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Essay 2 The representation f Clare's death, n the ther hand, seethes with the politics f racial hatred, marriage, social mobility, male dominance, and heternrmativity in 1920 s Harlem. Because the narrative glasses ver her thught's and des nt provide an actin sequence -- she was afraid, she turned, she jumped; r, she laughed, she was pushed, she fell -- Clare passes ut f literary conventions that stage female victimization r intolerable psychic conflicts. Early in Passing, we learn that Clare Kendry fled frm tyrannical, racist aunts by passing int a white marriage and that Irene Redfield fled frm any hint f risk-taking int a tennis marriage and infinite tea parties. Despite Irene's s tensible loyalty t "racial uplift, " she des nt fault Clare entirely fr her click t pass, t commit race suicide. The when first reunite, after all, at the tp f the Draft Htel where Irene herself is passing t brain refuge frm the crowded, "burning" streets f Chicago. Irene is relieved t be in "anther world, pleasant, quiet, and strangely remote frm the sizzling ne that she had left be." Although this ability t pass (up) int "anther world" des nt cme with substantial less, Clare confides in Irene that having my is crucial t her happiness: "'all things considered, I think, 'Rene, that it's even wrth the price'." Anxious t escape her "pale life, " Clare attaches herself t Irene and t Irene's social world in Harlem.
Irene replies several times t cut ff contact with Clare, but she never manages t d s. In the final scene, Clare, Irene, and Brian attend a party at the ironically named Freeland's apartment. Having discovered his wife's secret, Clare's husband, Jan Bellew, barges int the party and races toward Clare, calling her a "damned nigger. " Clare stands "at the window, as closed as if everyone were nt staring at her in curiosity and water, as if the we structure f her life were nt lying in fragments before her" (271). As Jan flies toward Clare, Irene hurries t her side, "her terms tinged with ferocity, " and lays her hand n "Clare's bare arm.
ne thought possessed her. She could't have Clare Kendry cast aside by Bellew. She could't have her free" (271). Clare must be contained by marriage, r death, in re fr Irene t feel safe: Irene know, "If Clare was freed, anything might happen" (268). The danger that Clare embodies, released when Irene pens the envelope in the first scene, culminates in this frantic cnfrntatin between identity, desire, and the threat f free. The narrative pauses, as it des thought the telling f this intense connection between the tw when, t reflect back n the men: "What happened next, Irene Redfield never afterwards allowed herself t remember.
Never clearly" (271). The narrative disengages frm the time f the fall, leaping forward t a partial memory. Since mst f the narrative depends upn Irene's recollection, we dn't have access t what "really happened" either. Somehow Clare falls ut the window -- which, c incidentally (r nt), Irene had peter a men before. This blurred event causes a great deal f speculation, inside and upside the fictional text. (11) Still, the final mment's f uncertainty and lss in Passing are complexly marked as female -- bth descriptively in the fcu's n Clare's by and structurally in the ambiguity f the fall. n the way downstairs, Irene is struck by the thought that Clare might still be alive, "a thought s terrifying, s horrible that she had t grasp hld f the banister" (273).
Clare passes, briefly, fr a tragic mulatto r burgess suicidal "white" was: the "band beauty" with her "ivory skin" and "ivory face" is either a murder victim r a suicide. Yet, if Clare cases t jump, her decision is prompted by a white supremacist husband and a desperate friend rushing at her; if Clare is pushed, she is a "closed" victim -- "There was even a faint smile n her full, red lips and in her shining eyes" (271). Clare refuses t abdicate, even at her death, her "revolutionary possibilities" r her smile. There is something self -- willed abut her disappearance, abut her willingness t risk everything -- twice. Writing abut Clarissa, Elisabeth Broken defines self-inflicted death as "bth the literal attainment f austerity through death and the performance f an autobiographical desire" (142).
In a far less protracted scene f dying than Clarissa's, Clare achieves this dual legacy as well -- but we nly know the complications f her desire through Irene's hld n the narrative. We can think abut Clare and her death with thinking abut Irene and her desire. It is this relating perception f self-destruction that me the text -- rightly praised fr its psychological subtlety -- away frm individual consciousness, toward community and toward history. The narrative stages an active inter subjectivity that latest intention in the public sphere as well as in the tense, also illegible, queer "and" between Irene and Clare. Clare's disappearance differs frm Edna Pntellier's walk int the sea, Lily Bart's decision t risk the choral, Anna Karenina's leap in from f the train, Emma Board's run t the chemist, and Miss Julie's acquiescence t Jean. In these realist texts, readers "see" the actin; narrators r stage directions cover the consciousness f the main character.
Passing fees n such access t Clare's thinking r t the actin itself. Following Tv and Barthes, Peter Brks refers t narrative as "essentially the articulation f a set f verbs" (111). The expected verb in Passing is missing. What catapults Clare ut the window is nothing. Nothing in the text. And, as Derrida reminds us, "There is nothing upside the text. " The conclusion f the new -- an ending that Davis calls "unrealistic and sme what ambivalent" (319), that Wall refers t as "abrupt and unearned" (107), that Jonathan Little defends as "consistent with the internal login and rani design Larsen sets up" (173), and that Cutter praises as "a state f genius" (97) -- summarizes the hermeneutical crisis.
Butler writes in Bodies that Matter: "As a term fr betraying what unit t remain concealed, 'queering' wrk's as the exposure within language -- an exposure that disrupts the repressive surface f language -- f bth sexuality and race" (176). This queer ending express what the national narrative seeks t conceal as it disrupts the very surface f a paper ending.
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Research essay sample on Ut The Window F The Fall Clare
