Clare‟s bonds, her ties to her black folk, have not been torn. 74

Irene intends to invite Clare home, but she is irritated at the thought of the reaction of her black neighbourhood. It reminds very much of Mrs. Hayes-Rore‟s attitude when she advises Helga not to tell anybody in Harlem about her 'white' blood, as Negro society disapproves of topics like miscegenation, and considers black people who 'pass for white' as disloyal traitors. And Clare, very sensitive, refuses her invitation, pretending not to have time, thus taking the horror out of Irene‟s dilemma. But she does this with an ivory mask behind which lurks "scornful amusement"(186), and Irene senses that she has been detected, that Clare has guessed her thoughts. In her unscrupulous 'having way', Clare does not mind how people react. Only Irene fears that her dignified position within the black community might suffer from it. Despite the awkwardness of the situation, Irene is curious to learn more about this "hazardous business of passing"(187). It exemplifies that crossing illegal racial borders is dangerous, but it also exemplifies Irene‟s hidden desire to try and find out herself, although she would never admit it. "No. Why should I? You see, Clare I‟ve everything I want. Except, perhaps, a little more money"(190). With this remark Irene also reflects her greed for materialistic values. All of Larsen‟s heroines share this craving. They all love to accumulate pretty things as a compensation for their omnipresent emotional conflict. To her surprise, Irene learns that "[i]t‟s such a frightfully easy thing to do. If one‟s the type, all that is needed is a little nerve"(187). Clare, with her dogged determination to get what she wants and her love of danger, is the ideal 'type'. Irene, with her self-consciousness and her love of stability, would be doomed to fail. When Irene inquires how white people reacted to her "drop[ping] down on people from nowhere"(ibid.) when she spontaneously decided to 'pass for white', Clare replies: "[y]ou‟d be surprised, ‟Rene, how much easier that is with white people than with us. Maybe […] because they are secure and so don‟t bother"(ibid.). Negroes would never accept another Negro 'passing for white'. They would never tolerate this person‟s disloyalty to their race. Their feeling of belonging together as a race is much stronger; "[t]hat instinctive loyalty to the race"(260), as Irene calls it. Irene is a bit vexed by Clare having "so low an opinion of her loyalty"(193). But Clare – so "appealing, so very seductive"(194) – manages to convince Irene and their common friend Gertrude to turn up for tea at Clare‟s house. Gertrude is another 75

mulatta woman who married a white man, but differently from Clare, her husband knew about her being a Negro from the very beginning. Irene disapproves strongly of Gertrude, as marrying a white man is another disgusting breach of loyalty to the race in Irene‟s eyes. Irene‟s racial consciousness and racial pride, despite her occasional 'passings', is much higher than that of her two friends. She feels terribly annoyed by Gertrude‟s presence and "a feeling of being outnumbered, a sense of aloneness, in her adherence to her own class and kind"(193) besets her. Clare and Gertrude are deserters in Irene‟s eyes who have nothing but their own advantages in mind. Gertrude is another example of mixed marriage, but she differs completely from Irene and Clare. Her husband and his white relatives accept her the way she is. While Clare‟s white husband would have divorced or even killed Clare if she had had a black baby, Gertrude‟s white husband reassured her during her pregnancy not to worry at all, when she panicked at the mere thought of giving birth to a black baby. Even her white mother-in-law would not have minded a black grandchild. Only Gertrude herself was scared to death. Despite her mixed ancestry she would not have been able to accept a black child. She has white twin boys, but the very thought that that small percentage of 'black' blood in her might skip generations and then pop out and ruin her happy life, terrifies her. Gertrude profoundly hates her black roots, and when Irene tells her that one of her boys is black, and that she is very proud of him,

[...] Gertrude jumped as if she had been shot. Her eyes goggled. Her mouth flew open. She tried to speak but could not immediately get the words out: „Oh! And your husband, is he – is he – er – dark too?‟(198)

Gertrude‟s racial consciousness is strange and hypocritical. She lives among white people, but surrounds herself with racially mixed friends. What obviously only counts for her is visible 'whiteness'. She simply tries to ignore that drop of 'black' blood in herself completely, which she actually cannot, as it keeps haunting her. Another example of how differently the three women handle their race consciousness is revealed when their conversation is all of a sudden interrupted by Jack Bellew, who welcomes Clare with the words "‟Hello, Nig!‟"(200), already mentioned above. When he then starts scoffing at Negroes, degrading, and ridiculing them, Gertrude gives way to gales of laughter about his "priceless joke"(201) that one

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day Clare will wake up as a nigger. Irene, on the other hand, is torn by "anger, mortification, [and] shame"(204). She desperately tries to suppress all these feelings behind an unrevealing mask, just not to betray Clare. Irene is upset about Clare‟s impudence to expose her to such a situation. She has never been humiliated more in all her life without being given a chance to defend herself. She is sure that Clare knew that such an embarrassing situation might flare up in her husband‟s presence, but she simply did not care. And although Irene feels like a traitor to her race, she keeps her mouth shut, and leaves. Irene has long known that Clare is "taking a chance, and not at all considering anyone‟s feelings"(205). And she is not at all reconciled when she receives a letter from Clare just before her departure for New York:

[i]t may be, „Rene, it may just be, that, after all, your way may be the wiser and infinitely happier one. I‟m not sure just now. At least not so sure as I have been. ( 208)

It is surprising that Clare, who seems to have achieved everything she wanted in her acquisitive nature, obviously envies Irene‟s decision to opt for black and to remain within the black community. She has actually always envied Irene. Irene now learns that she had been the trigger for Clare‟s decision to 'pass for white', because Irene on the South Side "had all the things she wanted and never had had"(188). Back home, Irene still finds it hard to sympathise with that "avowed yearning of Clare‟s for [her] own people"(212). And she starts thinking about her. The lines Clare dropped rouse that old suspicion in her that Clare is only acting, "not too consciously – but, none the less acting"(ibid.). And she still finds it hard to forgive herself because she had "failed to take up the defense of the race to which she belonged"(ibid.), but she realises that she "had toward Clare Kendry a duty. She was bound to her by those very ties of race which, for all her repudiation of them, Clare had been unable to completely sever"(213).These ties of race are an obligation for Irene not to betray Clare. This racial bond is inextinguishable, even though Clare denies it, and even though Irene loathes defending Clare. But she comes to hate Clare‟s manipulating manner. She knows that Clare is a perfect actress. Behind her unrevealing mask it is impossible to detect the slightest emotion. She is so inscrutable, so calculating. Irene eventually realises that they have nothing in common:

[a]ctually they were strangers. Strangers in their ways and means of living. Strangers in their desires and ambitions. Strangers even in their racial consciousness. Between them the barrier

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was just as high, just as broad. And just as firm as if in Clare did not run that strain of black blood. (222)

The awkward situation at Clare‟s house has opened Irene‟s eyes. She recognises that despite the unbreakable bond of their 'black' blood, their racial consciousness is too different to be bridged. And for all these reasons Irene is determined not to be "the link between her and her poorer, darker brethren"(216), as she knows that this will only mean trouble. And yet Clare starts visiting Irene and Harlem more regularly to satisfy her yearning for her own race, as she feels so utterly lonely. When she tells Irene "You don‟t know, you can‟t realise how I want to see Negroes, to be with them again, to talk with them, to hear them laugh"(231), Irene has her doubts about the sincerity of Clare‟s intention. Brian, on the other hand, believes it to be honest when he says, "They always come back. I‟ve seen it happen again and again"(215), although he has no plausible explanation for it. "If [he] knew that, [he]‟d know what race is"(216). It is this inexplicable voice of the 'black' blood. It creates an indestructible, inseparable bond. Yet this coming back to the roots is always a "dangerous business"(226). Brian has seen "more than one come to grief"(ibid.), and he advises Clare to be as careful as she can. "It‟s not safe. Not safe at all"(226). But Clare simply dismisses this warning, saying "Well, then, what does it matter? One risk more or less, if we‟re not safe anyway […] Besides, I‟m used to risks"(ibid.). What Clare wants to express is that her whole life has been a single risk ever since she decided to 'pass for white'. She even ignores Irene‟s warning concerning her daughter Margery, because if her husband finds out about her mixed race, the girl‟s life will not be the same any more. She will not forgive her mother because she will be haunted by the thought of being the offspring of miscegenation; she will be doomed to live a racially ambiguous life, despised by her own father for having 'nigger' blood in her veins. But Clare in her reckless and selfish way does not even care about her own daughter. "Children aren‟t everything"(240), she declares later. Despite all these warnings, Clare decides to join Irene for the N.W.L. Dance, which is a major attraction in Harlem every year. Even hundreds of white people come to join the event. So many that Brian says, "Pretty soon the colored people won‟t be allowed in at all, or will have to sit in Jim Crowed sections"(229). It is another outburst of Brian‟s hatred for this 'damned 'country he so desperately would

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love to leave for the racial freedom offered in South America. With Brian‟s remarks, Nella Larsen reveals her sharp criticism of the dehumanising conditions of black people under strict segregation laws. Harlem is described as the centre of the New Negro Movement, where a new Negro elite of Harlem artists is generally acknowledged, even by "white people of Hugh Wentworth‟s type"(ibid.). Clare is surprised that a man like him is present, but Irene answers, "[it‟s] the year 1927 in the city of New York"(ibid.), insinuating that, luckily, a lot has changed in the public awareness as far as Negrohood is concerned, and she says this with a "tiny triumphant smile"(ibid.) on her face. Irene and Wentworth watch Clare, "fair and golden, like a sunlit day"(235), dancing with a "fascinatingly handsome […] ravishingly beautiful"(236) Negro, and they start a very interesting conversation. Irene claims that they obviously feel

[...] a kind of emotional excitement […] the sort of thing you feel in the presence of something strange, and even, perhaps, a bit repugnant to you; something so different that it‟s really at the opposite end of the pole from all your accustomed notions of beauty. (236)

Wentworth fully understands Irene‟s allusion to the bond of race that unmistakably connects them, that "feeling of kinship"(237). Irene is surprised that Wentworth can apparently "tell the sheep from the goats"(ibid.), but when his eyes of a "clouded amber color"(ibid.) give her a long searching look, Irene all of a sudden knows that Wentworth has transgressed the 'color line' himself. And it must be his own racial ambiguity that lures him back to Harlem, where his black roots are. When Wentworth agrees that "lots of people ‟pass‟ all the time"(237), Irene subliminally answers, "not on our side, Hugh. It‟s easy for a Negro to „pass‟ for white. But I don‟t think it would be so simple for a white person to „pass‟ for colored"(ibid.). This indication may imply that Wentworth has lived among white people already too long, and that despite his racial ambivalence he cannot swap his life for living in the black community again. He can only satisfy his inherent feeling for 'blackness' dropping by in Harlem from time to time. After the N.W.L. Dance has passed without any of the numerous petty inconveniences that Irene had expected, a new friendship between Irene and Clare develops, only to be interrupted and finally fall apart due to Clare‟s 'having way'. In this particular case, Clare establishes too close a contact with Brian, who is lured by her sensual and sexual attraction. As far as her sexuality is concerned, Clare does

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not have any racially ambiguous feelings at all to be classified as black and animalistic. She lives her sexuality freely, and changes her male acquaintances every now and then, disregarding anybody‟s feelings. Clare‟s behaviour is embarrassing and irritating to Irene. She simply does not know how to react, but at the same time she knows she has to. Irene is caught between

[...] two allegiances, different, yet the same. Herself. Her race. Race! The thing that bound and suffocated her. Whatever steps she took, or if she took none at all, something would be crushed. A person or the race. (258)

In order to keep Clare at bay, she would have to tell Clare‟s husband and disclose Clare‟s 'true' identity. This would mean betraying Clare, betraying those bonds of race that tie them together. Not telling Clare‟s husband would mean that she would have to sacrifice herself. The racial ties apparently seem to outweigh the other considerations, although she can hardly bear the burden imposed on her. Being born a Negro is like a curse for her:

Irene Redfield wished, for the first time in her life that she had not been born a Negro. For the first time in her life she suffered and rebelled because she was unable to disregard the burden of race. It was […] enough to suffer as a woman, an individual, on one‟s own account, without having to suffer for the race as well. It was brutality and undeserved. Surely no other people so cursed as Ham‟s dark children. (258)

She has to suffer terribly because she now realises that she has made a huge mistake by playing out her dominance, and by repressing her own sexuality, thus exposing her husband to the lures of other sexually more attractive women. This would be suffering enough. But it is nothing compared to the ordeal when betraying her own race. Absolutely torn, Irene hopes that Jack Bellew will find out himself that his wife "had a touch of the tar brush"(258), so that she will not have to get involved in any way. But worse things are to come, and Irene is given the final blow when Clare turns up at her home, as she usually does, declaring that even if her husband is to find out, she will do what she wants to do more than anything else right now. She will come up to Harlem. With this announcement, Irene knows that she has lost. She cannot compete with Clare. She realises for the first time that for her whole life she has wanted security and stability, believing that a family with two sons would guarantee this. She also realises that for the sake of these values she has sacrificed all other things like "love, happiness, or some wild ecstasy that she had never known"(267). She has actually sacrificed all those qualities of life that make life 80

worthwhile, and they are all inherent in the black race. Irene is confronted with the bitter truth that she has deceived herself. She has denied and repressed all the desirable characteristics of the race she never wanted to betray. Her latent desire to be white has crushed the most essential black values. Pretending to be loyal, she has actually denied her own race at the same time. All things considered, Irene is the embodiment of racial ambiguity. The novel reaches its climax when Jack Bellew dashes into the room shouting at Clare in rage and pain "So, you‟re a nigger, a damned dirty nigger!"(271), and when in the following confusion, Clare mysteriously falls to her death out of the open window.

7.5.2.6 Mask and Masquerade in the Novel Nella Larsen applies the technique of 'mask' and 'masquerade' quite frequently in her novels. In Passing it is an essential device both her racially mixed protagonists use to hide their 'true' identities so as to not be unmasked, unveiled, and detected. While Irene pretends to be cool and reserved, to have her emotions under control, she in reality represses them all, and continuously hides behind a mask that serves as a shield to protect her inner self on the one hand, and to cover up sensations like scorn, anger, outrage, and contempt, on the other hand. Irene‟s mask serves to keep the image of a perfect lady of the black upper middle class alive. It is Irene‟s main objective never to get unmasked. She is actually constantly wearing an invisible stiff mask, even when among people of her race where she seeks to play the proper role as a 'race-woman'. She is always acting, performing, and pretending. Dressing is normally a pleasurable activity, but for Irene garments are not enjoyable masquerade; they serve as the necessary tool for her social identity. Irene‟s discomfort in performing her social role is represented in her dislike and slowness in dressing. She never manages to be ready in time. Performing the role of a bourgeois lady all the time, and living up to everybody‟s expectations, suffocates her. Gradually, dressing turns out to be a painful disguise for Irene. Irene also wears a mask when she transcends the borders of the 'color line' in her temporary 'passings'. In these situations her mask is less stiff. It is a friendly, pleasant mask, because she really enjoys these moments. It is a mask, though, 81

because she has to pretend to be a white woman, and to behave like one. Her whole body is masked; she is actually 'wearing a white body' then, displaying all the typical behavioural patterns of white womanhood. To enhance the impression she achieves through her 'performing as white', she dresses elegantly the way white women do, choosing her dresses very carefully. 'Passing' into the white world primarily requires a perfect outward appearance. Fashion in this case satisfies her need to cover up her racial identity, and it is the ideal means to meet these demands. She is less likely to be detected in beautiful clothes. Perfect make-up to go with her clothing is an absolute must. She keeps applying powder to hide any blemish. Perfect fashion plus perfect make-up form a perfect 'masquerade' for her to enter the white society, and to conceal her 'true' racial identity, although Irene can never rid herself of a guilty conscience and a feeling of insecurity when doing it. Clare Kendry, on the other hand, is the natural embodiment of perfection. Throughout the novel, Nella Larsen points out her immaculate beauty. Actually everything is perfect about her: her 'mesmerising, languorous eyes'; her 'ivory skin'; 'her golden hair'; her perfect body. And to top off the impression you get from her unblemished outward appearance, Clare knows how to dress perfectly as well. Clare is a little devil in disguise, but she acts like a perfect lady. Her mouth never expresses what she thinks or feels. This would not be ladylike. It is her eyes that take over this function. Just by looking down, her beautiful eye-lashes hide the least notion of anger or any upcoming emotion. Her fascinating dark eyes are her biggest weapon in her battle to achieve anything she wants, and they hardly ever 'fall or waver'. Her camouflage is so brilliant that even Irene – who is confident that she can recognise any 'passer' – is deceived by the perfect impression she leaves, and she cannot identify Clare‟s true racial origin at the Drayton Hotel. Her flawless make-up as well as her stylish wardrobe round off an impeccable whole, "too good to be true" (Larsen Quicksand: 76) to quote Helga Crane when she sees Anne Grey for the first time. Clare‟s whole appearance is a masquerade that transforms her identity without the slightest doubt in the eyes of the beholder. But her outward appearance merely reflects her inner stability and self-assertion. This brilliant 'white' façade only starts to crumble when she cannot suppress her yearning for her black people any more.

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I have now chosen a few quotations from the novel which include hints at 'masking' in order to confirm my statements: • Irene had an offended feeling that "behind what was now only an ivory mask lurked a scornful amusement"(186); • Irene‟s "voice did not tremble […] outwardly she was calm"(203); • Irene could not believe that four people could sit together "so ostensibly friendly, while they were in reality seething with anger, mortification, shame"(204); • Irene answered, "her scornful eyes on Clare‟s unrevealing face"(ibid.); • Irene Redfield was trying to understand the look on Clare‟s face, "Partly mocking […] partly menacing […] for which she could find no name"(206); • "[i]t roused again that old suspicion that Clare was acting, not consciously, perhaps – that is, not too consciously – but, none the less, acting"(212); • "[s]atisfied that there lingered no betraying evidence of weeping, she dusted a little powder on her dark-white face and again examined it carefully, and with a kind of ridiculing contempt"(251); • "Clare‟s ivory face was what it always was, beautiful and caressing, or maybe today a little masked. Unrevealing. Unaltered and undisturbed by any emotion within or without"(253); • Irene did not take Jack Bellew‟s hand. "Instinctively, in the first glance of recognition, her face had become a mask"(259).

7.8 Conclusion Passing, as the title implies, is primarily a novel about 'passing', which means you accept a different racial identity from the one you are actually supposed to have, at least according to the race regulations in America in those days. Being of mixed race, Irene‟s and Clare‟s contrasting black and white genes interfere with each other, and irrefutably lead to identity trouble. They can keep them under control, but they can never deny or ignore them. Not being able to rid themselves of their racially ambivalent feelings, they are both seduced to transgress the racial borders of the 'color line', but they do it in a different way.

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Irene 'passes' occasionally to shake off the burden of the social role she is expected to play in her black community, and to satisfy the 'white' blood in her in order to come to terms with her racially ambivalent feelings. Although Irene is never confronted with racial prejudice, she can never silence the voice of her „white‟ blood. It keeps haunting her. There are three reasons that prevent her from 'passing' permanently, as this thought keeps boggling her mind. On the one hand it is her lack of courage, that 'little nerve' that Clare has got; on the other hand it is her strong ties of loyalty to the black race which she cannot sever; and last but not least it is her desire for stability and recognition in the black community which she would never endanger. Clare 'passes' permanently – at least as long as her 'black' blood does not call her back – to enjoy the pleasures and the wealth restricted to a 'white' society, and to flee from racial prejudice and discrimination. As she becomes the victim of fierce racism among white relatives, she can only escape the hatred and contempt of her white environment by 'passing for white'. As a rather calculating person, her greed for materialistic values is much higher than her loyalty to the race, although even her bonds to her black roots are indestructible. In her manipulating and unscrupulous way, she would do anything to get what she wants. Loyalty to the race does not count a lot for her. 'Passing' – permanently or occasionally – implies hiding, concealing, and living in constant fear of being detected. Crossing racial borders is a crime. 'Passers' have to disguise themselves to cover their 'true' racial identity. They either wear a repressive mask or a pleasurable masquerade to protect their 'true' racial identity in a society where miscegenation is a shameful violation of a law. Irene and Clare do take a lot of pains to 'pass' as white ladies. Both meet the demands brilliantly. Their masquerade is always perfect, and no white person would ever question their identity, but Irene‟s bad racial conscience makes it much more painful for her. Clare never has a bad conscience, and she merely enjoys fooling her white environment with her stunning performance. 'Passing' also requires wearing a mask to be able to hide your thoughts and emotions so as not to reveal your 'true' identity. Because when you are detected, you are an even bigger outsider, even more marginal than before. And even in this respect Irene and Clare differ a lot. 84

Irene is constantly plagued by the feeling that she is doing something illegal. She feels insecure and ashamed, although she cannot help doing it. She is incessantly afraid that somebody might read her thoughts, as she knows that she is not good at all at hiding her emotions. She blushes when being watched, and she always has that tantalising feeling of being 'unveiled'. She lives in constant fear that somebody might recognise the Negro in her. She hides behind a stiff and 'aching' mask. And she is never safe, as her mask might always betray her. Clare, on the other hand, has her body and mind under control. She has learned to suppress the slightest sign of any racially ambiguous emotion. She does not allow any feeling to emerge that might betray her. Even in the presence of her racist husband, her iron nerves do not give her secret away. She is so determined and self-assured that not even a 'passer' like Irene can detect her. Clare does not really hide behind a mask; her whole self is an unrevealing mask that would never ever betray her. But in the end even Clare succumbs to the lure of her 'black' blood. Racially ambivalent feelings surface again and again. All her ambitions seem to be forgotten. She becomes obsessed with the idea to return home to her black community, where her racial roots are. Yet returning is not as easy as Clare imagines it to be. 'Blackness' is linked to a high code of honour. 'Passing' is equated with having deserted and having betrayed the race. This disloyalty has to be punished. Clare‟s fall out of the window is her punishment. Even though the real cause of her death remains unknown, what counts is her death. Irene is not able to come to terms with her racially mixed ancestry either. It keeps reminding her of her black and white roots. Not being able to silence her 'white' blood, she crosses illegitimate racial borders, committing treason, too. Her punishment is not death, but she will be caught in the distressing dilemma of her bi- racial heritage for the rest of her life, incapable of getting out of this vicious circle. Nella Larsen can convey this plight so convincingly because the same problem of a racially mixed lineage, of a split identity, accompanied her throughout her life. Like Clare, she tried to achieve success and recognition in the white world, but ended up in complete isolation and loneliness, never having solved her identity problem.

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8. Jessie Redmon Fauset

8.1 Jessie Redmon Fauset: Her Life, Her Career, and Her World

Views Jessie Redmon Fauset was born into an affluent 'Old Philadelphia' family of long established free blacks in 1882. This social status granted her a position in the upper Negro society, which closely resembled the white middle class. After the early death of her mother and the remarriage of her father to a white woman, she had a harmonious childhood, followed by a profound educational career. In 1900 Fauset graduated with honours from the high school for girls in Philadelphia, despite the fact that she was the only coloured girl in school. Her first attempt to study at a university failed as she was denied access due to her skin colour. But she finally managed to graduate with distinction from Cornell University, where she studied languages and English literature. Fauset was the first African American woman to earn a degree at Cornell before the 1920s, and she was also the first black woman to be elected a member of Phi Beta Kappa, an academic honour society. After her studies she intended to start a teaching career in Philadelphia, but was again denied the position because of her race. The constant discrimination she faced was to have a major impact on her future life as an ardent fighter for racial equality. She eventually managed to get a job in Washington D.C, where she taught French and Latin for 14 years in an all black public school before accepting a tempting job offer as a literary editor in New York. In 1919 Jessie Fauset was recruited by W.E.B. DuBois as a literary editor of The Crisis, the famous and influential magazine of the NAACP (The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), where she fervently promoted the work of established and new black writers. Besides her work as a literary editor, Fauset hosted salons and literary circles where literature and poetry were discussed among black intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance in order to support new talents. The most famous black artists Fauset promoted are without any doubt Jean Toomer and Langston Hughes. Because of her ardent literary aspiration towards black artists and their works, Fauset is considered the "midwife" (Beringer 2007: 18) of the New

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Negro literature of the Harlem Renaissance. Apart from her job as an editor, Fauset started her own writing career. Her four major novels are: There Is Confusion (1924), Plum Bun (1929), The Chinaberry Tree (1931), and Comedy: American Style (1934). As Fauset published four novels, she is regarded as the most published novelist of the Harlem Renaissance. We have to consider that – for a black and female author – this was a pioneering achievement. Fauset was an extraordinarily well-educated, cultured, and sophisticated woman. Although her novels are significant, her primary contribution to the Harlem Renaissance results from her years as the editor of The Crisis. She contributed literary articles to this magazine as she believed in "the power of art to effect change in people bound by trained prejudice and discrimination" (Sylvander 1981: 160). Fauset had to face some initial problems to get her novels published. The book market – mainly dominated by white publishers – thought that her topics would not conform to the tastes of their white readerships. Novels like Nigger Heaven by the white author Van Vechten were bestselling novels as they dealt with the exoticism, sensuality, and primitivism of the black race, the so called "black 'underworld'" (McDowell 1995: 72). But Fauset was not willing to adapt to that discriminating conventional image of the 'primitive' Negro. After several refusals, she finally managed to convince her publishers, and her books appeared on the market. According to Fauset‟s vision, black people would have to prove their qualities by abandoning their African American language and their traditional image of being subordinate to white society. Fauset tries to introduce this vision in her works by depicting middle-class black characters, and by creating a world that parallels the white middle class bourgeoisie. In order to avoid the common stereotypes that characterise blacks as instinctive, non-intellectual, lazy, and sensual, she grants her characters only a minimum of sexuality, but a respectable degree of rationality. Particularly the female protagonists in her novels are described as either fastidious and cold, or extremely naive with regard to sexuality. As far as her male characters are concerned, Fauset creates black men that incarnate important values of the well- brought up and cultured 'new' American, embodying the major characteristics of being proud, loyal, sophisticated, independent, and generous. Moreover, she pays great attention to the language of her characters. All her well-educated central figures of blacks speak perfect Standard English. Dialect and 'darkie language' are entirely 87

neglected in her works, as these features would reinforce the image of the 'primitive' Negro. Actually, all her black main protagonists can serve as a role model for the spirit of the New Negro Movement that Jessie Fauset ardently supports.

8.2 Plum Bun: A Critical Overview Plum Bun was written in 1929. When the book was published, most readers were expecting a novel similar to the Van Vechten novel Nigger Heaven. As a matter of fact, Fauset was effectively teasing the commercial expectations. Already the title implies subtle sexual expectation, as she employs literary duplicity, so called 'double- entendres', by using a food metaphor which is considered the equivalent of sex (cf. Gallego 2003: 25). Moreover, although there are no explicit sexual scenes in the novel, it is full of innuendoes that play intentionally with the reader‟s imagination. Plum Bun offers multiple dimensions, as Fauset uses four different genres: the romance, the 'passing' tradition, the fairy tale, and the nursery rhyme. • The romance deals with Angela‟s real love for Anthony Cross and their future marriage, a love that is finally fulfilled in a round-about way. • In the 'passing' tradition, Angela crosses the 'color line', and 'passes for white' in order to gain the privileges and opportunities that are restricted to whites. • The genre of the fairy tale is transparent in Angela‟s ambitions. She keeps dreaming of her white prince charming to come and save her. Fairy tales have a major impact on the protagonist‟s and her sister‟s lives, as their mother always finished them with the words: "[a]nd so they lived happily ever after, just like your father and me!" (Fauset Plum Bun: 33) • Fauset uses the well-known nursery rhyme To Market, To Market to structure her novel into five sections: HOME, TO MARKET, PLUM BUN, HOME AGAIN, and MARKET IS DONE. The section HOME describes the harmonious Murray household and Angela‟s gradual process of detachment from her racial ties. In the section TO MARKET, the heroine decides to go to New York to seize her chance and 'pass for white'. The section PLUM BUN contains two specific moments in Angela‟s life: her getting acquainted with white Americans in her art class, and the highlight, 88

the desired relationship with the wealthy white man, Roger Fielding, who seems to be the key to her desires of "the great rewards of life – riches, glamour, pleasure"(17). Bit by bit this illusion of the perfect white world is destroyed through the development of the narration, and replaced by an alternative African American concept of life. In HOME AGAIN, Angela realises her failure, and reconciles herself with her sister Virginia. The final section MARKET IS DONE merely deals with Angela‟s realisation that colour does not count, and her public announcement that she is coloured. If we have a closer look at the structure of the novel, we can see traditional features of a "Bildungsroman" (Champion 2000: 103) dealing with the process of maturation. A process that involves repeated clashes between the heroine‟s needs and desires, and finally ends with the protagonist‟s assessment of herself and her place in society. Angela has finally come to terms with herself. Being black and female was a major handicap in a world of white publishers and white critics, which is the reason that Jessie Redmon Fauset‟s novel Plum Bun received mixed reviews. Some critics dismissed Plum Bun as "naive and romantic endowed artistic scant" (Gallego 2003: 26); others considered her work quite innovative, as Fauset "is interrogating old forms and inventing something new" (Butler 1993: 109). Particularly after the feminist revival in the 1970s, when many works of formerly neglected black women writers were re-examined, Fauset‟s novels aroused interest, and therefore gained closer attention. Fauset became considered "a modern apostle of black pride" (Wilbert 1986), and Plum Bun was said to contain a social message that involves the dynamic of race, class, and gender hierarchies. The reason for the difference in opinion is based on the fact that Fauset revolutionised literature by hiding her messages under a multilayered surface of indirect strategies and narrative disguise. That is why Fauset‟s critique of the prevailing system of racial and sexual prejudice in the US – under a mask of narrative techniques – was often misunderstood. Fauset‟s heroine in Plum Bun is Angela Murray, a light-skinned mulatta who 'passes for white'. Using the trope of 'passing', Fauset is able to present both in her literature: a taboo and a synthesis. Breaking the miscegenation laws, the figure of the mulatta symbolises the breaking of a social taboo, but it can also be used as an allegory for the racially divided society as a whole. In other terms, Fauset is capable 89

of criticising the 'color line' and its strict segregation system under the cover of the mulatta character. Moreover, Fauset explores the dichotomy between appearance and reality by using the mulatta figure as a twofold metaphor. From one point of view, the novelist makes use of the mulatta figure as a convenient representation of African American women caught in the dilemma of racial ambiguity, and their constant struggle for racial identity and sexuality. From another point of view, Fauset uses the 'mulatta figure' to investigate the phenomenon of 'double consciousness' and the racial and social conditions that derive from it. By this means, Plum Bun is not just a novel of 'passing', where the heroine 'passes for white', as was often argued. It is a profound novel containing hidden criticism of the social plight of the American class system, disclosing America‟s shameful racial and sexual politics.

8.3 Plot Summary The novel opens with a description of the Murray household, which consists of the black husband Junius, his light-skinned mulatta wife Mattie, and their two children Angela and Virginia. Living in a black community district in Philadelphia, where the Murray family is a vision of harmony, unity and stability, the light-skinned Angela and her younger and dark sister Virginia spend a protected childhood. When the two sisters get older, Virgina turns out to be the more family-oriented one. She admires the life of her parents, and longs for the same fulfilment of marriage and love in her future, whereas Angela is looking forward to seeing the world and tasting the pleasures of life, particularly of the white world. On Saturday afternoons, Angela and her mother play their usual game of 'passing' in the city. As both of them have a light and creamy complexion, the two women can easily 'pass for white'. Those moments in town, surrounded by the glamour of white America, evoke a strong desire in Angela to become part of this life. After her parents‟ death, Angela finally decides to 'pass for white'. She leaves for New York, where she can start a new life as a white woman. She changes her name into Angèle Mory, breaking entirely with her past as a black woman. She is initially overwhelmed by the atmosphere of cosmopolitan New York, but weeks and months of extreme loneliness follow. After enrolling in an art course, Angela makes 90

her first contacts to white people, most of whom remain her friends. Through Paulette, one of her artist friends, Angela gets to know Roger, who possesses a great fortune due to his father‟s achievements. Angela sees the fulfilment of her dreams in Roger. A marriage to this white man would be the entrance to all the riches, wealth, and pleasures she had been craving for so long. Angela is willing to give up everything for Roger. She even denies her own sister, whose dark complexion would betray her. But the outcome of their relationship is not at all the fulfilment of her dreams. At first Roger is not interested in a marriage to her, and only offers her a "free love"(320) relationship with Angela being a kind of concubine. Disillusioned by his racism, she later turns his proposal down. Downhearted, she tries to find refuge in the arms of her old friend Anthony Cross, a young artist who is believed to be white, but who turns out to be a mulatto himself. Anthony had once been terribly in love with Angela but thought her unreachable, as he assumed her to be white. Anthony is now engaged to another woman, and Angela finds out that the future spouse of the man she is in love with is her own sister. Not willing to destroy her sister‟s life, she abandons the idea of having a relationship with him. Angela decides to concentrate on art. She is finally awarded a prize and a scholarship for an art school in Paris, together with one of her colleagues, Miss Starling, a black, extremely gifted artist. When Angela gets to know that the scholarship is eventually denied to Miss Starling because of her skin colour, she is outraged. She publicly declares that she is coloured too, and that she therefore cannot be granted the scholarship either. The reaction of this sudden declaration surprises and confuses her acquaintances a lot, as all of them had considered Angela white. After that turmoil of her outing, Angela decides to go to France on her own, but not without all her friends turning up to hug her and bid her farewell. Friendship has beaten colour. Angela is now obsessed with the idea of becoming a well-known black artist. The novel ends with Anthony joining her in France, and with their final decision to start a life together in America upon their return.

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8.4 Analysis of Plum Bun with Special Emphasis on Racial

Ambiguity, Mask, and Masquerade What the two female racially ambiguous protagonists – Mattie Murray and her daughter Angela – have in common is their "creamy complexion and [...] soft, cloudy chestnut hair"(14), which enable them to 'pass for white'. Yet they require detailed analysis, as they handle their racial ambivalence completely differently.

8.4.1 Mattie Murray Mattie Murray, a woman with "white skin [but] black blood in her veins"(29) is a devoted, caring mother and wife – "a perfect woman, sweet, industrious, affectionate and illogical"(33). As an adult, Mattie is "perfectly satisfied"(73) with her simple life, but during her youth as a single woman she has to undergo difficult times, as it is not easy for her to make her living as a 'black' woman. Only a few jobs are available for coloured women, and she tries her hand at all of them. She finally finds a good position in the home of an actress as a personal servant, as a "perfectly white nigger"(29). Her years with the actress, however, "had left their mark, a perfectly […] charming and „essentially feminine‟ [one]"(15), according to her husband Junius. Mattie develops a fancy for pretty clothes, fashion, and the stylish tea shops in down town – areas that remained exclusively restricted to white people. As the personal assistant of Madame Sylvio, she enjoys a lot of free time, in comparison to other servants who had to serve their masters and mistresses 24 hours a day. In these free hours, when Madame Sylvio is out of town, Mattie uses the chance and 'passes for white' to enjoy the privileges of the tempting white world and the glamorous atmosphere of white people‟s areas:

Mattie Murray employed her colour very much as she practised certain winning usages of smile and voice to obtain indulgences which meant much to her and which took nothing from anyone else. [...] it amused her, when by herself, to take lunch at an exclusive restaurant whose patrons would have been panic-stricken if they had divined the presence of a “colored” woman, no matter how little her appearance differed from theirs. (15)

In the actress‟ service, Mattie learns how to perform as a 'white' lady, and how to masquerade. She also "learned how very pleasant indeed life could be for a person possessing only a very little extra money and white skin"(30). She has no guilty

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conscience when she transgresses the 'color line'. She justifies it with a fierce criticism of the existing 'Jim Crow laws'.

I can‟t label myself. And if I‟m hungry or tired and I‟m near a place where they don‟t want colored people, why should I observe their silly rules, rules that are unnatural and unjust, because the world was made for everybody. (31/32)

As Mattie considers segregation unnatural and unjust, she sees in her "discontinuous" (Daniel, n.d. quoted in Root: 93) 'passings' only a "weakness and its essential harmlessness"(19). She merely enjoys them, but "she had no desire to be of these people"(15). Despite the fact that Mattie delights in these 'passing' adventures, she must have had some negative experience, too, due to her revelation that "[her] own skin color has never brought [her] anything but insult and trouble"(31). It is not explicitly stated, but there are a lot of insinuations – typical of Fauset – which indicate that Mattie must have become the victim of sexual abuse when delivering a message for her mistress to Mr. Brokinaw – a white man – whose "covetous eyes"(30) she felt all over her body. This assumption is strengthened by the white man‟s remark:

[a]re you really colored? You know, I have seen lots of white girls not as pretty as you. Sit here and tell me all about your mother, and your father. Do – do you remember him? His whole bearing reeked with intention. (30)

We also learn that Mattie is terribly afraid of going back to the white man‟s house. She therefore asks Junius – who subsequently "hated Mme Sylvio for having thrown the girl in the way of Haynes Brokinaw"(32) – to deliver further messages to the Brokinaw‟s home instead of her. This abhorrent experience makes Mattie fully aware of her vulnerable position as a racially mixed person, and she realises that – as long as she remains in the white world – she will always be prone to sexual assaults. Her light skin does not protect her from sexual exploitation, being nothing but a Negro in white men‟s eyes. Fauset uses the historical antebellum stereotype of the sensual black woman who is reduced to her sexuality – with Mr. Brokinaw standing for the slave owner who unscrupulously exploits her racially inferior position – to show her deep contempt for the racial classification system of America. Mattie later admits that "the white skin of hers had not saved her "from occasional contumely and insult"(14). In order to avoid such humiliating situations she finally confirms her identity as a coloured woman, and marries black-skinned Junius – which "was the happiest moment in her life"(32). Junius, "whom she had been glad and 93

proud to marry"(14) – as "in her eyes his color mean[s] safety"(31) – provides security and protection from white men‟s advances and luring eyes. And for this safety she is willing to do without any luxury because she knows that she will be rewarded with a feeling of belonging, with love and happiness, instead.

I‟d rather live in the smallest house in the world with you, Junius, than be wandering around as I have so often, lonely and unknown in hotels and restaurants. (32)

She admits that her 'passing' has made her conscious of a deep loneliness behind the 'white mask' she had to wear in white areas, as she had no acquaintances – actually nobody – to share her experiences with. Although Mattie now knows where she belongs, she still cannot resist continuing her "old game of play-acting"(19), and 'passes' once in a while. Mattie merely delights in acting, in performing a role, in ridiculing whites who believe themselves to be superior but do not realise that they are being fooled by a black person. She enjoys that thrill and 'passes' only "for fun"(32), knowing that she can always return to her safe haven. Junius accepts her fancy as he knows that she would "acknowledge [her] old husband anywhere if it were necessary"(19). When the girls are born, the "Saturday‟s adventures in 'passing'"(16) stop for a while, but are revived when the girls are old enough. Disguised as a 'white lady' with the necessary masquerade, these special afternoons create a break from the daily grind. They "cast a glamour over Monday‟s washing and Tuesday‟s ironing, the scrubbing of kitchen and bathroom, and the fashioning of children‟s clothes"(ibid.), and offer a temporary escape both from class and race. Mattie is not the typical racially ambiguous person who is torn and haunted by racial doubts. But she nevertheless displays her racially mixed heritage. Maybe she would have decided in favour of a white identity if she had not had that traumatising experience of sexual abuse, as she openly admits her attraction to white values. She has finally come to an ideal agreement. In the safety of a black community, and with the protection of a loving black husband, she can revel in her passion of masking and masquerading in order to satisfy that quantum of 'white' blood that is running through her veins. In this way she can embrace both the black and the white world.

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8.4.2 Angela Murray Mattie Murray has a great influence on her daughter‟s attitude towards race. Mattie‟s example is determinant in Angela‟s life since "it was from her mother that Angela learned the possibilities for joy and freedom which seemed to her inherent in mere whiteness"(14). In the Murray family, it has become a characteristic of Saturday afternoons that the two light-skinned mulattas of the Murray household – Angela and her mother Mattie – go shopping in the white world, while Junius and his dark-skinned daughter Virginia, tour the city. For Angela "Saturday came to be the day of the week"(20). For "the well-dressed, assured woman and the refined and no less assured daughter"(18) are "a modish pair"(ibid.), and "a successful and interesting afternoon"(ibid.) in the city consists of shopping, lunching, and attending the orchestra. During these excursions Angela becomes painfully aware that "the great awards of life – riches, glamour, pleasure, are for white skinned people only"(17). As "Junius and Virgina were denied these privileges because they were dark"(17-18), "she began thanking Fate [sic] for the chance which in that household of four had bestowed on her the heritage of her mother‟s fair skin"(14). Angela adores the weekends and the "luxuriousness of being „dressed up‟ on two successive days"(21) – Saturdays for playing 'passing', and Sundays for church going. Actually, appearance and clothes, and the feeling of being part of the extravagant atmosphere among white people in the city seem to be the essentials of Angela‟s life. She is obsessed with fashion, and she fancies masquerade, as does Mattie Murray. The excursions to the city have developed an appetite, an irrepressible craving for more and more white pleasures, and she is determined not to live a life like her parents, as this is "a life which she at any cost would avoid living"(12). Her attitude towards family life in general seems to change. Angela cannot identify with her parents‟ simple values any longer. She demands more, and she is convinced that she can get it in the white world. She yields to the cry of her 'white' blood, and tends to ignore her black inheritance:

I‟m sick of planning my life with regard to being colored [...] to take into consideration every time I want to eat outside of my home, every time I enter a theatre, every time I think of a profession. (53)

Angela craves independence and material values, and feels oppressed in her family as "all the things she most wanted seemed to her to be wrapped up with white

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people"(73). Her 'blackness' bars her from all the most desirable things in life – a handicap she is not going to put up with. As the good things are unevenly distributed, she is determined to take her share, and she will find the path that leads her into a brighter life. The 'whiteness' of her skin will be her entrance ticket.

Somewhere in the world were paths which led to broad thoroughfares, large bright houses, delicate niceties of existence. Those paths Angela meant to fight and frequent. At a very early age she had observed that the good things in life are unevenly distributed [...] Color and rather the lack of it seemed to the child, the one absolute prerequisite to the life of which she was always dreaming. (13)

Virginia is the character in the book that is not at all affected by racial ambiguity. She fully accepts her black racial identity. She retains her belief in the power of family until the end of the novel. She never envies her sister‟s light skin. Angela is her antagonist. She is the mulatta figure that serves as a metonym for the "cultural transitions, from familiarity to uncertainty […] from community to individualism" (Pfeifer 2003: 111). Two particular incidents of extreme racial prejudice finally strengthen Angela‟s desire to belong to the white world to escape constant discrimination and degradation. The first negative experience occurs in school with her friend Mary Hastings, a wealthy white newcomer in high school. Her friendship means a lot to Angela because "in the dark and tortured spaces of her difficult life it had been a lovely, hidden refuge"(38). The reason for Angela‟s frustration is that she had begun "to realize how solitary her life was becoming", that "the very girls with whom she had grown up were evading her"(39), and that "her class with complete but tacit unanimity „tried her out‟"(40). When Mary is eventually elected representative of the class, she proposes Angela as her assistant. But one of the white girls objects to the proposal by saying: "I should have to think twice before I‟d trust my subscription money to a colored girl"(43). Mary‟s reaction ranges from extreme bewilderment to being dismayed at finding out that her best friend is a Negro. Angela is outraged when she encounters "the first hurt"(77) of her racial identity, and she hates herself for being black. But her worst experience is to come in her beloved art class in Philadelphia. Art plays a special role in Angela‟s life. She has "an eye for line and for expression [and h]er gift was for her […] an adjunct to a life which was to know light, pleasure, gaiety and freedom"(13). This construct of a prosperous life as an artist is entirely

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destroyed by her art teachers who always used to assure her that the "artistic folk [are] the broadest, most liberal people in the world"(65). They abruptly stop supporting her talent, and coldly ignore her when Angela – who "looks and acts just like a white girl [and] dresses in better taste than anybody in the room"(72) – is denounced as a Negro by a female model in the art class, although they had promised her a bright future, emphasising that "there‟s no telling where [her] tastes and talents will lead [her]"(64). This young woman who refuses to "lower [her]self to pose for a colored girl"(71), ironically turns out to be the same Esther Bayliss, who had once pointed out her black status to her best friend Mary in high school. These two crucial incidents mark Angela‟s life:

[s]he began to wonder which was the more important, a patent insistence on the fact of color or an acceptance of the good things in life which could come to you in America if either you were not colored or the fact that your racial connection was not made known. (46)

Angela is torn between the choice of being loyal to the race she is supposed to accept or breaking away from all racial and family ties to be able to enjoy all those things in life only white people have access to. She opts for the second possibility, and she is good at not making racial connections known. She has always been perfect at masquerading, at 'performing as white'. Her refined manners and her clothing have perfectly concealed her racial identity, and she has been able to mislead all the people surrounding her in "dress, manner and deportment"(40). She has succeeded in fooling them all as long as nobody revealed her 'true' identity. She has also always taken strict precautions to not uncover her racial connection. She has always refused invitations, as "such invitations would have to be returned with similar ones, and the presence of Jinny would entail explanations"(64), and her "rosy bronzeness"(14) could possibly betray her. But all these precautionary measures could not prevent her from being detected, though. Angela has to face degradation and racial restrictions twice in her young life, but "she hated restraint [...] Freedom! That was the note which Angela heard oftenest in the melody of living which was to be hers [...] freedom from race"(13). In a conversation she has with some friends of her community about race, Angela replies with cynical realism to the suggestion of a coloured man that racial experience enhances artistic growth:

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[o]h don‟t drag me into your old discussion! [...] I‟m sick of the whole race business if you ask me [...] No, I don‟t think being colored in America is a beautiful thing. I think it is nothing short of a curse. (53)

This quote reveals that Angela has developed a specific hatred against her black racial inheritance. She feels cursed, as this small amount of 'black' blood in her has not only destroyed her career as a successful artist, but also valuable friendships. After the final realisation that the prevailing social system "stretched appearance so far beyond being"(58), the only way to avoid prejudice and the "dog-in-the-manger attitude of certain white Americans"(92) is to 'pass for white'. "I am both white and a Negro and look white. Why shouldn‟t I declare for the one that will bring me the greatest happiness, prosperity and respect?"(80) Initially, Angela has reservations about that decision, but the idea of a prosperous life, free from race and racism, makes her forget all her doubts. Even though 'passing' would mean the "sacrifice of a sister"(159), this thought does not scare her off. She does not even mind hurting her sister severely with the following remark: "[h]ow could I live the way I want to if you are with me?"(80) Deeply offended by Angela, Virginia states that Angela has "more white blood in [her] veins", and that "that extra amount made it possible"(81) to behave so selfishly and cruelly. "[S]elfishness [...] [is] the ultimate definition of Nordic supremacy"(275) next to "cruelty and savage lust of power"(291), and Angela possesses all these vices which are seen as inherent in the white race. When Angela reflects on her own "cruel and unjust action"(308) of denying her sister, she starts wondering if there might be "something fundamentally different between white and colored blood after all"(168) – a question she keeps asking herself. In the course of the narration, Angela stops seeing the white world through rose-coloured glasses, and becomes increasingly aware that it is not the ne plus ultra. This gradual expansion of consciousness is to be discussed in the analysis that follows.

8.4.2.1 The Process of 'Passing' and the Gradual Expansion of Consciousness In this part, Angela‟s 'passing' – the most polished performance of masquerade – will be analysed. Furthermore, as Plum Bun is considered a

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'Bildungsroman', the focus will be laid on the fundamental transitions going on in Angela‟s mind concerning her mixed race identity, and her racial ambiguity. After "an accumulation of the slights, real and fancied, which her color had engendered throughout her life time"(7), Angela decides to leave Philadelphia, and "break away from [...] loving friends and acquaintances"(77). She craves a new start, a new life as a white woman. Her plan is to sell her parents‟ house, and divide the proceeds to be able to afford to go to New York or Chicago, certainly to some place where she will – by no chance –be known, and "launch out into a freer, fuller life"(80). To Angela, 'passing' seems to be the only way of fulfilling her dreams, and of getting out of the hopelessly frustrating situation of being a coloured woman. Upon arriving in New York, she feels that the world is her oyster containing the precious pearl – all the glamour she has been longing for. Being "free, white and twenty-one"(88), Angela seems to reach for the stars. A feeling of "owning the world"(ibid.) overwhelms her, and with the gifts of a woman she wants to "exert [power] in this glittering new world, so full of mysteries and promise"(ibid.). To accomplish all the things she is dreaming of, she is aware that she will need money and influence, and being young and a woman, she will definitely need the protection of a man. Thus marrying a rich white man would pave the way to "all that richness, all that fullness of life which she ardently craved for, [and to] the freedom and independence which she had so long coveted"(ibid.). Angela is finally obsessed with the idea of marrying a wealthy white man to obtain the privileges she desires, as "marriage is the easiest way for a woman to get those things, and white men have them"(112). Everything seems possible to Angela. She even imagines that if she were a man "she could be president"(88). It reflects Angela‟s naïve attitude towards life, and the fallacy that the mere fact of being white would open the doors to the wide, wide world. New York goes beyond Angela‟s wildest dreams. She spends "many, happy, irresponsible, amused hours in the marvellous houses on Broadway or in the dark commonplaceness of her beloved Fourteenth Street"(92), and she spends huge amounts of money in luxurious hotels, the ones she has always been admiring with her mother. But soon a feeling of alienation overcomes her. New York is teeming with life, but without knowing anybody in this big city, the "loneliness palled on her"(ibid.). She decides to enrol in an art class where she can probably get acquainted with 99

some new people. She is excitedly looking forward to the "beginning of her adventure"(93), because this is the very first time in her life that people will meet her "against no background"(ibid.). Nobody will know her secret racial connections. She has even taken some precautions by changing her name into Angèle Mory. "[S]ome troubling sense of loyalty to her father and mother had made it impossible for her to do away with it all together"(94/95). This subtle hint concerning her family legacy indicates a latent feeling of racial ambiguity. Changing the name, however, is common among continuous 'passers' in order to erase their past completely, and to leave no trace behind so that nobody can ever detect them as 'passers'. Some participants of her art course luckily do become Angela‟s new friends, and it is highly interesting how Fauset describes her colleagues when pointing out their different racial origins: a Jewess, a Scandinavian, a German, and "several more Americans"(95) – all these different races united under the umbrella term 'Americans'. This description implies that all people who are not black do not suffer from racial discrimination because they are regarded as Americans, whereas white people "never think of darkies as Americans"(70). Fauset tries to illustrate once more the burden African Americans have to carry because they are not regarded as equal citizens. This unbridgeable gap in the art class becomes evident when the only coloured woman is described as constantly "withdrawn from her companions [never daring to] initiate any conversation"(94). The same kind of behaviour of coloured people in white people‟s presence can be observed in the art class in Philadelphia, where the same reserved mannerism of the Negro girl is mentioned, stating that she "never spoke unless spoken to; she had been known to spend the whole session without even glancing at a fellow student"(63). These observations of uneasiness in the behaviour of black people may have strengthened Angela‟s desire to 'pass for white' in order to be accepted as a full member of American society. When Angela finally meets Roger, a wealthy man, "tall and blond [...] with blue eyes"(115), she "saw her life rounding out like a fairy tale"(131)."She had never seen anyone like him: "[s]o gay, so beautiful, like a blond, glorious god, so overwhelming, so persistent"(129). Roger personifies the perfect type of the Caucasian race – "light of skin, blue-eyed, possessing fine sandy hair" (Spickard, n.d quoted in Root: 14) – a race hierarchically at the top, in terms of both physical abilities and moral qualities (cf. ibid. 22). Roger "had the power […] and the badge of that power was whiteness"(73). 100

Angela is highly flattered by Roger‟s attention, and attributes his interest to "[her] having everything that a girl ought to have just because [she] had sense enough to suit [her] actions to [her] appearance"(123). Fauset here emphasises Angela‟s excellent way of performing and masquerading, based on the fact that "stolen waters are the sweetest. And Angela never forgot that they were stolen"(ibid.). Having to keep her racial identity a secret, living in a kind of in-between state of consciousness, there is always something intriguingly mysterious about Angela, which fascinates and attracts Roger:

[s]he had charm and what was for him even more important, she was puzzling [...] he noticed studying her closely; her quiet look took on the resemblance of an arrested movement, composure on tip-toe so to speak, as though she had been stopped in swift transition from one mood to the other. (122)

This quote indicates some vague insecurity in Angela, but it also shows that she has her emotions under control. As Roger does not have the slightest idea of Angela‟s racial background and doubts, he is merely fascinated by something special in her, by some exceptional features that confuse him. Plum Bun reveals many ups and downs in the protagonist‟s equivocal attitude towards her mixed race. Racially ambiguous emotions start surfacing every now and then, but in the initial phase of her 'passing for white' Angela suppresses them all. First subconsciously, later knowingly. One such hint at her racial ambiguity is dropped in the passage where Angela takes part in a gathering in the home of Martha Burden, a colleague of her art class, where a black woman participates as well. Angela is "a little astonished to observe how the warmth of her appearance overshadowed or rather over-shone everyone else in the room"(114-115). Angela comes to realise that black can be beautiful, and she surprisingly associates 'blackness' with warmth and radiance. Moreover, reminded of Virginia through the young coloured woman, a vague feeling of homesickness arises in Angela, but still in a sub-conscious way. Particularly in situations where coloured people are discriminated against, racially ambiguous feelings keep emerging. Angela starts to develop feelings of sympathy, but as she is still convinced that 'passing' was and is the right decision, she does not react. She suppresses her outrage and remains silent. Interfering would betray her.

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One such occasion is the scene in a restaurant with Roger, when three coloured people enter the tearoom and are about to take a table. Angela instinctively thinks: "‟[o]h, here are some of them fighting it out again. Oh God! Please let them be served, please don‟t let their evening be spoiled‟"(ibid.). Angela can see "[Roger‟s] face change, darken"(132) the moment he notices them. He ostracises the small group by speaking crossly to the waiter, and then states:

[w]ell, I put a spoke in the wheel of those „coons‟! They forget themselves so quickly, coming in here spoiling white people‟s appetites [...] I‟d send „em all back to Africa if I could. (133)

Angela remains "silent, lifeless […] speechless, [although] [...] her appetite fled [and] her heart [felt] sick"(133). Angela has to hide her true emotions behind a mask, as she feels sympathy for the group, especially for the girl "in whose shoes she herself might so easily have been"(135). She remembers "[h]ow quickly she had forgotten those fears and uncertainties. She had never experienced this sort of difficulty herself, but she certainly knew of them from Virginia and others"(109). Angela is upset by Roger‟s intolerance and racist statements, and she starts reflecting, with her racially ambiguous feelings running high:

[l]ife could never cheat her as it had cheated that colored girl this evening, as it has once cheated her with Matthew. She was free, free to taste life in its fullness and sweetness, in all its minute details. By exercising sufficient courage [...] she was able to master life. How she blessed her mother for showing her the way! In a country where color or the lack of it meant the difference between freedom and fetters, how lucky she was! But, she told herself, she was through with Roger Fielding. (136)

She is so grateful for her luck to be able to live in the white world, and to taste life to the full. Yet at the same time she remembers the embarrassing and humiliating incident when Matthew, a good friend of hers, was strictly forbidden to enter a theatre because segregation laws would not allow him in on account of his dark skin. She is fully conscious of the rigidity and unfairness with which people of her race are treated. And Roger‟s racist behaviour is unforgivable, too. His racism has dethroned him, yet disillusioned her a bit, too. Her disillusionment grows when – under the impact of the incident mentioned above – she recalls a scene from her past where her mother Mattie has to be taken to a hospital "which no colored woman would ever have been admitted except to char"(58-59). When Junius arrives to take her home, he is treated in a hostile way. The nurse there "did not believe that black people were exactly human"(59), as "there was no place for them on the scheme of life so far as she could see"(ibid.). 102

Junius has to pretend to be Mattie‟s chauffeur in order to hide his wife‟s racial identity. When Mattie finally hugs Junius, the nurse hisses, "[T]hese damn white women and their nigger servants. Such women ought to be placed in a psycho-pathic ward and the niggers burned"(60). Angela feels rage surfacing when she envisions that racist nurse. This feeling of rage triggers the memory of another incident of severest cruelty which fills her heart with hatred: a young white man shows his gallantry to Anthony‟s mother – a very light-skinned mulatta whom he assumes to be white. Other whites who observe the scene mock him "for his courtesy to a nigger wench"(288). He is furious that he is being fooled by a black woman. To smooth his ruffled ego, he decides to give vent to his anger, and insults her severely. Deeply offended by his assaults, Anthony‟s mum strikes him across his face, which is to have a horrid outcome for her black husband. "Before nightfall the mob came to teach this man their opinion of a nigger", and he is "murdered by the bullets from twenty pistols. Souvenir hunters cut off fingers, toes, ears"(289). Completely "dehumanized"(ibid.), his body is finally buried. His house is set on fire, and all his property vanishes in the rage of the fire. All these memories make Angela aware of her blindness with regard to Roger. She cannot understand herself any more that she saw nothing but "his wealth and his golden recklessness, his golden keys which could open the doors to beauty and ease"(130). And she realises that she does not love him at all, but that she has just thought, "if they married she would probably come to love him; most women learned to love their husbands"(ibid.). She now knows that nothing has remained of the feeling of "swimming in the floods of excitement"(123), of having "secured not only him but an assured future, wealth, protection, influence, and even power"(151). What has remained is a "slight disgust […] for Roger and his prejudice"(162). But despite all these sobering thoughts, Angela cannot give up Roger. He is still the only key to her dreams, her desires. She simply cannot live exposed to the fanaticism of the Ku Klux Klan, the omni-present racism, and humiliation. So when she realises that Roger does not have the slightest intention to marry her, she accepts his offer to live in "free love"(192), and becomes his concubine. This arrangement does not really enhance her self-assurance. She is desperately torn between an awakening feeling of black racial pride, and her 103

materialistic 'white' attitude towards life. She has the feeling that she needs to withdraw from her relationship. If not, she "could never again face herself with the old, unshaken pride and self-confidence"(177). But "[if] it was all over she would have been exactly where she was before, and would have lost everything"(162). By the allusion of having lost everything, Angela refers to the day at the station when she coldly ignores her own sister because Roger appears out of the blue. Her fear of being detected as a black person in Roger‟s presence, makes her deny her own sister, "her own flesh and blood"(189), leaving Virginia alone in the unfamiliar New York in a totally distressed condition. Angela is "sick of tragedy"(143). She hates that she "belong[s] to the tragic race"(ibid.), and she still hopes that Roger will marry her one day, as marriage would be "a source of relief from poverty, as a final barrier between herself and the wolves of prejudice"(262). And yet, marriage could be a huge burden, a source of loneliness, as "the life which had seemed so promising, so golden, had failed to supply her with a single friend to whom she could turn in an hour of extremity"(234). Roger has actually come to be the only "individual who was kindest, most thoughtful of her, the one whose presence brought warmth and assurance"(199). By and by Angela realises how dependent she is on him as

[...] for the first time in her knowledge, her whole life was hanging on the words, moods, the actions of someone else - Roger. Without him she was quite lost; not only was she unable to order her days without him in mind, she was unable to go in quest of new adventures in living, as was once her want. (211)

Her doubts nourish her ambiguity. Even now as a 'white' woman, Angela is not able to live the perfect life she has always been longing for. Moreover, she gains the knowledge of "an apparently unbridgeable difference between the sexes; everything was for men, but even the slightest privilege was to be denied to a woman unless the man chose to grant it"(229). This sad realisation that even white women have to face restrictions because of men‟s power on women, finally destroys the illusion of the wonderful white world. She also becomes aware that being a white woman does not solve social problems, and that class-differences exist as well. As Roger is from an aristocratic family, his father would never accept a poor and unknown woman to be his daughter- in-law. So when Roger, to Angela‟s great surprise, finally asks her to marry him, she refuses gladly, as she is now perfectly convinced that she could never be happy with a white man. 104

In the same period of time – when she eventually comes to realise that 'whiteness' is not the key to happiness – she simultaneously starts to reflect on her attitude towards her black race. Several trigger moments contribute to an absolute change in perception. The first triggering incident is her realisation that her sister Virginia "without making an effort seemed overwhelmed, almost swamped by friendships, pleasant intimacies, a thousand charming interests"(241). Although Virginia is black and has suffered racial restrictions and humiliations, she is able to enjoy a full life. Her pursuit of a happy life is best summarised by Van Maier, an extremely successful African American orator who claims ardently "the deliberate introduction of beauty and pleasure into the difficult life of the American Negro", [which implies] "the acquisition not so much of racial love but racial pride"(218). Virginia is indeed proud of her race and herself as a black woman. This is the reason why she is able to live a life in inner harmony, whereas Angela lives a life in secrecy and pretence, always acting and concealing, shunning friends and relatives. Angela cannot achieve an inner balance. Her white and her black genes interfere too much with each other, despite her obsession and conviction that she is doing the right thing. She now lives a completely restrained life. It is a stifling life behind a mask. She develops more and more a feeling of belonging to two races, which is terribly captivating. On the one hand, she tries to suppress her black identity, and on the other hand, thoughts of the black community keep haunting her, perfectly illustrated by the melancholic thought of "her roots"(241). She imagines how marvellous it would be to go back to parents, relatives and friends, and she starts dreaming of "[the] peace, the security, [and] the companionableness of it!"(ibid.) This torturing feeling of 'two-ness' prevents the development of a proper self, and a clear identity. Even her appearance has changed because of her obsession with 'whiteness', along with a tantalising feeling of racial ambiguity: "gradually the triumphant vividness so characteristic of Angèle Mory left her"(234), and her racially ambiguous thoughts finally accumulate in a "fading brightness"(235), and "a sickness of soul"(307). Her ambivalent self is revealed when she ponders:

[...] if Jinny were as fair as I and yet herself, and placed in the same conditions as those in which I am placed, her color would save her. It‟s a safeguard for Jinny; it‟s a curse for me. (178-179)

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Jinny‟s loyalty to and love for her race would always win. Angela is the victim of her incapability of deciding which values really count in life. Despite her negative physical and mental development, and despite the growing gnawing doubts, Angela still assures herself that 'passing' is a good decision, and that she "[has] been forced to take this action"(308), as

[...] it would have been silly for her to keep on living as she had in Philadelphia, constantly, through no fault of her, being placed in impossible positions, eternally being accused and hounded [...]. (243-244)

But gradually, Angela painfully realises that her mother‟s maxim – "life is more important than colour"(333) – is right after all. It becomes stronger and stronger in her mind. It starts to silence her racially ambivalent feelings, and finally helps her to come to grips with life. Her only ambition in life is now "the right to live and be happy"(266), although she is "still conscious of living in an atmosphere of falseness, of tangled implications"(271). By and by Angela recognises that luxuries and wealth are not the essentials of life, and that she is "longing for someone real and permanent with whom she could share life"(ibid.). She even thinks about starting a new relationship with Anthony Cross, a poor artist whose acquaintance she had made in her first art class. Anthony had been in love with Angela for a long time. But Angela, obsessed with the desire for wealth and pleasures, did not return his love as she had no intention of living in poverty, in a constant struggle to survive. She was not meant for such a life. After finally realising that "a woman could be her true self with him"(146), Angela becomes convinced that together with Anthony, she can find the happiness she has always been craving. She now secretly admits her love to him, and ironically then finds out that Anthony is a mullatto himself, but in contrast to Angela, Anthony is "not ashamed of [his] blood"(291) at all. Anthony‟s love of Angela had actually been a great burden to his conscience, as he had promised himself – after the murder of his father – never ever to get entangled with white people again, and always "to hate them with perfect hate"(ibid.). Assuming Angela to be a white woman caused him to have a guilty conscience. From Angela‟s point of view, the fact that he has black roots as well would solve all her problems. There would be no more obstacles between them any more. "No sacrifice of the comforts which [...] the mere physical fact of 'whiteness' in America brings would be too great for her"(294). Angela even envisions living with

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him in Harlem or in Africa; she imagines that they would first live in poor conditions, but definitely "climb happier and sunnier heights"(272), because to Angela love now appears "as the greatest thing in the world"(313) that no money and wealth could ever offer. She yearns for a life without secrets, as she is "sick of secrets and playing games with human beings"(321), and finally comes to the conclusion that "[m]ystery might add to the charm of personality but certainly could not be said to add to the charm of living"(324). Angela wants to confess to Anthony "that they were based and rooted in the same blood"(294), and this is the first time in her life that she is "glad to be colored"(296). But just as she is determined to disclose her secret to Anthony, she learns that Anthony is already engaged to another woman. And to her bewilderment, it is her sister Virginia. It was fate that had brought Anthony and Virginia together on that memorable day at the station where Virginia had to experience the greatest humiliation and the most ineffable pain when being abandoned by her own sister. Not willing to hurt her sister again, Angela decides to draw back with a heavy heart. This experience makes her reflect on her life again:

[m]ore than once the thought came to her of dying, but then she thought of black people, of the race of her parents, and of all the odds against living which a cruel, relentless fate that had called on them to endure. (309)

By pointing out Angela‟s desire to die, Jessie Fauset applies the trope of the 'tragic mulatta' with suicidal tendencies. But Angela overcomes her depression, and she starts to perceive black people "powerfully, almost overwhelmingly endowed with the essence of life"(309). And she comes to realise that her eyes, "dark, sunken, set in great pools of blackness, were the only note, a terrible note – of relief against that awful whiteness"(311), and that "all this bother about race and creed and color [is] tommyrot"(312). Angela can finally rid herself of that painful yearning for 'whiteness'. She is eventually convinced that colour and race do not really count in life, but that far more valuable assets than wealth and glory make life worthwhile. Love and friendship, trust, loyalty, and harmony are the prerequisites for happiness and contentment, regardless of any racial heritage. These are the messages Fauset tries to convey to her readers. And Angela has learned her lesson, too. She has matured during that distressing process of finding her 'true' identity and a meaning in life. And she has

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succeeded. She has expanded her consciousness, and is ready for life. She has found home again after various setbacks, and – with a touch of a fairy tale – she is rewarded for all her efforts. It is not a 'white god' that is awaiting her, but it is Prince Charming. Anthony‟s relationship with Virginia breaks up, and Anthony is free again. They happen to meet in France, where Angela intends to take up art lessons to be a well-known black artist one day, and they decide to return to New York together later. By stressing Angela‟s intellect and talent, Jessie Fauset pays tribute to the New Negro Movement of the Harlem Renaissance, with Angela being a representative of all those young talents discovered by committed supporters, like Fauset herself. With this positive outcome of the novel, Fauset has contributed to boosting the black racial consciousness of the New Negro Movement by telling her readers that even black people with their manifold inherent talents can achieve a lot, disregarding white supremacy.

9. Fannie Hurst

9.1 Life and Career

Fannie Hurst was born in Hamilton, Ohio, in 1889, into a family of German- Jewish background. Her parents were Bavarian Jews who immigrated into the US in 1860. Hurst was raised as a protected single child in St.Louis, Missouri. After taking her B.A. degree at Washington University in St. Louis in 1909, she continued her studies in New York, and graduated from Columbia University in 1910. Hurst developed a strong interest in writing at an early age. She wrote her first short story at the age of fourteen, to be followed by numerous short stories published in student magazines at school. The real starting point of her writing career, however, was marked by her move to New York, where her creativity started to blossom. According to Hurst, it was essential for a good author to do some field work in order to get acquainted with people‟s lives, their behaviour, and the circumstances they live in. Thus, she started to explore the lives of poor working-class and middle-

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class women and families who were to become the central target group in her writings. She observed these people in the streets and in the night courts; she took up jobs as a waitress and sales girl with the intention of acquiring a feeling for them. By 1913, numerous bestselling short stories had appeared regularly in different magazines, in particular in the well-established Sunday Evening Post, which gained her the reputation of being "a [veritable] Genius of the Short Story" (Norris 1918 quoted in Hurst 2004: vii). After the huge success of her short story fiction, her publishers and her reading public urged her to dedicate herself to novels as well. During the 1920s and 1930s, Hurst became one of the most popular and most prolific novelists and short story writers. All in all, more than 300 short stories and eighteen novels were published, and Hurst was considered to be the highest paid writer in the US. As far as Hurst‟s political ambitions are concerned, she was well known for her strong pursuit of women‟s rights as well as civil rights for African Americans, with the major aim to achieve equal rights for both groups. Moreover, she was highly active in raising funds and supporting socially unprivileged people. Her social welfare activities ranged from regular donations to oppressed people – with the main focus lying on Jewish immigrants and their families who had escaped the Nazi regime in Germany – to the donation of one million dollars to Brandeis and Washington Universities for the establishment of professorships in creative writing after her death in 1968. Her significance for the Harlem Renaissance comes primarily from her ardent support of Zora Neale Hurston, the great folklorist and novelist of this era who had secured her position in the modern construction of the African American literary canon with her innovative novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). When Hurston suffered financial problems, Hurst tried to help her by employing her first as a secretary, then as a chauffeur, and finally as her personal travel companion. During this patron-protégé association, in which Hurst tried to promote Hurston‟s writings with letters of recommendation to different potential publishers, an intimate friendship developed. It is often claimed that Hurst‟s friendship with the black woman demonstrated her desire to immerse herself into the black culture. This important contact made it possible for her to absorb black life and culture to the full, and get the necessary inspiration for her best-selling novel Imitation of Life. Many critics honoured Imitation of Life as a "novel of black life" (Corbin 1918 quoted in Doane

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1991: 233), although it sounds quite inaccurate, as it is not entirely clear for which character Hurston actually served as a model. We can state, however, that the close relationship with the black author shows Hurst‟s strong commitment for the race and gender politics of her time – an issue that is pursued in the theme of 'passing' in the novel. Added to that, Fannie Hurst was busy contributing many articles to the highly influential magazine Opportunity, which in the mid 1920s sponsored an annual competition for young black writers to prove their talents. Fannie Hurst and some other prominent authors, such as Van Vechten, assisted these contests as judges, and could consequently aid those newcomers to secure generous patrons and publishing contracts. Zora Neale Hurston was one of these discovered talents who were subsequently able to show their writing abilities publicly. Apart from her literary career, and her ambitions for the Harlem Renaissance, Fannie Hurst is also known for her scandalous personality. Her unconventional activities and opinions often led to public talk. Some examples are her overt opinions on the race and gender issues, or her secret marriage to the piano player Jacques Danielson.

9.2 Fannie Hurst’s Fiction Her early fiction mainly deals with trials of modest city dwellers, most of them of Jewish background, to be continued by the description of the lives of shop girls, immigrants, mistresses, and romantic dreamers. Like in her short stories, Hurst depicts the lives of the poor and unprivileged Jewish population of New York, particularly of the Lower East Side of Manhattan. In later works, Hurst shifts her attention from Jewish people to the broader topic of general race relations in the US. Another famous issue in her literary work is the position of women in American society. Hurst herself was an ardent fighter for women‟s rights, and promotes her views on the problematic situation of the socially oppressed woman in her stories and novels. The novelist‟s main argument is that the place of a woman is not in the kitchen; her place is where she can give the most, and get the most out of life. Hurst incessantly tries to make her reading public aware of the social and economic discrimination that women suffer. Her protagonists therefore often try to break out of 110

this anti-woman social fabric, as the existing social codes prevent them from realising their potential. It is worth pointing out that Hurst, despite her commitment, is not always capable of commuting this high seriousness in her works, as many of her figures sometimes drift into stereotypes ranging from the cad, the egoist, the self- absorbed rich lady, the brave wife, to the pure-minded virgin. Yet in most of her works, this stereotyping does not affect the content to a great extent, as those characters are considered to play only minor roles. What really compensates for this 'weakness' of stereotyping is Fannie Hurst‟s remarkable ability to perceive emotions and feelings, and depict them in an extraordinary manner. Critics of the time were very often sharply divided in their assessment of her works. Some critics dismissed them as far too sentimental, as Hurst‟s tales were marked by her desire to capture everyday life of ordinary women with vivid descriptions, and a touch of romance. Some even used her name as an example of how not to write, while others praised her. Her major success with the public is ascribed to the fact that her topics and style matched the increasingly urban sensibilities of the literary market place, and that her emotionally withering plots found their profundity in the everyday disparities of modern city life (cf. Hurst 2004: ix). A common literary feature in both her short stories and novels is that at the end of the story a suffering female protagonist, who has successfully overcome the social boundaries and norms, is ultimately punished. This recurring motif is depicted in Imitation of Life, too. Both Bea and Delilah are punished by the rejection of a beloved person. As far as Imitation of Life is concerned, the novel was generally well received in Harlem, though some critics denounced the novel‟s depiction of the loving 'mummy'– embodied in the character of Delilah – and the 'tragic mulatta' – incarnated in Peola. It was claimed that Hurst reinforced ethnic stereotypes in her novel, a fact that did not prevent the film version from gaining fame. Early after its publication already, Imitation of Life was adopted for screen in 1934 by John Stahl, and turned out to be a tremendous success, followed by another film version in 1959. The major difference to the book is that in both film versions Peola regrets her ultimate decision to 'pass', and asks her mother‟s forgiveness after

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her death, whereas in the novel, Peola disappears, and does not even attend the moving funeral of Delilah.

9.3 Imitation of Life

9.3.1 Plot Summary The story opens with the death of Bea Chipley‟s mother, leaving her teenage daughter alone to keep the household for her picky father and Benjamin Pullman, a lodger who peddles ketchup and relish on the boardwalk, and sells maple syrup in a door-to-door service. Bea is entirely overburdened with the household chores, and has major difficulties in meeting the expectations of her father. Together with his lodger‟s approval, her father decides that Bea should become Mr. Pullman‟s wife. Shortly after their marriage, Bea becomes pregnant. In quick succession, Bea‟s father suffers an incapacitating stroke which confines him to a wheel chair, and Mr. Pullman dies in a terrible train accident. Fate strikes Bea twice in her young life, leaving her alone again to take care of herself, her paralysed father, and her infant daughter Jessie. In order to make a living, Bea decides to continue her husband‟s business of trading maple syrup by using his old 'B. Pullman' business cards, in order to avoid the omnipresent sexism of male traders. Now having a running business, Bea is not able to give her handicapped father enough support with the care of her little daughter. To get some additional help in the household, Bea hires black Delilah as a live-in servant. Delilah brings with her Peola, her light-skinned infant daughter. Delilah is a perfect cook, and well known in the family for her delicious waffles. In waffle-making Bea sees a chance of establishing a small business and she opens the first 'B. Pullman' waffle restaurant. Within a few years, B. Pullman stores sprout up in big cities across America, and eventually turn into an international chain, an achievement that represents the ultimate realisation of the American Dream. The two girl daughters grow up side by side; Jessie develops into a radiant and cheerful girl, whereas Peola keeps struggling for her racial identity. Painfully torn between her light skin and her mother‟s racial values and race consciousness, she 112

seems to see no way out of her dilemma. At the early age of eight she already tries to 'pass for white' while her mother keeps trying to awaken her racial pride. In the end Peola chooses to 'pass', to break with her family ties, and to marry a white man who does not know her racial secret. Shortly after Peola‟s ultimate decision, Delilah dies of a broken heart. With Delilah slowly dying, Bea realises that there is something missing in her life. She yearns for a loving husband and falls in love with her business manager Flake, who is eight years her junior. She is disillusioned by the age gap, but nevertheless decides to give up the restaurant chain and marry Flake. Yet just before confessing her love to him, she learns the sad truth that her own daughter Jessie and Flake already have wedding plans for themselves, and Bea is left alone.

9.3.2 Analysis of Imitation of Life with Special Emphasis on Racial Ambiguity, Mask, and Masquerade It has to be pointed out that the only racially ambiguous character in the novel is Peola, who is actually only a marginal character. The major part of the story deals with the miraculous success story of Bea Pullman, and her difficulties as a woman in a world dominated by men. Peola‟s light skin is the racial inheritance of her father, who was a "white nigger"(75). Although her father‟s heritage is the major source of her racial identity problems, it is essential to analyse her mother‟s character to fully comprehend Peola‟s racially ambiguous feelings, as Delilah unknowingly enhances them. Peola‟s inherent longing for 'whiteness' on the one hand, and her moral obligation to her mother‟s racial pride on the other hand, are to blame for her racial dilemma. And the more Delilah urges her daughter to accept her God-given black race, the more she increases her racial plight. When Bea is forced to hire a domestic help, she has initial problems to find a live-in servant, as most black female servants, women "with home ties of their own"(75), "demanded the freedom to return home [in the] evenings"(74). By mere accident Bea runs into Delilah – "an enormously buxom figure of a woman with a round black moon face that shone above an Alps of a Bosom"(75) – who gratefully accepts her offer. Delilah, who is in a miserable situation herself after the sudden 113

death of her husband, even offers her service for free just to obtain board and lodging for herself, and her little daughter Peola. From the first moment on, Delilah points out that Peola is "the purfectest white nigger baby dat God ever dropped down in de lap of a black woman from Virginie"(76), and assures Bea simultaneously that "We‟s black, me and mah baby"(ibid.). Hurst uses vernacular, a specific dialect of African origin that sounds like a rudimentary form of English. This grammatically incorrect language underlines the common stereotype of primitivism, with Delilah being portrayed as the uncultured and uneducated black woman. She is also the embodiment of another prominent stereotype – that of the big, fat mammy of the plantation South:

[h]er red, black and white personality of this immense woman [...] the terrific unassailable quality of her high spirits, Baptist fervor, and amplitude reached and encompassed two infants and an infantile old man, who turned his cold old bones toward her warmth. (79)

Delilah possesses all the positive characteristics inherent in the black race. With her joyful laughter, her positive attitude towards life, which is deeply rooted in her unassailable faith, Delilah is able to bring warmth and cheerfulness into the cold Pullman house. She holds the whole family together in her cordial and affectionate way, like "a huge black sun over the troubled waters of the domestic scene, laying them and the hordes of fears, large and small, that had dogged her heels all day"(78). Her massive body is as steady as a rock, and has a calming effect on her environment. Her warmth provides a feeling of safety and cosiness in the family. Delilah is a caring, loyal, and devoted character, willing to sacrifice herself for the members of the household, trying to make herself indispensable by her over- caring. She argues that she has "got babies, one, two, three of „em [...] besides the one God give me but mah own flesh"(215): Bea, Jessie, Mr.Chipley, and her own child. The order in which these four people are arranged reflects Peola‟s actual position in the Pullman household from her mother‟s point of view. Delilah is a humble servant who never questions the superiority of the white race. She unquestioningly accepts her inferior position at the bottom of the American class system, and ascribes her inferiority to the will of God, and wallows in "de glory of bein‟ born one of de Lawd‟s lowdown ones"(118). She blindly and thankfully obeys her mistress. In her God-fearing nature she only complies with God‟s wish for her to

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serve, an attitude that is clearly illustrated by the following statement: "‟We‟s black, me and mah baby, and we‟d lak mighty much to come work for you‟"(76). She is not at all interested in wealth and leisure; her only duty and moral obligation on earth is to serve whites, as they are superior to blacks, not because of the controversial American racial classification, but because of God‟s will. This highly subservient attitude is exemplified in the scene in which Delilah, exhausted from her hard day‟s work herself, rubs Bea‟s tired feet when she comes home from work. Particularly evident is her servility shortly before she dies. Delilah is lying on the floor and "begin[s] to pour hot broad kisses against the bare ankles of Bea, who stood by"(267). She refuses any consolation in her conviction that God‟s kingdom is waiting for her anyway. The only thing she ardently desires for herself is "the finest funeral a nigger woman"(143) has ever had. "[A] thousand times during those years Delilah, dreaming the glory of her own funeral, had plotted this, lovingly, with detail, with grandeur"(213). Delilah is convinced that her lifelong suffering will finally lead her to the gates of heaven, where God will welcome her with open arms. Delilah continually tries to transfer her God-given set of values to her daughter; she even tries to condition her into inferiority by continuously giving preference to the white child, a fact which only enhances Peola‟s hatred and racial ambivalence. She also insistently tries to retard her daughter‟s developmental progress in order to promote Jessie‟s 'natural superiority'. For instance, Delilah is totally disquieted when she finds out that her own daughter Peola, who is two weeks younger than the white child, is going to teethe first. Panic stricken she attempts to hide this fact from Bea.

In every matter of precedence, including teeth, was that of Bea‟s child most punctiliously observed. The duet of their howling might bring [Delilah] running intuitively to her own, but the switch was without hesitancy to the white child, every labor of service adhering rigidly to that order. (83)

Even when Delilah has to punish the girls, she gives the white child her preference. "Gimme that white ear, Jessie, for a twist. Gimme dat yaller ear, Peola, for to twist. Stop pushin‟, Peola. You cain‟t git your ear twisted befoh white chile has had her‟n"(97). She constantly undermines Peola„s self-confidence with her firm conviction that there exists a God-given difference between black and white, an unassailable truth: "[t]ain‟t no use mah chile tryin‟ to get herself raised on de idea all men is equal"(100). Incessantly drumming obedience, subservience, and inferiority 115

into Peola is adding fuel to the flames. Peola gets more and more devastated by her racially ambivalent feelings; feelings which are not only caused by her mother‟s unfair and unequal treatment, but also by the outstanding contrast between her and her mother‟s outward appearance. From early infancy on, Peola realises that she and her mother have no physical features whatsoever in common, but that there is no perceivable difference between herself and all the white people in the Pullman household on the other hand. She, "except for the contrast of the 'whiteness' of Jessie, might have passed for white herself"(92), as "her pallor, the color of a pealed banana, lay over slim Caucasian features"(99). The contrast between mother and daughter, physically and spiritually, is unbridgeable, a fact which is even more emphasised by Delilah‟s endeavour to keep her daughter away from any other black people. This lack of a black community – which is one of the key factors for racial consciousness – and growing up as an inferior being in a white household, make it impossible for Peola to develop any racial pride. The only black person she can refer to is her mother, whose example of humbleness and subservience she is determined not to follow. She comes to hate her racially mixed heritage, and represses anything black in her body and mind. Hurst describes Delilah as massive and even ugly, ascribing to her features that appear even monstrous. "Her huge body"(106) with its "enormous face" (215), a "vast wet surface of a face"(242), "its great flaring nostrils"(93), and her "arms loaded with flesh"(294) make her appear as a huge, "gargantuan"(215) creature. Delilah‟s repellent massiveness sharply contrasts her frail daughter. Despite all the biological ties, Peola cannot identify herself with her mother at all. Delilah seems to be a complete stranger to her, and Peola develops a real aversion to her: "Peola was suffering [her mother‟s] embrace, a demonstration against which her flesh and staring eyes seemed to curl"(242). Peola is filled with disdain and even hatred for her mother. Her unaesthetic physical appearance, her incessant attempts to evoke racial pride in her, and her constant rebuke of her disloyal attitude towards the black race rouse Peola‟s dislike for her mother, and for her race. She simply cannot hear Delilah‟s complaints "I want mah chile full of nigger-love and lovin‟-to-be-nigger"(118) any more, and she is not willing to put up with Jessie‟s insulting outbursts: "Nigger! No fair! You pushed! You‟re a little nigger and you‟ve got no half-moons on your finger nails. Nig-nig-nig-ger!"(148). She simply cannot forgive her mother that, when 116

Bea urges her daughter to apologise, Delilah forcefully prevents Jessie from doing it, arguing that "Peola got to learn it"(ibid.).

Take it standin‟. You gotta learn to take it all your life that way. Nigger [...] is a wild-cat word when it comes jumpin‟ at us from the outside. Doan‟ let it git you. [...] If you let go of tears for every time you‟re gonne be called nigger, your tears will make a Red Sea big enough to drown us all in [...]. No white chile cain‟t be comin‟apologizin ‟to to a black and puttin‟ ideas into her ahead. Stop that tremblin‟, and walk over dar, and tell Jessie you‟re proud of bein‟a nigger, „cause it was de Lawd‟s work makin‟ you a nigger. (149)

This quote reveals that, despite Delilah‟s unswerving faith in God, being a Negro in a white racist America has to be learned. As a Negro you have to learn to put up with the fact that you are constantly exposed to racist attacks, but you also have to learn to ignore them. This is the message that Delilah keeps conveying. But Peola‟s reaction towards her mother ranges from confusion and physical aversion to profound hate, as her frantic outburst clearly shows: "I won‟t be a nigger! I won‟t be a nigger! [...] Won‟t! Won‟t"(149), echoed by her mother‟s harsh reply, "Yes, you will, baby, long as de Lwad is stronger dan you are", and again followed by Peola‟s furious reply "I won‟t! I won‟t"(ibid.), ending up with one of Peola‟s terrible convulsions triggered by an emotional breakdown. The relationship between mother and daughter is so tense that there appears to be no emotional link between them. Delilah seems to neglect Peola‟s feelings and needs, just hammering her obsession with religion and black race consciousness into her mind. The real reason for her desperate attempt to do so is finally revealed when she discloses the secret of her husband, who tried to 'pass' himself: "[d]e biggest curse whatever hit him or [her] was his whiteness"(ibid.). What actually happened we do not learn, but with Delilah saying "[I]t‟s a heap easier to be black when you‟re black lak I am, [...] dan it is to be white when you‟re black lak mah poor baby"(ibid.), we can draw the conclusion that her husband – who was obviously torn by the same racial ambivalence as Peola – must have experienced something dreadful on account of his racially mixed heritage. And Delilah turns out to be a highly protective mother who just tries to prevent, with all her might, Peola from ending up in the same way. She loves her daughter so dearly that she does not want to lose her, too. Peola‟s renunciation of her 'blackness' is initially more rooted in her disgust and disdain for her mother than in the abhorrence towards her race in general. The image of her 'slave mother', and the pressures that she exerts on Peola, finally

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contribute to her decision to conceal her racial identity by 'passing for white', already at the age of eight. As non-segregation is common in public schools in the North, it is easy for Peola, who "coolly calculated this procedure"(184), to take her place without any question among the children, "never by word or deed associating herself with the handful of Negro pupils in the class"(ibid.). "Without anyone knowing it, except the strange little crypt herself, Peola, at eight, had „passed‟"(ibid.). For a period of twenty- eight months, the little girl‟s race remains entirely unknown to her teachers and classmates. "The fanciful anonymity"(ibid.) of the big city finally enables Peola to play her "small ruse"(ibid.) on her surroundings. But one day her little secret is shamefully revealed when her black mother unexpectedly turns up in class. The very moment Peola sees Delilah, she "turned seventy years old in that schoolroom"(185). By discrediting Peola as a Negro, the girl‟s social life seems to be literally over. Devastatingly ashamed by her black mother‟s appearance and her racial outing respectively, Peola cannot bear her anger any more, and in a frenzy of hate screams at her mother: "[t]hey didn‟t know. They treated me like white. I won‟t ever go back [...] I hate you!"(187) This outburst is followed by a "typhoon of hysteria"(185), and culminates in a "nervous collapse"(187). These nervous breakdowns indicate Peola‟s indescribable suffering. She cannot bear being stigmatised as black; she yearns to be fully accepted; she yearns to be white. It requires amazing maturity for a girl of eight to be able to play such a cleverly devised trick on her social habitat and hide her racial identity for such a long time. Without her mother‟s appearance at school, Peola‟s masquerade would never have been detected. After the incident Delilah is devastated, and implores God to have mercy on her and her daughter:

[s]he caint pass. Nobody aint pass. God‟ watchin‟. God‟s watchin‟ for to cotch her. [...] Shame, mah baby. Lift de curse from off mah baby. Lawd, git de white horses drove out of her blood. Kill de curse-shame de curse her light-colored pap lef‟ for his baby. Chase it, rabbit‟s foot. Chase de wild white horses trampin‟ on mah chile‟s happiness. Chase „em, shameweed. Chase „em, rabbit‟s foot [...]. (185-186)

In this quotation Delilah uses an expression she very often refers to when she talks about her little daughter‟s race. "Lawd, git de white horses drove out of her blood"(185). By using the metaphor of the 'white horses', Delilah indicates the huge amount of 'white' blood running through her daughter‟s veins, as well as the power of

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the voice of her 'white' blood. It is Delilah‟s plight that the same wild horses which now destroy Peola‟s happiness once destroyed her husband‟s life. That yearning for 'whiteness' is as strong as wild horses are; too powerful to resist; too strong to chase away. She has already lost one fight. Not even God could help. And yet she begs God urgently again to take that curse off her daughter that she has inherited from her father, and to bring peace to her child.

You know what I wants most, honey-chile. Something dat money cain‟t buy. I wants to drown dem white horses plungin‟ in ma baby‟s blood [...]. I doan want nothin‟ else on dis earth „cept peace an‟ honesty for mah chile. (216)

In addition to Delilah‟s conviction that the black race is ordained to self- sacrificing servility towards the superior white race, it is Delilah‟s superstition, and her trust in Voodoo magic that Peola fiercely rejects. "[T]he rabbit‟s foot"(185) mentioned in the quotation above is such a device to help cure diseases or ban demons. That is why Delilah keeps a rabbit‟s foot dangling from the side of her child‟s crib, among other superstitious stuff. Her belief in old Voodoo witchcraft refers to ancient rites practised where her roots are. And she wants to keep these traditions alive, defying any changes. This meets with intense opposition from Peola. Delilah‟s sticking to primitive practices increases the gap between Peola and her mother; it enhances Peola‟s aversion to her, and fuels her racially ambivalent feelings towards the black race. Peola‟s racial dilemma is also heightened by the fact that Delilah deliberately tries to assimilate her daughter‟s life to Jessie‟s. For instance, Delilah replaces "Peola‟s colorful and fantastic little wardrobe of checks and bright calicos [...] [with] a coarse replica of the sheer and dainty"(83) ones that Bea had once fabricated for little Jessie. Or when the two girls are in their teens, and Jessie comes home for holidays and openly reveals her affection for Delilah, she "in turn paid her the perfect tribute of reciprocal devotion by emulating in Peola [...] Jessie‟s clothes, hair-dress and color schemes"(175). This conduct pushes Peola into even more racial ambiguity, as it frighteningly increases her resemblance to Jessie. With their appearances being almost identical, Peola does not understand the world any more. Delilah fully consciously tries to reinforce that being white is far better than being black, and that black people can only pursue happiness and joy in an indirect way, by benefiting from the opportunity to be able to play supportive and subservient roles as servants in white people‟s lives.

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Endowed with intellect by Fannie Hurst, the only logical consequence for Peola is to rebel against this discrepancy in the privileges of the two races. While Delilah unquestioningly subdues herself to white supremacy, Peola is not willing to put up with it. In her childhood and as a teenager, this rebellion is articulated by hysterical emotional outbursts, as she has no other choice to escape. As a young woman, the ultimate decision is therefore inevitable. She leaves the Pullman household to disappear for quite some time, without leaving a note, and without leaving a trace.

9.3.3 'Passing'as the Ultimate Solution to Peola’s Racial Ambiguity After a long absence of five years, Peola finally returns home. Her mother is entirely happy and convinced that her daughter has found her way back to her roots. "Gawd, Almighty, praise be de Lawd, ma chile‟s come home"(241). But she has to suffer a terrible shock when her daughter reveals that she has already been 'passing for white' in the last few years. The one and only reason for her coming back home is to ask Bea‟s and her mother‟s approval to "pass completely"(246) – a request that implies the complete renunciation of her past and all her family ties. "Lordagawd, it‟s come! Give me strength. De white horses have cotched her. Lordagawd, give me strength"(244). Delilah realises that the call of the 'white' blood in Peola has won. She frightfully realises that all her praying has not helped, and that her daughter is doomed as "black wimmin who pass, pass into damnation"(247). In the following crucial passage, all of Peola‟s emotions – her fears, her doubts, her self-loathing, and her self-pity – are revealed. She desperately tries to explain the whole dilemma of her racially split soul:

[y]ou at last can cry. I can‟t. You‟ve got tears left. I haven‟t. I‟ve cried myself dry. Cried myself out with self-loathing and self-pity and self-consciousness. I tell you I‟ve prayed same as you, for the strength to be proud of being black under my white. I‟ve tried to find glory in my people. I‟ve drenched myself in the life of Toussaint L‟Ouverture, Booker Washington, and Frederick Douglass. I‟ve tried to catch some of my spark. But I‟m not that stuff. I haven‟t pride of race, or love of race. There‟s nothing grand or of-the-stuff-martyrs-are-made about me. I can‟t learn to endure being black in a white world. It might be easier if I was out-and-out-black like you. Then there wouldn‟t be any questions. But I‟m not. I‟m light. No way of knowing how much white flows [sic] somewhere in my veins. I‟m as white under my skin as I am on top. Sometimes I think if my pap were living he‟d have things to tell me. (245)

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This passage clearly shows Peola‟s ordeal. It is actually the only passage in which Fannie Hurst describes Peola‟s harrowing inner conflict. She depicts a young woman whose inner balance is completely destroyed. We learn that Peola is not cold- hearted, selfish, and calculating. We also learn that she has tried everything to come to terms with her racial ambivalence. It is not a rash decision that she takes when she finally decides to 'pass for white'. Peola has taken her mother‟s faith and racial pride seriously; she has tried to pray, and asked for God‟s help to be proud of her black roots. She has read all the leading authors of the New Negro Movement such as Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass – who preach a new black racial consciousness – but everything in vain. She cannot be a martyr. She simply cannot learn to endure all the pain she would have to suffer if she remained, and if she accepted being black. She envies her mother being "out-and-out-black"(245). She has no questions, no doubts, but also no choice. But she herself is white inside and outside. She just wishes her father would still be alive. He would probably be the only person who could understand and help her. Peola reveals that the only reason for her 'passing for white' is her "plight of not having the courage to face life in a black world"(ibid.), and that she is haunted by that tantalising feeling that she could never get where she wants. She then argues that "there‟s nothing wrong in passing [because] what the world does not know, will not hurt it"(244). What she is painfully aware of is that she will have to conceal her life behind a mask. She cannot be her 'true' self any more. She will have to leave everything behind; she will have to change her environment by moving to some distant place where nobody will know her. Pretending to be an orphan appears to be the best camouflage, the best mask to hide behind. Peola is determined to break away from everything familiar, and she does it with composed strength. She represses any emotion: she will 'pass' even with regard to her feelings; she will keep them under control, as she will have to keep her whole life under control; she will efface all the black traits inside her; she will silence the voice of her 'black' blood forever. Delilah, the pure black soul, cannot help giving free rein to an emotional outburst which borders on delirium. It is like delivering a deathblow to her when Peola finally announces that she intends to marry a white man. "Gawd don‟t want his rivers to mix!"(246) and "[her] man will live to curse de day when [her] lie comes out"(247). 121

Miscegenation is not only a crime against the prevailing racial classification enforced by a law; it is blasphemy, and Delilah is sure that God will curse and punish her. Peola tries to mitigate her mother‟s anger by explaining that "it is not a sin [...] where there won‟t be children, [and] that there is no shame in being sterilized in the name of the happiness of another"(ibid.). Peola yearns for happiness and freedom from race. Knowing that a child conceived in this interracial marriage might betray her and shatter all her hopes of a happy life as a white woman, she is even willing to give up her fertility. It seems, however, that Peola‟s most essential reason for her sterilisation is the terrible fear that her child could suffer from the same torturing feelings of racial ambiguity that she had been suffering from all her life. How final and irrefutable Peola‟s decision is, is revealed in the following quotations. Peola implores her mother and Bea to let her go, because these two women "have [her] life or [her] death in their hands"(249). She explains to them that "[o]ne dares everything when there is nothing to lose and everything to gain"(250). Life as a black woman is not worth living for her, and staying would be her emotional death. She is not capable of bearing the heavy burden of an oppressed race. 'Passing' is "all or nothing for her"(248). Her entire past and her two caring 'mothers', Delilah – as her over-protective biological mother – and Bea – as a 'mother' in terms of financial support and friendship – seem therefore to represent 'nothing' to her in comparison to her ardent wish to 'pass for white':

[a]ll that I want is your pledge. Both of yours. To let me pass in silence. Give me your solemn oaths that so far as you are concerned, so far as every entering my life with my husband is concerned, you don‟t know me, have never seen me, have never heard of me. It is that, for me, or nothing. It is life for me, or death. Promise me never to know me if you should meet me face to face in years to come. (248)

Peola asks her mother, who loves her dearly but who has never been able to show her affection openly, for the impossible – to abandon her own flesh and blood. The 'passing' of Peola means literally the passing away of the mulatta "Peola Cilla Johnson"(184). Her 'passing for white' – and the involved breaking away from all contacts with her family – is to be equated with the effacement of her former life. The young girl starts pleading for her release out of the dilemma of her racial turmoil in a very theatrical way: "‟Mammy, I beg – I beg – on my knees I beg [...] I‟ll kiss your hands – I‟ll wash your feet [...] let me go„"(251). Being willing to wash the feet of a woman whose massive black body she feels disgust and disdain for, underlines her 122

despair and her fervent desire to 'pass for white'. Delilah is 'breaking in two', but decides to give her daughter her blessings and a farewell. But complying with her daughter‟s wish to release her is beyond Delilah‟s capacity of suffering. She soon dies of a broken heart. At the funeral all the participants are of the same opinion that "it will be a queer world without Delilah!"(273). They are surprised at the enormous number of black people taking part, as one of them states: "[d]idn‟t know there were so many in the world. There can‟t be any darkies left anywhere [...] Except one. In her white man‟s jungle"(272). Peola does not turn up at her mother‟s funeral. She is on her way to South America together with her blue-eyed husband, Allen Matterhorn, who knows nothing about her past, except that she is an orphan without any relatives. He loves her, and he "depends on [her]"(250), because he is as lonely as she is. The indication that the white man‟s world is a jungle implies that living in the white world is not free from risks and adventures. That is what Peola will probably have to find out herself.

9.3.4 Masking and Masquerading in Imitation of Life What is really unique in Fannie Hurst‟s Imitation of Life is that Peola displays amazing maturity even as a little girl, and that her racial ambivalence is so strong that she is determined to 'pass' already at eight. As she lives in a white household among white people, she realises the mind- boggling difference between her subservient uneducated black mother and the successful and elegant white business woman from the moment they move in. Her aversion to the 'black' blood in her starts to oppress her, to suffocate her, and she has to break free. From her very infancy on, Peola is "quick as any child to ape"(98), but nevertheless she is "careful to avoid replica of her parent‟s dictum" (ibid.). While other children always try to imitate grown-ups in every respect, Peola avoids and even refuses to imitate her mother‟s speech and manner. Already at a very early age, her racially ambiguous feelings and her attraction to the white race prevail. And already in infancy she knows how to masquerade, how to 'perform as white' by aping 'white' behavioural patterns, 'white' codes of dressing, and 'white' language. Having Jessie as a kind of sister, she has learned how to dress properly, how to apply make- 123

up to look pretty, how to copy white performance. Delilah herself has often copied Jessie when dressing Peola, and the other way round. So Peola has always been shown how to masquerade, although both girls use it differently: Jessie – to confirm her position in the white world; Peola – to use it as an entrance ticket into the white world. It is amazing with what self-assurance, dogged determination, and obsession she handles that situation. She is perfect at concealing her 'true self' behind an unrevealing mask. Unswerving in the pursuit of her aim to 'pass for white', she never hesitates or doubts her decision. Nobody questions her masquerade; nobody penetrates her iron mask. Even when her secret is openly disclosed with Delilah turning up at school, Peola does not give up. This traumatising experience forces her to change schools, which involves leaving the Pullman household, a haven of security. But her unbroken will to achieve her goal makes her overcome that obstacle. She takes up an apprenticeship as a librarian in Washington, distant enough from Atlanta City, where she can easily perform her masquerading without the constant threat of being betrayed by her own mother. In the safe distance she can live the life of a 'white' woman without having to hide behind a mask. Peola knows how to perform, how to behave among white people. Bea, whose style and manners Peola has adopted, has served as a brilliant role model of a white lady. Performing is an essential part of 'passing'. It is the visible confirmation of her inner conviction, and Peola is determined to make her dream come true. The fact that the context of a black community is entirely missing facilitates Peola‟s assimilation process, and the development of most of the masquerading strategies consequently takes place almost automatically. Peola is simply perfect at misleading her social habitat, at fooling whites. And yet she is very careful at concealing any compromising detail of her true racial identity. She thus uses nail varnish to cover up a blemish inherent in the black race: Jessie once notices that discriminating difference when she remarks that Peola has "no half moon on her fingernails"(148). But this missing of the half-moons is obviously the only visible evidence that differentiates the "exceptionally white"(119) mulatta Peola from a white woman. The most crucial criterion for Peola‟s successful masquerading in order to 'pass for white' is, however, her strong and intrinsic will not to resemble her mother, 124

neither in appearance nor in manner, as she is the embodiment of 'blackness'. Peola thus develops masking and masquerading to perfection to erase the slightest doubts with regard to her racially mixed heritage. The sharp contrast between Delilah – representing 'blackness' – and Peola – representing 'whiteness' – is displayed in the following quotation:

[a]nd now here was Peola, straight as a blade, her banana-colored pallor standing out beneath the brim of the modish hat, walking into the routine of Delilah preparing to deliver the nightly polished apple on its nightly polished plate. (241)

Peola appears as the perfect white lady. Elegantly dressed, only her 'banana-colored' pale face might imply an allusion to her mixed origin. The hint at 'the nightly polished plate' implies the subservience with which black servants observe their household duties. And that is exactly what Peola does not want to be reduced to. Her mother‟s example is nothing but deterring to her.

9.3.5 Conclusion The title Imitation of Life implies that the protagonists in the novel do not live life to the full, but merely copy a fulfilled life. They pursue their goals with great ambition, and seem to achieve everything they have been dreaming of, only to realise in the end that something essential missing. Bea Pullman is an ambitious business woman who built up the huge empire of 'the Pullman chains' by relying on her strength and her potential. Bea‟s miraculous success story represents the ultimate realisation of the American Dream. As she is a purely white woman, she does not have to overcome any obstacles of race, only those of being a woman in a man‟s world. But being white enables Bea to achieve what Peola is barred from, and this nourishes Peola‟s racial ambiguity. It fuels her yearning to be like her. Peola loathes being classified as black, as she can spot no difference whatsoever between her and Bea. This enhances her ambition to 'pass for white' in order to enjoy all the privileges and chances of a white woman. Bea shows Peola all the unlimited possibilities a white woman has in a white world, and she serves as a role model for Peola to perfect her masquerading techniques by copying her appearance and performance, which is essential to succeed. Delilah, on the other hand, is the personification of loyalty. She is the personification of a God-fearing soul, laying her black hands into God‟s. She never 125

questions her destiny. She is ordained to serve white people, and she blindly accepts God‟s will to belong to the inferior race. Never asking anything for herself, she sacrifices her life for others with subservience and devotion. In the same way as Bea nourishes Peola‟s ambition to be white, Delilah serves as a deterrent for Peola never ever to become like her mother, never ever to yield to the voice of her 'black' blood. Both women make Peola aware of the discrepancy between the two races, and plunge her into the dilemma of intense racially ambiguous feelings. Bea personifies independence, wealth, and success. Delilah is the embodiment of subordination, inferiority, and a blind trust in God. Comparing the white and the black woman, and what they have achieved in life, Peola bluntly refuses to accept her mother‟s dogma that she has to subdue herself, that as a Negro she belongs to an inferior race. Peola rebels against this blind obedience, and she reflects Fannie Hurst‟s commitment as a civil rights activist to establish equality of the races. Hurst was an ardent campaigner, and Peola displays the same obsession and resoluteness to make her dream come true. The only way out of the dilemma of her racially ambiguous suffering is the ultimate decision to 'pass for white'. For Peola, 'passing for white' is the only option to live the life she longs for. Peola claims that she is "as white under [her] skin as [she] is on the top"(245). The torturous feeling of being classified as a member of the detested black race prevents her from enjoying life. She wants to live without any racial restrictions and prejudice, without the stigma of being black. Peola desires to live her life to the full, and not a mere imitation of life. "It‟s life, I tell you. Me clutching at life!"(250) Although many critics have argued that Hurst reinforced stereotypes, and that the 'passing' of Peola represented a disgrace to the black race, Hurst‟s intention in the novel was to uncover the social and racial discrimination that black women have to suffer from. It is therefore false to assume that Hurst promoted the idea of 'passing'. It just represented a crucial device to unfold the sad reality of the American class system. The trope of 'passing' therefore served as a severe criticism of American race politics. It is worth pointing out that Peola provoked heated debates. Most of the readers hated her for what she did to her mother. She was regarded as the epitome of pure selfishness. In the late 1930s, through to the late 1970s, 'Peola' became a 126

term with negative connotations that was used by blacks to refer to light-skinned black women who identified themselves with mainstream white society. A typical 'Peola' was white and wanted to be white. During the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement, the term 'Peola' achieved the status of an insult, and was comparable to the epithet of 'Uncle Tom'.

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10. Conclusion I would like to start by giving an overall view of the mulatta heroines, whose lives are dominated by feelings of racial ambiguity. Being of mixed race, their contrasting black and white genes interfere with each other, and irrefutably lead to identity trouble. They can keep certain traits under control, but they can never deny or ignore them. They have several features in common, yet due to different upbringings and environments, they differ in the way racially ambivalent feelings affect them, and in the way they handle the dilemma of their racially mixed heritages. What the six protagonists share is their origin. They are all the illegitimate offspring of miscegenation, half-breeds who do not fit in with any community, black or white. Their hybrid bodies are the visible sign of racial and sexual transgression in a racially divided, strictly segregated society. As they pose a threat to white supremacy within a strict racial classification system, they are stigmatised and marginalised. Not knowing where they really belong, they are tormented by racial ambivalence. Reflecting the new racial consciousness of the Harlem Renaissance, they all represent the new African American woman – beautiful, intelligent, and well- educated, not willing to put up with the circumstances they were born into. Endowed with advanced intellects, they rebel against the inequality and unfairness with which coloured people are treated. In the search of their own identities, their intelligence allows them to break out of the borders of a rigid class system,as they are fully aware of the 'two-ness' of their personalities, their split identities; but breaking out does not always liberate them from racially ambivalent feelings. They are all torn by their bi- racial heritage. Yet despite a few similarities, they all have different approaches in their attempts to come to terms with it. I will now compare the six protagonists with regard to the following criteria:  their childhood as the origin of their racial ambiguity  the way their racial ambiguity affects their relationships  their loneliness and solitariness  their search for their „true‟ identity; their masking and masquerading

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10.1 Their Childhood as the Origin of Their Racial Ambiguity Helga Crane in Quicksand is the only „mulatta‟ figure who is actually too dark to „pass for white‟; yet she is haunted by a racial dilemma which is deeply rooted in her childhood. It is there that she experiences those depressing feelings of being unwanted and unloved which she can never get rid of. As she is never able to resolve the problem with her white Danish mother, and as she has to grow up among white relatives who despise and discriminate against her after her mother‟s death, her life remains a constant turmoil of feelings. She can never come to terms with her past. Clare Kendry in Passing has a miserable childhood, too. It also has a traumatic impact on her life, but in a different way. As her parents die very early, she is brought up by her bigoted white aunts whose maltreatment, prejudice, and exploitation she is determined to escape. In contrast to Helga, Clare –in her 'having way' – knows exactly what she wants. She shakes off all her racial doubts in order to escape that racial hell she grows up in, and „passes for white‟ when she is only fifteen. Irene Redford in Passing is raised in a black community as a protected child. Even though she can enjoy wealth and the love of her parents, she develops tormenting feelings of racial ambiguity that are to haunt her for the rest of her life. It is never explicitly said, but there are several hints that Clare‟s resoluteness and determination to change her life subconsciously influenced her in their common childhood, and maybe enhanced those racially ambiguous feelings already inherent in her. Angela Murray in Plum Bun enjoys a happy childhood in a black community. Her racially ambivalent feelings are kindled by her mother Mattie, who teaches her infant daughter to enjoy both races in her by playing their favourite 'passing game' on Saturdays, where she introduces the little girl into the glittering white world. Seeing the discrepancy between the white and the black world, Angela‟s inner balance is destroyed. She cannot identify with the simple values of her parents any more; she feels an irrepressible craving for the pleasures and riches of the white world, and her bi-racial heritage starts harassing her. Peola Cilla Johnson‟s racial ambiguity in Imitation of Life is nourished by the fact that she grows up in a white household, being all-but-white herself. Cut off from 129

any black community, seeing nothing but wealthy white people around her – apart from her mother, whose appearance and attitude she detests – she is confronted very early with the disillusioning reality that black people are on earth to serve their white 'masters'. This is at least what her black mother Delilah is convinced of in her God-fearing nature. And this is exactly what Peola is determined not to do. Despite her mother‟s constant attempts to hammer obedience and subservience into her brain, she rebels against this inequality. Her stubbornness and doggedness not to accept this discrepancy as God-given make her 'pass for white' at the early age of eight. Mattie Murray cannot be mentioned here as the novel starts off much later and does not provide any details about her childhood.

10.2 The Way Their Racial Ambiguity Affects Their Relationships The 'mulatta body' not only poses a threat to white supremacy within the American racial classification system, but it functions as a sexual threat as well. 'Blackness' is very often equated with sexuality, and as mulatta women are afraid of being reduced to mere sensuality and sexuality, some tend to repress any sexual desire so as to not be classified as primitive and animalistic – stereotypical features seen as inherent in the black race. Helga and Irene are typical examples of 'mulatta figures' who repress their sexuality, which has a rather negative effect on their relationships. Both regard sexuality as a destructive force, though they handle it differently. As long as Helga suppresses any sexual emotion, she can avoid being constrained. She can avoid succumbing to the lures of her 'black' blood. She can avoid becoming a 'jungle creature'. This is the reason why she flees from any close relationship. When she finally marries the 'yellowish' reverend, she has no choice with regard to her sexuality any more. She has to succumb to it, and this is her perdition. She is doomed to one pregnancy after another, each of them endangering her life. Marriage – the legitimate sanctuary of sexuality – is a death warrant for her, and not a way out of her racial dilemma. Irene‟s marriage differs from Helga‟s. Her marriage guarantees her stability and financial security. But this is only a crumbling glittering façade as Irene just 130

pretends to be a happy mother and wife, and a well established member of the black upper middle class. She could be really happy and content, but she is not. It is her racial ambiguity which makes her restless and discontent. She feels smothered by her marriage, and the attractions and pleasures of the white world keep luring her. It is her frigidity – originating in her racial ambivalence – which makes Brian finally look at other sexually more attractive women. In the end she bitterly regrets that she has lived such a restrained life. With Clare, it is completely different. She is the epitome of female sexuality, and she lives her sexuality freely, changing her sexual partners randomly. Her marriage reflects her acquisitive nature; knowing exactly what she wants, she is determined to escape the ordeal of racial ambivalence and 'pass for white'. Marrying a rich man is the best entrance ticket into the white world, although marrying a fanatic racist is almost suicidal. It is inevitable that Clare, sooner or later, will come to hate him so much that she might even consider killing him. Her marriage is actually a disaster, another glittering façade which crumbles on account of unbridgeable controversies arising from her racially mixed heritage. When Clare finally succumbs to the voice of her 'black' blood, and decides to return to her black community, a tragic ending of her marriage is unavoidable. Mattie Murray„s marriage is an ideal agreement between her and her black husband Junius, who tolerates her desire to 'pass for white' every now and then. He knows that her 'passings' are harmless. Junius can fully rely on Mattie. She is not troubled by racial ambivalence any more as she can embrace both components of her racial identity simultaneously, and as such her 'passings' do not affect her marriage in any way. They just brighten up Mattie‟s daily routine; they probably make her marriage even happier because there are no restraints. She has opted for 'blackness'. She is so well-balanced that all the riches of the white world mean nothing to her compared to the love and protection her husband Junius provides. Angela Murray is driven into a turbulent relationship as she is not willing to live a life of racial discrimination and inequality. She cuts off all ties to the black world, and marriage to Roger – a rich white man – seems to be the ultimate solution to make her dreams of wealth and glory come true. She is even willing to accept a 'free love' relationship, hoping that he will marry her one day. But several incidents with regard to Roger‟s perception of race disillusion her completely, and slowly but 131

gradually more and more racially ambiguous feelings and doubts destroy her illusion of a glittering white world. When Roger finally asks her to marry him, she refuses his proposal as she has reached a point where she cannot suppress her racially ambivalent feelings any more. She can successfully shake off all her racial doubts. She eventually opts for a life with Anthony, who shares her bi-racial origin. Peola Johnson„s future seems to be settled, too, although there are hardly any hints at a relationship. Peola plans and lives her life far away from the Pullman household. On her last visit she announces that she is going to marry a white man. This is a thought that horrifies Delilah, as God 'doesn‟t want rivers to mix'. But Peola is determined to break off all racial and all family ties, despite the grief she causes. She will cover up all traces that might betray her racial ancestry by telling her future husband that she is an orphan without any family connection.

10.3 Their Loneliness and Solitariness Helga is a desperately lonely person. Feelings of strangeness and 'outsideness' keep haunting her. A kind of destructive force prevents her from reaching out to people, from establishing lasting relationships. She thinks of herself as a 'disturbing factor', and as she never has a racial community she can identify with, she exposes herself to complete solitariness. Clare becomes a victim of loneliness the moment she starts meeting black people again. Racial doubts start surfacing, and she cannot rid herself of them any more. As she has to conceal her 'true' identity in front of her husband, she cannot satisfy her awakening longing for her black community; she has to shun her friends, and she has nobody to talk to. This causes a terrible feeling of loneliness in her. When she cannot silence this urge any more, she finally ignores all warnings and opts for black. But this is her death warrant. Irene is a big pretender. She always keeps up appearances so as to not endanger her social position. But her racial ambiguity dominates her activities and makes her an extremely lonely being at the bottom of her heart. Mattie also knows what loneliness can mean. She regularly 'passed' into the white world in her youth. She was lured by its glamour, but she felt utterly lonely as she had nobody to share her adventures with. She could not stand this feeling of 132

isolation any more. This is one of the reasons why she finally opted for 'blackness', apart from the sexual exploitation of white men she was exposed to. Because of her dogged determination to 'pass' for white, Angela is prone to fits of loneliness and solitariness, too. So as to not betray herself, she has to withdraw from her sister and all her friends and acquaintances. In these moments of extreme loneliness, racially ambiguous feelings torment her, and she finally realises that it is not worth sacrificing family and friends for riches. Peola is fully aware of her solitary position but it does not seem to affect her. She appears to be so strong-willed and so determined to achieve her goal – which is living as a 'white' woman in a white world – that she is willing to sacrifice everything for it.

10.4 Their Search for Their 'True' Identity; Their Masking and Masquerading Helga Crane is a very tragic character who can never resolve her racial dilemma. It keeps haunting her because she cannot silence the voice of the 'white' blood in her. With her inherent irrationality she revels in the 'soothing haziness' of her racial identity, although she is constantly torn by her bi-racial heritage. But instead of trying to arrive at a decision, she keeps transgressing racial and geographical boundaries in order to avoid a solution. This 'two-ness' in her makes her wish to be able to divide her life between two countries, in two continents, moving 'shuttle-like' between them. It is actually this search for her 'true' identity – however tormenting it is for her – which keeps her alive, because the moment she decides to opt for black, she is doomed to damnation. She enjoys masquerading, and it gives her pleasure to attract attention, but her masquerade is never a means to conceal her identity. As her complexion is too dark, she can never opt for white. Her identity problem is deeply rooted inside her, driven by a 'ruthless force'. Throughout her life she wears a mask which she adapts to various situations; she plays different roles, but it is never her 'true' self which she reveals, as she does not know who she really is. She is a 'tragic' mulatta who becomes the victim of herself, unable to cope with her bi-racial heritage. Irene Redfield resembles Helga in a way in so far as she is never able to resolve her identity problem either. She lives a life behind a beautiful façade. She 133

always leaves the impression of a perfect lady. Her appearance is flawless, but her life is a life behind a mask, a rather 'stiff mask‟, which actually suffocates her. Even masquerading for her temporary 'passings' – which she does enjoy – is not a pleasurable activity, but a nuisance. She cannot resist the temptations of the 'white' blood in her, although she can never rid herself of feelings of guilt when doing it. She is a rather torn personality. She can never shake off her racial ambivalence. Even when crossing the 'color line' she is haunted by insecurity and fear. She simply could not stand the shame of being detected. She is driven by the same irrational attitude as Helga. Though highly intelligent and sophisticated, she cannot arrive at a decision. She is a dissatisfied, frustrated woman who keeps crossing racial borders, but who has not got the courage to close the door to either the black or the white world. She will remain the unhappy victim of her racial ambiguity. Clare Kendry is a very strong-willed person who is fully aware very early in life of the racial and social dilemma her mixed heritage has thrown her into. Endowed with intellect and beauty, she also knows how to cope with it. With irresistible charm, but recklessly and cold-heartedly, she pursues her aim. Living a race-free and carefree life is all she desires, and 'passing for white' is the only way to achieve this. She does not allow a single racially ambivalent emotion to surface. She is perfect at concealing. Nobody would detect the slightest insecurity behind the sometimes 'aching mask' she is wearing. She is also the personification of the 'masquerading' technique. It is a most pleasurable activity for her to fool white people. No pricks of conscience seem to bother her until she is confronted with 'blackness' again. Her black racial ties do not stop calling her any more, and for the first time in her life she is confronted with a dilemma she is unable to resolve. Deep uneasiness and even despair come to dominate her life. The dilemma caused by her emerging racial ambivalence is finally the deathblow for her, in the very meaning of the word. For Mattie Murray, racial ambiguity is not a subject any more, but it used to be of major importance to her when she was very young. When she remembers the time she 'passed for white', a lot of rather unpleasant memories start troubling her. With the consent of her husband Junius, her temporary 'passings for white' are now mere fun and pleasure. She delights in 'masquerading' and playing tricks on snobbish white people. She enjoys the sophistication of the white world, but is always happy to return to her cosy refuge, her safe haven in the black community. 134

For Angela Murray, coming to terms with her racially ambiguous feelings is a much more complex burden, and a series of painful ups and downs marks her search for her 'true' identity. Her regular 'passings' into the white world in her youth have left an irresistible impression on her, but they have also made her painfully aware of the inequality between the races. She cannot stop these tantalising feelings any more. Experiencing racial humiliation herself, she is determined to 'pass for white'. She dreams of a life free from racism and degradation. She craves independence and material things. Meeting Roger seems to be the fulfilment of her dearest dreams. She is good at acting and 'performing as white', and she fancies 'masquerading'. Like her mother she enjoys fooling white people. But reality soon catches up with her. Her self-assertion is seriously undermined when she is publicly denounced as a Negro. Even more careful to conceal her 'true' identity from then on, she soon faces extreme solitariness, and racially ambiguous feelings start torturing her. She represses them again and again, more or less successfully, only to be fully disillusioned by the rather disappointing development of her relationship with Roger. She starts envying Virginia, who lives a happy and fulfilled life, free from any racial doubts. She develops a suffocating feeling of 'two-ness', of belonging to two races. She desperately tries to suppress her black identity, although thoughts of the warmth of the black community keep emerging. But her obsession with 'whiteness' and her naive feeling that everything is perfect in the white world prevent her from deciding which values really count in life. Her incapability of resolving her racial dilemma culminates in a 'sickness of soul' and a deteriorating outward appearance. She loses control of her body and mind. Only slowly she comes to recognise the essentials of life. She can extract herself from that awful 'whiteness'. She returns to her black community without any racially ambiguous feelings. After a long and painful process of maturation she has eventually found her inner balance, her 'true' self. Peola Cilla Johnson‟s racial ambivalence is fuelled by her upbringing. It is bound to escalate because she grows up in a white household, far away from any black community, which is generally considered the most essential racial tie. Completely white herself, apart from the missing half moons on her fingernails – the only visible racial sign that differentiates her from white people – she is obsessed with 'passing for white'. Her mother Delilah is just a deterring example of racial subordination – a fact Peola is not going to put up with. Although she does not feel a 135

lot of sympathy for her mother, breaking off all racial ties to her is less easy than it seems to be. She is plagued by racial doubts, too, but she is not willing to suffer from them for the rest of her life. Endowed with a high amount of intellect by Fannie Hurst, she arrives at a decision after some distressing experiences in her endeavour to resolve her racial dilemma. She bids farewell to Delilah and the Pullmann household, never ever to return. Although Peola used to be perfect at concealing, 'masking' and 'masquerading' are devices Peola does not need any more – now that she intends to marry a white man who will never know her racial secret. The thought of an interracial marriage does not scare her. Without any relatives and with huge distances from her familiar surroundings, nobody will ever be able to discover her 'true' identity in South America. And miscegenation does not pose any threat to her, either, as she is going to sacrifice her fertility for a life free from racial prejudice. She buries all her racially ambiguous feelings with the decision to undergo a sterilisation procedure to prevent any pregnancy that might produce another unhappy, miscegenous child; a child that might also betray her racial origin. Peola does not opt for an agreement between the black and white traits of her bi-racial heritage. They might start interfering with each other again, plunging her into a never ending vicious circle of racially ambiguous feelings. She prefers a more definite solution.

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