Research Papers /
Nella Larsen's Passing - what to write about? [4]
Here is the begining of my essay.. any thoughts?
Women who were raised during the later 19th century were raised with patriarchal beliefs that the men are to be the head of the household and sole bread winners. When women would marry, they would do so just to be married, that was the thing to do; to be married, have children and make the man happy. The marriage between the husband and wife was not like marriage is today. Marriage was a legal contract between a man and a woman and wasn't considered to be anything romantic or emotional about their attachments to each other. Married men and women often slept in separate rooms and very seldom had intelligent conversations with each other. The wife was there to bear the children and take care of the home and not much else. The roles of women in marriage began to change in the early 20th century, but women still had it in their blood and minds that they were to be the housekeepers and childbearers. This being said, without that emotional intimacy that a wife should get from her husband, the wife would turn to other women and form an emotional bond with them in order to satisfy the craving for emotional stability and sanity. Out of these bonds, would come very strong friendships among married women, bonds that would last a lifetime and friendships that women would not find in their marriages with their husbands. Some critics of novels written during the late 19th century and early 20th century believe that these friendships that were formed between married women were more than platonic relationships, that they were homoerotic relationships. Granted some of the relationships between women could have been homoerotic but I believe more often than not, that these were close friendships built because women knew what the other was going through and the women could relate to each other on a more intimate level because of that. Nella Larsen's novel, Passing, is one of those novels that critics have torn apart the relationship between Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield; calling it a homosexual or homoerotic relationship which ultimately ended in Clare's death. In this paper, I will argue the fact that Clare and Irene's friendship was solely a platonic friendship based on trust and intimacy that they had has children, not a homoerotic relationship.
