{"title":"Race, Gender, and \"Real Brains\": Interrogating Unreliability in Nella Larsen's Passing","authors":"V. Román","doi":"10.1353/mfs.2022.0010","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay analyzes narrative reliability in Nella Larsen's Passing by putting it in the context of early-twentieth-century ideas about gendered modernity and the scientific racism of eugenics discourse. Larsen's use of focalization—the formal separation of narrating voice and focalizing consciousness—illuminates how bias against raced and gendered subjects are naturalized in ascriptions of reliability. Through such formal strategies, Passing asks readers to interrogate the systems of oppression the novel's Black women navigate, making visible the frame structures (both narrative and sociopolitical) that function to undermine their articulations of independence and intelligence.","PeriodicalId":45576,"journal":{"name":"MFS-Modern Fiction Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5000,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"MFS-Modern Fiction Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mfs.2022.0010","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract:This essay analyzes narrative reliability in Nella Larsen's Passing by putting it in the context of early-twentieth-century ideas about gendered modernity and the scientific racism of eugenics discourse. Larsen's use of focalization—the formal separation of narrating voice and focalizing consciousness—illuminates how bias against raced and gendered subjects are naturalized in ascriptions of reliability. Through such formal strategies, Passing asks readers to interrogate the systems of oppression the novel's Black women navigate, making visible the frame structures (both narrative and sociopolitical) that function to undermine their articulations of independence and intelligence.
期刊介绍：
Modern Fiction Studies publishes engaging articles on prominent works of modern and contemporary fiction. Emphasizing historical, theoretical, and interdisciplinary approaches, the journal encourages a dialogue between fiction and theory, publishing work that offers new theoretical insights, clarity of style, and completeness of argument. Modern Fiction Studies alternates general issues dealing with a wide range of texts with special issues focused on single topics or individual writers.
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