Nella Larsen and Alice Dunbar-Nelson
Alex Karu, Julie Dekovitch, Paul Johnson, Fanny Michel
Nella Larsen
Nella Larsen is considered the mystery author of the Harlem Renaissance. Not many people knew too much about her life. As the years went on, more was discovered about Larsen. Thadious M. Davis wrote the first substantial biography about Nella Larsen. (Debo 130). She was born in Chicago in 1891. Her mother was white and her father was African-American. Her parents separated and her mother remarried a white man. Larsen was very educated. Her family sent her to a prestigious all black school in Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. In addition to being a writer, Larsen was a nurse. Nella also worked at a library in New York as she worked on her writing. She married Elmer Imes which brought her into the comfortable upper middle class. However, Nella Larsen struggled her whole life with her biraciality. She felt distanced from her family because she felt like an outcast. Many soon discovered that the characters within Larsen’s pieces reflected her battle in life with her racial identity.
Larsen is best known for her two novels Quicksand and Passing (Wall 88). Larsen had a tendency to create characters and their conflicts based on her own life experiences. Quicksand is about a biracial woman who is a product of a white mother and a black father. This is clearly based on Nella Larsen’s life. She is rejected by her family. The main character, Helga, is faced with a black middle class that is only concerned with the “race problem.” In passing, Larsen explores two African American women who are light enough to pass for white. Irene stays true to her African American heritage. However, Clare passes for white and marries a white man who is racist. These two works show Larsen’s feelings towards African American relationships and passing. Larsen provided a female mulatto’s point of view on society.
Quicksand tells the story of Helga Crane, fictional
character, which was based on Larsen’s life. Larsen’s dominant themes in her
novels were racism,
sexism and gender oppression. In Quicksand, Helga is representing Nella
Larsen in various ways. In fact, the novel mention that Helga Crane’s mother was
Danish and her father was African American. Also, Helga suffered with acceptance
in her family and society in terms of her skin complexion. She found herself
trapped in worlds because she was not accepted as either white or black. Those
emotional feelings were very much analogous to those of Nella Larsen.
After Quicksand, Nella Larsen wrote Passing and Sanctuary. Passing was just as successful as her first novel… After Sanctuary, Nella was accused of plagiarism, which was later on proving wrong. Because of this absolutely wrong accusation, Nella Larsen decided to stop writing novels. She returned to working as nurse until retirement. Even though she deceased on March 30, 1964, Nella Larsen is now known as the first African American woman to win the Guggenheim fellowship for creative writing.
Larsen’s second novel, Passing, addresses the issue of light skinned
African Americans leaving their past behind and entering the white society. The
main character of the novel is a successful African American named Irene
Redfield. She is married to a physician with two children. She is living
comfortably until one day she runs into an old childhood friend, Clare Kendry.
Irene finds out that Clare has left behind her family and the black community to
assimilate into white society. She marries a racist white man. Throughout the
novel, Irene is troubled by the life that Clare has chosen to live. The issue of
belonging to the white or black race is similar to what Nella Larsen experienced
in her own life. Larsen was a successful African American; however, she was
light enough to where she could pass for white. Larsen included many parallels
between her life and her writings.
Larsen was accused of plagiarism when she came out with her third piece, a short
story, “Sanctuary.”
Her divorce from her husband, Elmer Imes, and
the accusations of plagiarism caused Nella Larsen to withdraw from writing for
the rest
of her life. (Wall 134).
Alice Dunbar-Nelson
Alice Dunbar-Nelson
was a poet, political activist and a journalist
during the Harlem Renaissance. She was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on July
19, 1875. Her pa
rents
were mixed racially consisting of black, white, and Native American. Her
parents were also considered to be part of the working class. Dunbar-Nelson
would set out to become a teacher and would succeed graduating from a two-year
teaching college. She became a high school teacher in order to support her
writing.
In the year of 1895, Alice Dunbar-Nelson began her writing career with the published works of short stories and poems in Violets and Other Tales. The early works that she created throughout the collection often exposed her inexperience, but nonetheless unveil her use of language and life growing up in the South.
In 1898, Alice Dunbar-Nelson married the
poet
Paul Laurence Dunbar.
Their lives
together flourished, and resulted in their writing. The marriage also helped
their careers. In the case of Paul Dunbar, his wife always demanded “top
dollar” for his performances. Dunbar-Nelson benefited from her husbands links
to the publishers (Johnson 3). Their love began to crumble as Paul Dunbar was
stricken with tuberculosis and alcohol began to run his life. In 1902 they
would split up and Paul Dunbar would pass on four years after.
In many of Alice’s writings, she would often write about issues that pertained to women’s positions in society and their contribution to society. She seemed to have focused on the race issues; not necessarily how whites viewed blacks, but how darker black people viewed light skinned black people. Alice Dunbar had a very effect way of expressing her point of views in her writings.
Alice Dunbar-Nelson uses a lot of statistical information in her work to prove how women’s position has changed in society and how they have made contributions. In Alice’s work she writes about the change in women occupations and how they have made them more important in an economic since to society. Alice writes in Essays by Alice Dunbar-Nelson:
“From
one elevator operator in 1910, the number jumped to 3,073 in 1920. Those engaged
in lumber and furniture industries in 1910 were 1,456. In 1920, 4,066. Textile
industries jumped from 2,234 to 7,257. On the other hand, chambermaids in 1910
were numbered 14,071, but in 1920 they had declined to 10,443. Untrained nurses
from 17,874 to 13,888; cooks from 205,584 to 168,710;
laundresses, not in public laundries, from 361,551 to
283,557. On the other hand, cigar and tobacco workers jumped from 10,746 to
21,829, and the teaching profession showed a normal increase from 22,528 to
29,244. Just what do these figures indicate? That the Negro woman is
leaving the industries of home life, cooking, domestic service generally, child
nursing, laundry work and going into mills, factories, operation of elevators,
clerking, stenography (for in these latter occupations there is an almost 400
percent increase). She is doing a higher grade of work, getting better money,
commanding better respect from the community because of her higher economic
value, and less menial occupation. Domestic service claims her race no longer as
its inalienable right. She is earning a salary, not wages”
Along with writing about the position of women in society, Alice also writes about the racism that was implemented toward light skinned black people by darker skinned black people. Alice writes from personal experience when she discusses this issue. In her essay Brass Ankle Speaks, Alice writes about how she went to public and experienced racism for the first time. In her school, where her class was filled with black children, she was a very fair skinned little girl and her teacher assigned her a seat in front of the class near the teacher’s desk. So the other children began to taunt her saying things like, —"Yah! Teacher's pet! Yah! Just cause she’s yaller!" Thus at once was I initiated into the class of the disgraced, which has haunted and tormented my whole life— "Light nigger, with straight hair!” So ultimately Alice writes about things that affect her life personally, weather its dealing race or women.
Following the separation between Paul Dunbar and Alice Dunbar-Nelson, she moved to Wilmington, Delaware. She continued to publish under the name Dunbar following the separation and would go on with her career teaching at a high-school, and college summer night classes. She went on to publish the Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence in 1914, which was considered one of the most influential church publications.
Alice Dunbar-Nelson continued in her life to tackle matters that plagued African-American women. She started making a campaign in 1915 for suffrage in the mid-Atlantic States. She was designated as the representative Woman's Committee of the Council of Defense in 1918, along with battling for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill in 1924.
Dunbar-Nelson married Robert J. Nelson, making it her third and final marriage.
By 1916, she had published
in many
works that were compiled by
various artists during the Harlem Renaissance, including the famous NAACP’s
The
Crisis Magazine. Because Dunbar-Nelson
struggled economically, she was not able to give her full time to writing, but
she still was considered established as a writer. She died in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania on September 18, 1935.