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"Recoil" or "Seize"?: Passing, Ekphrasis and "Exact Expression" in Nella Larsen's Passing Monique Rooney continued . . . 
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Notes 1. Camille Paglia Sexual Personae (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990) 154. 2. Nella Larsen, Passing, ed. Deborah E. McDowell (1929; New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1986) 201. All subsequent page numbers refer to this edition. 3. A reflection of its canonical importance in the study of sexuality, McDowell's essay which was published as an introduction to her edition of Passing and Quicksand has been republished in the Gay and Lesbian Studies Reader. "'It's Not Safe. Not Safe at all.': Sexuality in Nella Larsen's Passing." Gay and Lesbian Studies Reader, ed. Henry Abelove, Michele Aina Barale, David M Halperin (New York and London: Routledge, 1993) 616-25. 4. Deborah E. McDowell, "Introduction," Quicksand and Passing (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1986) ix-xxxvii; Barbara Johnson, "Lesbian Spectacles: Reading Sula, Passing, Thelma and Louise, and The Accused," Media Spectacles., ed. Garber, Matlock and Walkowitz (New York: Routledge, 1993) 160-66; Judith Butler, "Passing/Queering," Bodies that Matter; Valerie Smith, "Reading the Intersection of Race and Gender in Narratives of Passing," Diacritics: A Review of Contemporary Criticism 24: 2-3 (Summer/Fall 1994): 43-57. 5. In fact Peter J. Rabinowitz writes that he uses Passing as a pedagogical tool that is helpful in exposing to students how "carelessly they read": "Specifically, I treated Passing as an exemplification of its subject: a novel about lesbians passing as heterosexuals that passes as a novel about racial passing." "Betraying the Sender": The Rhetoric and Ethics of Fragile Texts," Narrative 2:3 (October 1994) 201. 6. Larsen's biographer Thadious Davis dismisses the possibility of "latent lesbianism" in Passing on the grounds that the apparent attraction between Irene and Clare is more to do with Irene's "aesthetic attraction to whiteness" than with homoeroticism. Davis argues that Irene "elevates" Clare to the level of "icon": "As icon, Clare functions as object rather than subject, a factor that accounts for some dissatisfaction with her passiveness and illusiveness in the text." Like Cheryl Wall, Davis sees Irene's objectification of Clare as a psychic projection of Irene's repressed ambivalence concerning her own black identity. Nella Larsen, Novelist of the Harlem Renaissance: A Woman's Life Unveiled (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994) 326. Although Martha J Cutter and Davis take very different perspectives both tend to equate the spectacle with passivity. Martha J Cutter, "Sliding Significations: Passing as a Narrative and Textual Strategy in Nella Larsen's Fiction," Passing and the Fictions of Identity, ed Elaine K Ginsberg (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1996) 75-100. 7. My use of the female pronoun points to both Clare and Irene as passers. However, another interesting reading of homosexual passing in Passing is David Blackmore's interpretation of Brian Redfield's (Irene's husband's) possible homosexuality. See "That Unreasonable Restless Feeling: The Homosexual Subtexts of Nella Larsen's Passing," African American Review 26:3 (Fall 1992): 475-84. 8. Helen (Charles) also makes this observation in her discussion of the relation between passing and forms of visibility. "'White' Skins, Straight Masks: Masquerading Identities," Reconstructing Womanhood, Reconstructing Feminism: Writings on Black Women, ed. Delia Jarrett-Macauley (London: Routledge, 1996), 147. 9. For Mary Helen Washington, passing is a metaphor of possibility for black women but it is also a word that "connotes death." Unlike Washington who argues that the thematics of passing display Larsen's failure to deal with issues of "marginality," my argument stresses that the theme of passing is what allows Larsen's Passing, in opposition to Quicksand, an expression of marginality that incorporates death but also ironises, through Irene's survival, possible resistance to stereotypes and conventions. Invented Lives: Narratives of Black Women 1860-1960. (New York: Anchor Press, Doubleday Books, 1987) 164. Cheryl Wall writes: "Like 'quicksand,' 'passing' is a metaphor of death and desperation, and it is similarly supported by images of asphyxiation, suffocation and claustrophobia. Unlike 'quicksand,' 'passing' provokes definite associations and expectations that Larsen is finally unable to transcend." Women of the Harlem Renaissance. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995) 131. 10. Deborah R Grayson in her article, tellingly titled "Fooling White Folks, or, How I Stole the Show: The Body Politics of Nella Larsen's Passing," also focuses on the power of Irene's gaze and argues that it is not the "white man" but the "black women" who own the gaze. The Bucknell Review. 39:1 (1995): 34. 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | Notes | Works Cited
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