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e33511d
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I think being a mother is the cruelest thing in the world.
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mothers
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Nella Larsen |
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093c1b7
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What are friends for, if not to help bear our sins?
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Nella Larsen |
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4c8f9b7
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The trouble with Clare was, not only that she wanted to have her cake and eat it too, but that she wanted to nibble at the cakes of other folk as well.
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Nella Larsen |
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f47e9a4
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Somewhere, within her, in a deep recess, crouched discontent. She began to lose confidence in the fullness of her life, the glow began to fade from her conception of it. As the days multiplied, her need of something, something vaguely familiar, but which she could not put a name to and hold for definite examination, became almost intolerable. She went through moments of overwhelming anguish. She felt shut in, trapped.
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Nella Larsen |
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168f594
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These people yapped loudly of race, of race consciousness, of race pride, and yet suppressed its most delightful manifestations, love of color, joy of rhythmic motion, naive, spontaneous laughter. Harmony, radiance, and simplicity, all the essentials of spiritual beauty in the race they had marked for destructions.
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Nella Larsen |
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6fb2544
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It hurt. It hurt like hell. But it didn't matter, if no one knew.
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Nella Larsen |
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25c24e2
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Children aren't everything. There are other things in the world, thought I admit some people don't seem to suspect it.
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Nella Larsen |
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45d33e0
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Everything can't be explained by some general biological phrase.
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science
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Nella Larsen |
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0b9e4af
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To each his own milieu. Enhance what was already in one's possession.
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Nella Larsen |
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2e405cd
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But there was, she knew, something else. Happiness, she supposed. Whatever that might be. What, exactly, she wondered, was happiness. Very positively she wanted it.
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nella-larsen
quicksand
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Nella Larsen |
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091891d
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Well, what of it? If sex isn't a joke, what is it
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Nella Larsen |
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3ef52ad
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I feel like the oldest person in the world with the longest stretch of life before me.
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Nella Larsen |
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4e5315d
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And yet she hadn't the air of a woman whose life had been touched by uncertainty or suffering. Pain, fear, and grief were things that left their mark on people. Even love, that exquisite torturing emotion, left its subtle traces on the countenance.
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Nella Larsen |
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5bfef0e
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But she did not look the future in the face. She wanted to feel nothing, to think nothing; simply to believe that it was all silly invention on her part. Yet she could not. Not quite.
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Nella Larsen |
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1744aaf
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I'm not such an idiot that I don't realize that if a man calls me a nigger it's his fault the first time, but mine if he has the opportunity to do it again.
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Nella Larsen |
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87ceef6
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Incited. That was it, the guidingprinciple of her life in Copenhagen. She was incited to make an impression, a voluptous impression. She was incited to inflame attention and admiration. She was dressed for it, subtly schooled for it. And after a little while she gave herself up wholly to the fascinating business of being seen, gaped at, desired.
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Nella Larsen |
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c8ec50b
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She wished to find out about this hazardous business of "passing," this breaking away from all that was familiar and friendly to take one's chance in another environment, not entirely strange, perhaps, but certainly not entirely friendly."
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Nella Larsen |
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b2b0c21
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She isn't stupid. She's intelligent enough in a purely feminine way. Eighteenth-century France would have been a marvellous setting for her, or the old South if she hadn't made the mistake of being born a Negro.
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Nella Larsen |
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2bafda0
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The trouble with Clare was not only that she wanted to have her cake and eat it too but that she wanted to nibble at the cakes of other folk as well.
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Nella Larsen |
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e4fc0a4
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It's funny about 'passing.' We disapprove of it and at the same time condone it. It excites our contempt and yet we rather admire it. We shy away from it with an odd kind of revulsion, but we protect it.
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Nella Larsen |
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b6c226f
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Faith was really quite easy. One had only to yield. To ask no questions. The more weary, the more weak, she became, the easier it was. Her religion was to her a kind of protective coloring, shielding her from the cruel light of an unbearable reality.
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Nella Larsen |
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737a0f3
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Negro society, she had learned, was as complicated and as rigid in its ramifications as the highest strata of white society. If you couldn't prove your ancestry and connections, you were tolerated, but you didn't "belong."
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Nella Larsen |
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c966b2d
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Money's awfully nice to have. In fact, all things considered, I think, 'Rene, that it's even worth the price.
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Nella Larsen |
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d9026c6
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It was the most brilliant exhibition of conversational weightlifting that Irene had ever seen.
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Nella Larsen |
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87844fc
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She was herself unconscious of that faint hint of offishness which hung about her and repelled advances, an arrogance that stirred in people a peculiar irritation. They noticed her, admired her clothes, but that was all, for the self-sufficient uninterested manner adopted instinctively as a protective measure for her acute sensitiveness, in her child days, still clung to her.
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personality
irritation
sociability
standoffishness
self-sufficiency
sensitivity
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Nella Larsen |
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d688ff5
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Not so lonely that that old, queer, unhappy restlessness had begun again within him; that craving for some place strange and different, which at the beginning of her marriage she had had to make such strenuous efforts to repress, and which yet faintly alarmed her, though it now sprang up at gradually lessening intervals.
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Nella Larsen |
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7804948
|
No, certainly he didn't. Not actually. He couldn't, not very well, since he didn't know. But he would have. It amounts to the same thing. And I'm sure it was just as unpleasant.
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Nella Larsen |
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11dccc9
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Later, when she examined her feeling of annoyance, Irene admitted, a shade reluctantly, that it arose from a feeling of being outnumbered, a sense of aloneness, in her adherence to her own class and kind; not merely in the great thing of marriage, but in the whole pattern of her life as well.
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Nella Larsen |
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188942e
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She could neither conform nor be happy in her unconformity. This she saw clearly now, and with cold anger at all the past futile effort. What a waste!
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Nella Larsen |
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7be5db1
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What right, she kept demanding of herself, had Clare Kendry to expose her, or even Gertrude Martin, to such humiliation, such downright insult?
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Nella Larsen |
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2cd6a97
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And mingled with her disbelief and resentment was another feeling, a question. Why hadn't she spoken that day? Why, in the face of Bellew's ignorant hate and aversion, had she concealed her own origin? Why had she allowed him to make his assertions and express his misconceptions undisputed? Why, simply because of Clare Kendry, who had exposed her to such torment, had she failed to take up the defense of the race to which she belonged?
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Nella Larsen |
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944003b
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Helga Crane was silent, feeling a mystifying yearning which sang and throbbed in her.
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Nella Larsen |
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9a1f48e
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Brian darling, I'm really not such an idiot that I don't realize that if a man calls me a nigger it's his fault the first time, but mine if he has the opportunity to do it again.
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Nella Larsen |
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11a4945
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She said: "It's funny about 'passing.' We disapprove of it and at the same time condone it. It excites our contempt and yet we rather admire it. We shy away from it with an odd kind of revulsion, but we protect it."
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Nella Larsen |
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367db6f
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After all these years to still blame her like this. Hadn't his success proved that she'd been right in insisting that he stick to his profession right there in New York? Couldn't he see, even now, that it had been best? Not for her, oh no, not for her--she had never really considered herself--but for him and the boys. Was she never to be free of it, that fear which crouched, always, deep down within her, stealing away the sense of security,..
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Nella Larsen |
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dd7d9eb
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It wasn't now, as it had been once, that she was afraid that he would throw everything aside and rush off to that remote place of his heart's desire. He wouldn't, she knew. He was fond of her, loved her, in his slightly undemonstrative way. And there were the boys. It was only that she wanted him to be happy, resenting, however, his inability to be so with things as they were, and never acknowledging that, though she did want him to be happ..
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Nella Larsen |
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52c634a
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The chagrin which she had felt at her first failure to subvert this latest manifestation of his discontent had receded, leaving in its wake an uneasy depression. Were all her efforts, all her labors, to make up to him that one loss, all her silent striving to prove to him that her way had been best, all her ministrations to him, all her outward sinking of self, to count for nothing in some unperceived sudden moment? And if so, what, then, w..
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Nella Larsen |
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77a875a
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If it hadn't been for that, I'd have gone on to the end, never seeing any of you. But that did something to me, and I've been so lonely since! You can't know. Not close to a single soul. Never anyone to really talk to.
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Nella Larsen |
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66d4b34
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This, Irene told her, was the year 1927 in the city of New York, and hundreds of white people of Hugh Wentworth's type came to affairs in Harlem, more all the time. So many that Brian had said: "Pretty soon the colored people won't be allowed in at all, or will have to sit in Jim Crowed sections."
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Nella Larsen |
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448e4b1
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It's only deserters like me who have to be afraid of freaks of nature.
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Nella Larsen |
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8e40bb6
|
It's easy for a Negro to 'pass' for white. But I don't think it would be so simple for a white person to 'pass' for colored.
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Nella Larsen |
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09756e4
|
Almost she wished she could die. Not quite. It wasn't that she was afraid of death, which had, she thought, its picturesque aspects. It was rather that she knew she would not die. And death, after the debacle, would but intensify its absurdity. Also, it would reduce her, Helga Crane, to unimportance, to nothingness. Even in her unhappy present state, that did not appeal to her.
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Nella Larsen |
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4922673
|
Yet she had continued to try not only to teach but to befriend those happy singing children, whose charm and distinctiveness the school was so surely ready to destroy.
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Nella Larsen |
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7101bee
|
As if aware of her desire and her hesitation, Clare remarked thoughtfully: "You know, 'Rene, I've often wondered why more colored girls, girls like you and Margaret Hammer and Esther Dawson and--oh, lots of others--never 'passed' over."
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Nella Larsen |