passing - clare Flashcards
brit bennet - danger
Clare seems to enjoy the risk that is drawn from passing.
- revels on the nearness of getting caught - passing is a performance and therefore requires an audience
“her words swept over them”, “verbal feat”
- refers to herself as a ‘deserter’ yet Irene looks in vain for traces of pain, fear, or grief on her countenance
Indeed, even Irene picks up on the fact that Clare draws her vitality, rather than her suffering, from “stepping always on the edge of danger”.
“surely everyone doesn’t do everything for gain”
“Innate lack of consideration for the feelings of others”
“She wanted to nibble at the cakes of other folk as well”
“HAVING NATURE”
little -clare
clare find no peace or rest even after returning to black community - no supporting community will embrace Clare in returning
- Larsen, obviously aware of the traditions before her, chooses not to depict such serene returns for her characters
“i feel exactly as i used to on the sunday we went to the christmas tree celebration”
background of oppression and physical abuse
expected her to “earn (her) keep”.
Her repetitive explanations to Irene “You’re free. You’re happy. You’re … safe
“For I am lonely, so lonely”
“the freeland Clare attains is finally ironic.. Pushed by the same friend in whom she so closely confided” - ending at the freeland party but clare doesnt achieve freedom
‘But if Jack finds out if our marriage is broken, that lets me out. Doesn’t it?’
‘sob of thankfulness’
brazil is used to show how there is no black and safe community anywhere in the world (in 1929 brazil symbolised an ironic and disillusioned reality)
- irene kills clare to erase parts of herself (homosexuality) which dont allow her to remain invisible
tate - clare death
clare’s desire for excitment that brings about her sudden death
“No tangible proof to support one interpretation over another”
Suicide - parralel between clare seeing father’s dead body and last scene
“And, in the next instance, she . . . turned and vanished through the door [never to return]”
“One moment Clare had been there… the next she was gone”
In both instances Clare surveys the fragments of her life, and in both she vanishes, leaving behind a painful situation which she cannot alter
lewis - gatsby and passing
desire to pass for clare and gatsby
“platonic conception”
“ivory mask”
- observed by other who infuse narrative with highy charged mix of desire and dread
- pass in order to enjoy economic and social mobility - nick and irene too
“The need for immediate safety”
“magic carpet to another world”
tredell - teacup
“there was a slight crash”
“on the floor at her feet lay the shattered cup”
- symbolic anticipation of the ending of the novel - anticipate psychological shattering of clare’s white identity into fragments - perhaps expresses irene’s desire for clare’s destruction
retains her composure as if “the whole structure of her life were not lying in fragments before her”
brody - teacup is a “relic of the Civil War” - its shattering is analogous to the broken body of the nation
zulena is who picks up shattered cup = hierarchical social infrastructure
“a small mahogany-coloured creature”
