Strategic Ambivalence: A Feminist Standpoint Theory Reading of Nella Larsen's Novels

Caresse A. John

Feminist Formations, Volume 23, Issue 1, Spring 2011, pp. 94-117 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: 10.1353/ff.2011.0001

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/ff/summary/v023/23.1.john.html

Access Provided by your local institution at 10/22/12 6:34AM GMT

Strategic Ambivalence: A Feminist Standpoint Theory Reading of Nella Larsens Novels

Caresse A. John

The article applies feminist standpoint theory to the content and style of Nella Larsens novels to show the literary critic and student the potential benefits of using standpoint theory in interpreting literature. In particular, it examines the concept of achieving a standpoint, and analyzes why Larsens protagonists fail to achieve a standpoint. Its reading of Larsens novels in light of standpoint theory demonstrates that Larsen conveyed knowledge of her world different from that of the dominant white culture and the male-centered, black middle-class culture of 1920s America and Harlem, knowledge that has yet to be fully examined. Further, the application of standpoint theory to literary texts provides refinements of particular concepts within standpoint theory, as the article demonstrates. Keywords: feminist standpoint theory / Harlem renaissance / narrative technique/ Nella Larsen Standpoint theory was developed in the 1980s primarily by feminist scholars in sociology, philosophy, and political theory. In its use, this theoretical approach has often been relegated to the social and natural sciences, which is unsurprising, as it deals with questions of how we have developed knowledge about the natural and social worlds and their inhabitants. Recently, some scholars have also used feminist standpoint theory to examine literature by authors like Jamaica Kincaid and Helen Porter, but there is still very little discussion about the potential benefits of standpoint theory for literary criticism, not to mention other fields in the humanities.1 This article demonstrates, through an analysis of Nella Larsens novels, how feminist standpoint theory can be beneficial to the literary critic.
2011 Feminist Formations, Vol. 23 No. 1 (Spring) pp. 94117

Caresse A. John 95

Within the last two decades, Larsens novels have gained more attention than they had formerly been given, but there is still much left to be discovered in her works. Recent Larsen criticism is attempting to resuscitate her reputation by examining her content in relation to historical and social context, and by examining her expertise at creating multifaceted characters and plots. However, critics have failed to examine the depth and complexity of this content in relation to stylistic achievement, and they have not fully paid attention to Larsens socio-historical contexts and how they affected her narrative choices. The application of standpoint theory to Larsens novels can yield a richer, more complex reading of those novels content and style than has previously been produced, as well as a more complete understanding of Larsens socio-historical context. Thus, this article contributes important knowledge about Larsen and her works to literary criticism, while also offering a refinement of standpoint theory itself. By analyzing the content and style of Larsens novels in light of standpoint theory, we find that she conveys knowledge about the world that is different from the knowledge conveyed by the dominant white culture in 1920s America and by the male-centered, black middle-class culture of 1920s Harlem. Through writing her fiction, Larsen enacted her own struggle with and critical thinking about her present-day racial and sexual politics. Through her novels content and narrative technique, Larsen shows us, years before standpoint theory was developed, why achieving a standpoint is crucial. Standpoint Theory and Larsens Socio-historical Contexts Before turning to the novels, I want to provide an overview of standpoint theory for readers who may be unfamiliar with it. In its first forms, standpoint theory was a movement against positivist notions, particularly in the natural and social sciences. Working against the positivist belief that an objective reality exists independent from ones own perspective, standpoint theorists generally claim that knowledge is socially constructed and, therefore, our positions in society produce understandings of the world similar to and different from the understandings of others. Standpoint theory also argues against the idea of a value-neutral researcher, calling for recognition of the social and political circumstances that influence not just the researched, but also the researcher. Because standpoint theory is interested in interrogating how the social order and knowledge are constructed and maintained, it is an epistemology; it investigates what we believe and why we believe it. Standpoint theorists believe that society is hierarchically structured, with groups of people gaining privilege by oppressing other groups. Thus, standpoint theorists argue that we must begin our research and thinking from the lives of the oppressed. As Sandra Harding (1991) notes, the understanding that [oppressed people] are oppressed, exploited, and dominatednot just made miserable by inevitable natural or social causesreveals aspects of the social order that are difficult to see from the perspective of their

96Feminist Formations 23.1

oppressors lives (126). In other words, we gain a more comprehensive view of social conditions and relations, as well as knowledge production, when we begin our thinking from the lives of the oppressed. Since standpoint theory was developed, there have been numerous theoretical and epistemological discussions about many of its facets, and, indeed, there is still much left to discuss.2 Two often misunderstood but key aspects of standpoint theory, both relevant to my discussion, are the definition of a standpoint, and the process of achieving a standpoint. Part of what has led to the confusion about the definition of a standpoint is the misuse of the term standpoint itself. In standpoint theory, a standpoint is not just ones perspective on the world. A standpoint is not automatically given by ones biology or even ones social identity, as implied in the following statements: From my standpoint ... and The way I see it ...; rather, a standpoint is earned and achieved by intellectual reflection on and political engagement with ones own position in society in relation to others positions. A standpoint is an understanding of ones individual location in the social order as part of and shaped by that orders social and political contexts. Thus, a standpoint is both individual and collective, in definition and in achievement. Few standpoint theorists have explicitly discussed the process of achieving a standpoint, thereby overlooking the possible separate levels involved. Moreover, when they do consider the possible levels, theorists often discuss the individual level as inseparable from the collective one or discuss only one level, rather than showing how there are two separate though necessarily related levels.3 I see the achievement of a standpoint as consisting of two separate but related achievements, individual and collective. In order to understand ones location in relation to others locations, logically, one must first be able to interrogate ones own location. Required, then, is a sort of self-definition, an achievement that is solely accomplished on an individual level. Once one self-defines, one then can define in relation. To define in relation requires not only [a questioning] of what has been said about [oneself] but the credibility and the intentions of those possessing the power to define (Collins 2000, 114). Thus, achieving a standpoint can become collective. Achieving a standpoint can, but does not necessarily, lead to social and political agency because a changed consciousness encourages people to change the conditions of their lives (117). As one moves toward achievement of a standpoint, one becomes conscious of ones privileges, the ways in which one is oppressed, and the power relations that produce and maintain those privileges and oppressions. When one achieves a standpoint one becomes conscious of ones place in relation to the collectivenot only the groups from which one is excluded, but also the groups with which one shares certain types of oppression and certain types of power. Furthermore, a third level is possible, in that one also may make an actual movement from the individual to the collective; in other words, once one has achieved a standpoint on an individual level (which, again,

Caresse A. John 97

requires self-definition and relational self-definition), one may choose to become part of a group resistance in order to overcome political and social oppression. Because many theorists have not been clear about the different individual and collective levels of the achievement, another important point about this achievement has remained virtually unspoken: Namely, a standpoint is not permanent, but rather must be achieved again and again. This point may be implicit in many standpoint theorists work, because standpoint theory is interested in interrogating the power relations that make possible group-based oppression, and one cannot interrogate those relations without recognizing that they are constantly fluctuating. Nevertheless, this important point has often gone unspoken. Oppression happens over and over, manifesting itself in different ways everyday; therefore our standpoints must also necessarily change. Brooke Lenz (2004) states that the term standpoint refers not to a rigid or permanent stabilization of perspective, but rather to a fluid and dynamic negotiation of experience and point of view that can be temporarily stabilized in order to interrogate dominant ideologies (98). Temporary stabilization is just thattemporary. Importantly, there is potential fluidity to the relationship between ones individual standpoint and the collective standpoint. Indeed, the place to start the achievement is at the level of the individual. Subsequently, the achievement may remain on that individual level, but it also it may move to a collective level, and it may even continue to move back and forth between these two. This constant need for achievement, this potential fluidity between the levels of the achievement, is part of what makes achieving a standpoint so powerful: It requires a continuous state of heightened consciousness on the part of individuals and groups about the oppressions they face, and therefore is a continuous fostering of the ways in which individuals and groups can be empowered to fight those oppressions. Applying standpoint theory to Larsens novels has led me to this clearer understanding of the definition of a standpoint and its achievement; it has also led to a clearer understanding about who can achieve a standpoint. Doing so has led me to see the ways in which nonmarginalized and marginalized individuals can achieve standpoints. The possibility for marginalized individuals to achieve standpoints has not often been explicitly discussed by theorists. The usual, though implicit, message is that those who are in a position to achieve a standpoint are those who are the nonmarginalized. This suggestion arises from the foundational argument of standpoint theory: Namely, that we must begin our research and thinking from the lives of the marginalized or oppressed. Thus, the assumption is that those who are doing the research and thinking are nonmarginalizedthe theorists and intellectuals who must, as it were, think down. Dick Pels (2004) calls this the spokesperson problem:
standpoints do not simply exist in the real world ...; all standpoints need to be spoken for in order to become constituted as standpoints in the first place.

98Feminist Formations 23.1 ... Indeed, if feminist standpoint arguments are investigated more closely, it turns out that it is not so much the contradictory or marginal location of women as such, but precisely that of the female feminist thinker that is deemed to offer epistemological advantages. (279, 28081; emphasis in original)

Pelss understanding of standpoints themselves in this quotation shows how much clearer we need to be in discussing the achievement of a standpoint. It is true, as Julia Wood (2005) says, that achieving a standpoint does not necessarily make one a theorist (62). But my understanding of standpoints is that while Pels is correct in pointing out that they do not simply exist, they can be and are achieved and constituted as standpoints without a theorist speaking them into existence. Further, Pels is incorrect in suggesting that it is the position of the female feminist thinker that offers epistemological advantages; indeed, the foundational idea of standpoint theory is that it is the contradictory or marginal location of women, it is the view from their lives, that offers an epistemologically advantageous view to men and women, theorists and nontheorists. While the common understanding of the achievement is that it is possible and perhaps necessary for those who are nonmarginalizedPelss thinkersthe application of standpoint theory to Larsens novels has caused me to believe that a standpoint can be achieved by the marginalized as well.4 Before turning to the novels to examine this idea, it would be beneficial to examine Larsens own social location, as it sheds light upon her novels content and style. Larsens life, particularly the beginning and the end, is somewhat enigmatic. She was born in 1891, in Chicago (as far as we know), to a white mother and black father. Her parents were probably not married; in 1894 her mother Mary married Peter Larsen, a white man. Peter and Mary had another daughter, Anna. By the 1910 census, Nella was no longer listed as a resident of the Larsen household, although Anna was. Larsen said that between 1910 and 1912 she had traveled to Denmark to visit relatives, but there is considerable debate among her biographers about whether or not this trip took place.5 In 1912 she began studying for her nursing certificate in New York, which she completed in 1915. During the period 19151917 she worked as a nurse in Tuskegee, Alabama, returned to New York in 1918, and in 1919 married Elmer Imes, a darker black man who was a research physicist in New York. Their marriage ended in a much-publicized divorce in 1933, and soon afterward she left Harlem and returned to nursing in Brooklyn. We know very little about her life after her departure from Harlem. She died in 1964, never having published anything after her short story Sanctuary in 1930 and maintaining little to no correspondence with anyone she had known during her years as a writer.6 Most of what we know for certain about Larsen comes from her time as a writer during the Harlem Renaissance. Although the above biographical outline is straightforward enough, we can confirm little about Larsen before and after her involvement in the Renaissance; furthermore, what we do know

Caresse A. John 99

still presents a complex woman. First and foremost, because of her race and sex, Larsen was both an insider and outsider. Jessica Rabin (2004) tells us that, as a biracial woman, Larsen traveled among the black social elite, but she also moved in white intellectual and artistic circles. Her friends were both white and black [such as Carl VanVechten and W.E.B. DuBois, respectively], and she consistently resisted pigeonholing (135). Feminist standpoint theorists would identify Larsen as an outsider within (Collins 1986, S14). As a mixed-race woman, Larsen was inside both black and white circles, as Rabin points out; but as an insider in both circles she was also, necessarily, an outsider to both circles, not fully belonging to either. This position as a member of and between two groups would have allowed Larsen a unique view of the dominant ideologies of one circle and the consequent oppressions of the other. Indeed, her position in both groups would presumably have allowed Larsen to see the groups relations in connection to both social and political power. However, there are not only possible advantages, but also tensions caused by being both an insider and an outsider. These tensions for Larsen, who was both black and white, as well as a woman writer in a male literary tradition, may be best represented in the example of her competing intellectual circles. As a close friend of Van Vechten, though intellectually, perhaps, more closely in agreement with Du Boiss beliefs, Larsen found herself somewhere between the two men and the groups they represented. Further complicating her friendships with them were their opposing views and depictions of black women in the Harlem Renaissance. Deborah McDowell (1986) argues that Van Vechtens novels were and still are associated with primitivism, often representing the black woman as a primitive and exotic sex object (xivxv). Du Bois and writers like Jessie Fauset retaliated against this portrayal, wanting more proper, respectable portrayals of black men and women (much like the middle-class protagonist of Larsens novel Passing). Du Bois was committed to racial uplift, and that uplift would happen, according to him, through the Talented Tenthintellectuals, artists, and professionals of all kinds, women and men. McDowell elucidates Larsens precarious position between these two groups:
On the one side, Carl Van Vechten, roundly excoriated along with his followers by many members of the black middle-class intelligentsia, was her friend. He was responsible for introducing Quicksand to Knopf, and perhaps Larsen showed her gratitude by dedicating Passing to him and his wife Fania Marinoff. On the other side, Larsen was a member of the black intelligentsia [led by Du Bois] whose attitudes about art Van Vechten had criticized in Nigger Heaven. (xvxvi)

Thus, like her protagonists, Larsen experienced many conflicts as an outsider withintension about where to place her loyalties not the least of them. Larsens own beliefs, as well as her life as a black woman, unfortunately, perhaps, fell somewhere in the middle of the two views: We might say that

100Feminist Formations 23.1

Larsen wanted to tell the story of the black woman with sexual desires, but was constrained by a competing desire to establish black women as respectable in black middle-class terms (xvi). Kathleen Pfeiffer (2003) has shown just how close Larsen was to Van Vechten, and his support of her and her work cannot be underestimated. It is clear in reading her letters to him that she relied heavily on his perception of her, as well as his opinions on many issues. And while she was somewhat critical of Du Bois in her personal letters, in her fictional work she often supported his notion of the Talented Tenth, providing her readers with models of proper, respectable, middle-class blacks.7 Also, Du Bois was quite impressed by both of Larsens novels, giving them wonderful reviews, helping her along the path to the fame she desired.8 As a woman in a male-dominated literary profession, then, Larsen was necessarily dependent on both Van Vechten and Du Bois, needing their support and approval. But also as a woman and writer, she necessarily had different experiences than they did and chose to write honestly about some of the tensions she herself experienced, such as the effects of living a life as a woman dependent on a husband for, literally, survival. Nancy Hirschmanns discussion of language in her article Feminist Standpoint as Postmodern Strategy (1997) might help to shed light upon Larsens experiences and their relation to the language she used in her novels. Hirschmann discusses language with respect to what she calls the materialist moment. This moment is much like the achievement of a standpoint: It is real because it grows from actual experience, but it is fleeting because it is a function of and created by languagea language that, by its nature, cannot contain the whole of such a moment. Through her narrative technique of strategic ambivalence, Larsen acknowledges the concreteness of experience within languages that have the denial of those experiences at their core while at the same time acknowledging that there is no way to share experiences with others, or even to understand our own experiences, without those often hostile languages (84). In other words, the language of American literature was a white-dominated language, one that represented blacks as minorities, and the language of the Harlem Renaissance was a male-dominated language, one that often represented women as either entirely pure or entirely sexual. Larsen had concrete materialist moments that differed from these racial and sexual representations. By careful use of ambivalent technique, Larsen shows that although much of the language of the Harlem Renaissance was unreceptive to her experiences, she could still use it in order to reveal her own materialist moments and critique the view of the world that was a product of the ruling relations. Although standpoint theory is based on an assumption that the social order is hierarchical, considering Larsens life and work in relation to standpoint theory shows us that this theory can also illuminate lives that are much more than opposing ends of a spectrum. Larsen and her protagonists negotiated within and among these binaries, and when we apply standpoint theory to Larsens works, we reveal the diverse spaces between the two polarities, as well as some of the vague areas of standpoint theory itself.

Caresse A. John 101

A Reading of Quicksand Larsen published two novels in her lifetime, Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929). Quicksand tells the story of Helga Crane, a light-skinned black woman trying to find happiness. Helga moves from one place to another, always searching for someone or something to satisfy her though never finding it. The epigraph to the novel, from Langston Hughess poem Cross, suggests that Helgas searching stems from her family background: My old man died in a fine big house./ My ma died in a shack./ I wonder where Im gonna die,/ Being neither white nor black? This epigraph suits Helgas life. Her mother was a white Scandinavian woman and her father a gay suave scoundrel (23). Helga thinks often of her mother, clearly sympathizing with her and hoping she had been happy before Helgas father left her. When Helga was age 6 her mother remarried a man of her own race, but not of her own kind, and Helga learned to believe that it was a marriage of grievous necessity (23). Growing up hated by her stepfather and stepsiblings, Helga left home at age 15 when her mother died (much like Larsen). Her Uncle Peterher mothers brothersent her to a school for blacks, where for the first time she could breathe freely, where she discovered that because one was dark, one was not necessarily loathsome, and could, therefore, consider oneself without repulsion (23). Helgas background, her lack of connection to a loving family, and her lack of strong black or white role models instigates her lifelong restlessness. The novel traces this restlessness and its consequences in Helgas life. Although it seems that Larsen does not create sympathy for Helga, reading this novel in light of standpoint theory has shown me that she does indeed create sympathy for this character, but she also leaves readers questioning, wondering why Helga makes the choices she does. Larsen provides Helga with opportunities that could lead to her achievement of a standpoint, but Helga never does achieve a standpoint; instead, Helga is sucked into the quicksand of her social location at the end of the novel. Because Helga is unable to examine and come to terms with her own social location, she cannot even begin to see it in relation to others locations and see that she is part of various groups of oppressed people. For the standpoint theorist, then, the question is not why Helga fails to achieve a standpoint, but rather what is it that causes this inability, and what are the consequences of that inability? In other words, for the standpoint theorist, the focus is not on Helgas failure, but on her situation, on the causes of that failure. Helga has a mind of her own, at least at the beginning of the novel. We see her strength of character very early in the narrative when she is in Naxos, Georgia teaching at a school for blacks. A white preacher comes to Naxos to give a speech that consists, in Helgas opinion, of banal, patronizing, and ... insulting remarks (2). Her reaction to the speech is anger and resentment, not just toward the preacher, but also toward the audience that provided the preacher

102Feminist Formations 23.1

with considerable applause. She decides that night to leave Naxos. This decision, made in the opening pages of the novel, immediately shows Helgas vacillation between wanting to belong and being disgusted by the groups to which she could conform. At the opening of the novel Helga is of the impressionable age of 22 and has taught in Naxos for two years, during which she has come to realize that she cannot be a part of the Naxos policy of uplift, nor does she fit into the general atmosphere of Naxos, its air of self-righteousness and intolerant dislike of difference (5). The preachers speech brings these realizations to the forefront of her mind, and her decision to leave suggests that Helga is intensely aware of her difference and does not want to naturalize, as her fianc James Vayle has done with such ease (7). But she also recognizes that she does not have the social capacity to up and go: She hated to admit that money was the most serious difficulty. Knowing full well that it was important, she nevertheless rebelled at the unalterable truth that it could influence her actions, block her desires (6). And so the opening of the novel foregrounds Helgas social dilemma: Her notions of self-worth and self-definition are strong, but there are few if any socially acceptable outlets for her to develop those notions. Unfortunately, Helgas strength of character is also meshed with impressionability and a sense of shame. Thinking about how easily James has naturalized and how difficult it has been for her to do likewise, Helga places blame on the society around her, as well as on herself: How pathetically she had struggled in those first months and with what small standing on the part of the community, but in her present new revolt she realized that the fault had been partly hers. A lack of acquiescence. She hadnt really wanted to be made over. This thought bred a sense of shame, a feeling of ironical disillusion. Evidently there were parts of her she couldnt be proud of (7). Instead of relying on her feeling of self-worth and the rightful sense of not wanting to be made over, Helga feels shameful for not allowing herself to be naturalized. Thus, from the start of the narrative we see that Helga is a conflicted character, one who has strength of mind, but also one who is not strengthened by her continued status as an outsider (7). Larsen further displays Helgas strength of character and belief in herself, as well as her impressionability, in her subsequent conversations with James and Dr. Anderson, the schools principal. In her interactions with these men we see that Helga, despite her pliability, has the potential for the achievement of a standpoint. Helgas thoughts on her relationship with James show readers a woman striving to, but not yet achieving, an understanding of who she is. After telling James that she is leaving Naxos, the narrative makes clear to readers that Helga has made the right decision in wanting to leave, but unfortunately she herself is not quite sure of her own feelings:
Well, that was over. She would never be married to James Vayle now. ... She couldnt have married him. Gradually, too, there stole into her thoughts of him a curious sensation of repugnance, for which she was at a loss to account.

Caresse A. John 103 It was new, something unfelt before. ... No, she had not loved James, but she had wanted to. Acute nausea rose in her as she recalled the slight quivering of his lips sometimes when her hands had unexpectedly touched his; the throbbing vein in his forehead on a gay day when ... she had allowed him frequent kisses. ... She must have been mad, she thought; but she couldnt tell why she thought so. This, too, bothered her. (2425)

Clearly, Helga does not love James, but breaking off their engagement means social suicide, for the Vayles were people of consequence, and Helga has always wanted a social background that her lack of a supportive and socially connected family prevents (8). Importantly, then, Helga breaks off the engagement, showing her disdain for the social game that a woman such as she must play to attain security and social status. Yet, even while she is so sure of some of her feelings, Helga is unable to understand and explore all of her feelings. Doing so would mean much more than examining her feelings for James; it would mean honest scrutiny of herself, which is the first step toward achieving a standpoint. Comparatively, Helgas subsequent conversation with Dr. Anderson shows that she has some sense of herself, but is not yet ready for a wholly honest scrutiny of who she is. After Helga has made the decision to leave Naxos, she goes to see the principal to inform him of her intentions. As she waits for him in the lobby of his office she is disgusted by the surrounding people who yapped loudly of race, of race consciousness, of race pride, and yet suppressed its most delightful manifestations, love of color, joy of rhythmic motion, nave spontaneous laughter. Harmony, radiance, and simplicity, all the essentials of spiritual beauty in the race they had marked for destruction (18). Helga is very aware of and repulsed by the hypocrisy that surrounds her; her awareness of this hypocrisy is one of her strongest characteristics and shows us a brief moment of recognition of herself and how she differs from those around her. And although her ensuing conversation with Dr. Anderson shows her vulnerability and weakness, she retains that recognition of herself long enough to leave Naxos. Helga is very honest with Dr. Anderson, telling him that she does not mean to stay in Naxos if it means suppression of individuality and beauty (20). In response to this, Anderson patronizingly says, Some day youll learn that lies, injustice, and hypocrisy are a part of every ordinary community. ... I think theres less of these evils here than in most places, but because were trying to do such a big thing, to aim so high, the ugly things show more, they irk some of us more. As he lectures on, we stop hearing what he is saying, and instead the narrative is focalized through Helga. She begins to give in to his speech, feeling that urge for service, not now for her people, but for this man who was talking so earnestly of his work, his plans, his hopes. An insistent need to be a part of them sprang in her. With compunction tweaking at her heart for even having entertained the notion of deserting him, she resolved to not only remain until June, but to return next year (ibid.; emphasis added).

104Feminist Formations 23.1

Helga appears very impressionable here, not even recognizing that she is contemplating staying not for herself or for an idea in which she believes, but for another person, a man, who represents everything she has decided to leave behind. She is not aware of the fact that she does not desire what is being said, but who is saying it. Her feeling of desire, however, is quickly turned to aversion when Dr. Anderson asks her to stay because she is a lady [who has] dignity and breeding (21). Like James, Dr. Anderson has a sexual notion of Helga; James sees Helga only sexually, while Anderson sees her as a proper lady. These notions or ideals of black womanhood represent the conflicting ideals of black womanhood in Larsens day that I discussed earlierthe sexual object or the pure lady.9 Larsen has Helga reject both of these ideals when she rejects both men; in this rejection, Larsen begins to show us that the reality of black women was neither one of these concepts. Helga wants to be known as something more than either a sexual woman or a proper lady; she wants this because she knows she is something more. However, this rejection leaves Helga with a dilemma, perhaps a dilemma that Larsen also faced: What other role or identity was available to black women and how to assume it? Although these conversations show us Helgas pliability, they also show Helgas potential to achieve a standpoint. While the men seek to objectify Helga, Helgas achievement of a standpoint would position her as subject, as knower, rather than as simply known. Standpoint theorists have yet to explicitly outline the steps to achieving a standpoint, but self-awareness and self-definition are important places to start, as Alexis DeVeaux has argued: [Y]ou have to understand what your place as an individual is and the place of the person who is close to you. You have to understand the space between you before you can understand more complex or larger groups (qtd. in Collins 2000, 112). Helgas decision to leave Naxos, even after her moments of vulnerability, suggests a strength and awareness of self that, unfortunately, she does not retain to the end of the narrative. Although Helga tries to examine her place at the beginning of the narrative, she never does come to understand it, and thus she never achieves a standpointa weakness that Larsen represents contextually, as well as stylistically. Helgas weakness or inability to achieve a standpoint is first contextually represented by her failure to stay in one geographical location for very long; as she migrates from city to city, she finds herself always searching for something she cannot find. In the course of a 135page novel, Helga moves from Naxos to Chicago to Harlem to Copenhagen to Harlem and ends back in the South, the place she so desperately wanted to escape in the beginning. In each place she initially finds happiness, but soon becomes restless. For example, after finding security and contentment in New York living with her friend Anne Grey, Helga soon begins to feel uneasy: 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 (47). To readers,

Caresse A. John 105

this restlessness becomes familiar. Helga soon becomes disenchanted with every city to which she moves and consistently thinks up some pretext to leave. What is never clear, at least to Helga, is what she is searching for. Her unwillingness to examine her past and come to grips with her identity as a mixed-race woman makes it difficult for Helga to achieve a standpoint, which requires her to grapple with who she is and how she became that person. Helgas situation should cause standpoint theorists to sit up and take notice: How do the experiences of marginalized individuals who are unable to examine their own location problematize our theories on the achievement of a standpoint? While standpoint theorists reward the perspective afforded by the outsider within, they have not often examined the possible devastating effects this perspective can have as well. Although Helga does self-define in relation to those immediately surrounding her (characters like Dr. Anderson, James Vayle, and Axel Olsen), she does not take the next step and connect her self-definition to more complex and larger groups. Doing so might have meant, literally, an undoing in her mental and emotional stability. Helga is not able to confront and be comfortable with her multiple locations partly because she is not offered empowering alternatives, such as a family who loves her and is able to help her comes to terms with those locations or a geographical space where she can create a home in which she is not oppressed because of her multiple locations. Without a stable collective to examine herself in relation to, to connect to, or to identify with, Helgas self-worth and self-definition implode and leave her empty. Helgas failure to achieve a standpoint is further explored stylistically by Larsen through two specific narrative techniques: The use of Helgas full name, and the use of free indirect thought (FIT), free indirect discourse (FID), and interior monologue. In the course of the first 118 pages of the novel, the narrative calls Helga by her full name, Helga Crane, 112 times, almost once every page. The effect of this is a bit jarring; most narratives use a characters full name only for the first few pages. In Quicksand, we read Helga Crane vastly more frequently than we read simply Helga. The constant reiteration of Helgas last name parallels her need for escape, for flight, as well as her personality. Cranes are long-legged, longnecked birds known for their long migrations, and they mate for life. Although she is looking for something permanent, Helga never does settle down for long, at least not until the end of the novel. Once she marries the Reverend Mr. Pleasant Green, she is no longer referred to by anything but her first name. Indeed, at the end of the novel this crane has finally settled down, but not where she should have, therefore, perhaps, the use of just her first name, rather than her full married name. In contrast, the reverends full name appears eight times in the final eighteen pages of the novel. The elimination of Helgas full name at the end of the narrative, and the reiteration of her new husbands name, symbolizes the utter loss of her identity and individuality in marrying the reverend. Thus, the ways that Helga is referred to by name underscore her powerlessness, which is both a cause and a consequence of her constant need for escape.

106Feminist Formations 23.1

The second narrative technique that Larsen employs to examine Helgas lack of a standpoint is the use of FIT, FID, and interior monologue. Charles Larson (1993) argues that Helga is the most fully realized and convincing black woman depicted in American fiction to that date (68). Larsens portrayal of Helga is so convincing precisely because of her narrative technique, which has been overlooked by many critics. The extensive use of FIT, FID, and interior monologue prompts readers to sympathize with Helga, because we are privy to her consciousness and no one elses. Careful readers, however, those who recognize the use of and effects of these techniques, will notice the few narrative moments that are outside of Helga and be invited at those moments to draw their own conclusions about her. The most important outside view we are afforded of Helga is the narrators, because it is this view that largely points to Helgas self-deception. After Helga marries the reverend, Larsen discontinues the characteristic use of FIT in order to describe Helgas new life:
As always, at first the novelty of the thing, the change fascinated her. There was a recurrence of the feeling that now, at last, she had found a place for herself, that she was really living. ... Hers was, she declared to herself, a truly spiritual union. This one time in her life, she was convinced, she had not clutched a shadow and missed the actuality. ... If she remembered that she had had something like this feeling before, she put the unwelcome memory from her with the thought: This time I know Im right. This time it will last. (118, emphasis added)

The emphasized phrases and words are not Helgas recognitions but the narrators assessments. More than anything else, these additional words and phrases suggest Helgas ability to deceive herself, to not see the reality of her actions. As the narrative closes, Helga has one final moment of realization, reminding the readers of her latent ability to achieve a standpoint. She looks back on all of the people from her past and sees them for what they really were; she sees what she did not see throughout the narrative. She realizes that she deeply loved Dr. Anderson. She sees that Anne was secure but selfish. She sees James as snobbish and servile and sees the Dahls as the social climbers that they are. But this moment is unfortunately only a moment, and the narrative closes in its penultimate paragraph with Helga sick and bedridden from her fourth childbirth: It was so easy and so pleasant to think about freedom and cities, about clothes and books. ... It was so hard to think out a feasible way of retrieving all these agreeable, desired things. Just then. Later. When she got up. By and by. She must rest. Get strong. Sleep. Then, afterwards, she could work out some arrangement. So she dozed and dreamed in snatches of sleeping and waking letting time run on. Away (135). The final paragraph of the novel tells us that as soon as Helga was out of bed and able to walk again without pain, she was pregnant with her fifth child (135). Helga seems, as evidenced by others views of her and the penultimate

Caresse A. John 107

paragraph, to be party to her own limiting situation, as she deludes herself about her physical situation (When she got up) and as she lets the time run away. But Helga is also, no doubt, in a sexually limiting situation, caused by the racial and sexual politics that Larsen examines in the novel. And we would do the novel a disservice to forget these politics; indeed, standpoint theorists should ask what role these politics play in Helgas failure to achieve a standpoint. For Helga, there is no middle, no compromise, no gray areathe only satisfaction must be total, pure (Johnson 1998, 53), but the content and narration that I have analyzed shows us that although Helga did not see the gray area, Larsen did. Helgas inability to examine or even acknowledge that gray area and the consequential lack of a standpoint leaves her, at the end of the novel, simply a vessel for the reverends desires, rather than an initiator of her own desires. In refusing to provide a happy ending for Helga, in refusing to save Helga in the end, Larsen criticizes not just the perils of Helgas self-deception, but also all of the people and the limiting sexual and racial situations complicit in this deception. When we begin thinking about this novel from Larsens social position, from her life as a mixed-race woman writer of the Harlem Renaissance, we begin to see the novel and its socio-historical contexts in a new light. For example, Quicksand and Passing have often been criticized for their so-called unresolved endings. As Cary Wintz wrote as late as 1988, Larsens literary career and her life were almost as depressing as those of her characters (213). Cheryl Wall (1995) argues that the worlds of Larsens protagonists offer them no possibility of autonomy or fulfillment (131). McDowell (1986) suggests that Larsen, like Helga in Quicksand, could neither conform nor be happy in her nonconformity (xxxi). And Judith Branzburg (1984) says that [w]hat is lacking in Larsen is the imagination necessary to discover a new way to be a black woman, a way between refusal of the body or victimization by it (104). My reading of Larsens work and her life has led me to a different conclusion. It is not Larsens writing or life that was lacking in something; rather, it is Helgas lack of a standpoint that shows us why a standpoint is precisely what Helga needs. Helgas end displays a real consequence in Larsens time (and perhaps our own as well) for women who were unwilling, or perhaps more accurately, unable to struggle against the racial and sexual oppressions they faced. Larsens work also, importantly, shows us how difficult it can be to achieve a standpoint, something not many standpoint theorists have acknowledged, much less discussed. A Reading of Passing Passing, published one year after Quicksand, also examines the harmful effects of the failure to achieve a standpoint. Passing is narrated, like Quicksand, by a third-person omniscient narrator, with Irene acting as the main point of view, or central consciousness. For readers unfamiliar with the story, a short plot

108Feminist Formations 23.1

summary: Passing is set in the late 1920s in New York and Chicago and tells the story of Irene Redfield, an upstanding middle-class black woman, and her childhood friend Clare Kendry, an exuberant yet mysterious light-skinned black woman who is passing as a white woman in her marriage and social life. The first part of the narrative entails a flashback to a previous accidental meeting between Irene and Clare, which was fraught with racial and social tensions. Years later, Clare arrives in New York and, despite Irenes multiple protestations, works her way into Irenes life. Irene begins to suspect that Clare is having an affair with her husband, and Clares husband comes to find out, partly because of Irene, that his wife is black. The book culminates in a party, at which Clare is found out by her husband and falls/is pushed out a window and dies. Although seemingly the story of Clare, the narrative is actually that of Irene. Irene, possibly even more than Helga, is unwilling to examine herself and those around her, and her refusal to do so has grave consequences for everyone involved in the narrative. There are two important ways that the text represents Irenes failure to achieve a standpoint: Her inability or unwillingness to speak about certain issues, and the thematic and stylistic parallels between Clare and Irene. Irenes inability or unwillingness to discuss certain topics highlights her failure to achieve a standpoint.10 Irene has multiple moments of silence throughout the text; some of these have to do with emotions or feelings that she cannot put into words, what I call the inexpressible moments. These moments often concern Clare. For example, after a conversation she has with her husband, Brian, that causes her to suspect that he and Clare are having an affair, the narrative describes Irenes reaction in this way: For a long minute she sat in strained stiffness. The face in the mirror vanished from her sight, blotted out by this thing which had so suddenly flashed across her groping mind. Impossible for her to put it immediately into words or give it outline, for, prompted by some impulse of self-protection, she recoiled from exact expression (21718). Although the conversation she just had with Brian has given her no concrete reason to believe he is having an affair with Clare, Irene comes to that conclusion. (Incidentally, the narrative itself never actually uses the word affair; this could be because the narrative is filtered through Irenes mind and she is unable to name this thing.) The rationale given for recoiling from expression is self-protection, and it is not clear if this rationale is given to us by the third-person narrator or if it is Irenes interpretation. But this reason is important to note, regardless of whose explanation it is, because it reminds us of Irenes precarious social position. By this point in the narrative readers have come to see that Irene and Brians marriage is nothing less than strained. They continue to exist in what Larsen presents as an empty, middle-class shell, one that looks unbroken and secure from the outside, but is tense and unstable on the inside. They have differing opinions on most everything, they have no emotional connection or sexual relationship, and their marriage acts as a social mask for both that presents a

Caresse A. John 109

happy, middle-class family. Yet, Irene knows that Brian does not want to live in New York any longer, preferring South America instead, and she senses his increasing emotional distance from her. Thus, this self-protection is just that self-deluded and self-serving, yes, but Irene will be committing her own kind of social suicide if she is to leave Brian or acknowledge his (so-called) affair. However, in order to move toward achieving a standpoint, Irene would have to be willing to speak these thoughts and describe these emotions; instead, she survives on delusion and self-deception. While we cannot take lightly the fact that Irene lives in a time and place where her financial security and social well-being depend on her marriage, the novels stark conclusion is still a direct consequence of Irenes unwillingness to speak what she sees as inexpressible, her unwillingness to examine her feelings about Brian and Clare (individually and together), which thus impedes her ability to achieve a standpoint on an individual level. The question for standpoint theorists, then, is how are we to theorize Irenes unwillingness when we examine it in relation to the social detriment she faces if she does achieve a standpoint? In addition to Irenes inexpressible moments, she also has what I call the unspeakable moments, which have to do with what Irene feels she must not (rather than cannot) speak about. As before, her self-deception leads to and is a consequence of her unwillingness to examine her location in relation to social groups and other individuals, thus impeding her achievement of a standpoint on a collective level as well. For example, although on the surface Irene seems to be a model for all black womenshe works tirelessly for racial uplift and has a seemingly happy middle-class marriagethe readers know that, for Irene, race and sex are unspeakable matters. In two conversations she has with her husband, Irene makes it clear that her boys are not to hear about racial and sexual matters. When she learns that Brian has discussed lynching with their boys, she says, in an ultimate moment of repression: I want their childhood to be happy and as free from the knowledge of such things as it possibly can be (231). Irene sees such racial matters as unspeakable, and the longer it takes her kids to receive what Brian calls necessary education, the better (189). She upholds her need for propriety and security not only in the raising of her children, but also in her own living. For instance, in meeting Clare on the rooftop of the Drayton (a Chicago hotel with a rooftop restaurant), Irene has a desire to ask Clare all about passing: But she couldnt. She was unable to think of a single question that in its context or its phrasing was not too frankly curious, if not actually impertinent (157). Notice, first, that Irenes reason for not asking Clare about passing revolves around propriety; Irene views it as improper to ask explicitly about matters of race and implicitly about matters of sex, since the rumor about Clare is that she has made her way in the world by sleeping with rich white men. Second, Irenes curiosity is, of course, ironic, for she herself passes in this scene and, more importantly, does not speak about it, out loud or even in her mind. As Jennifer DeVere Brody (1992) has so perceptively shown,

110Feminist Formations 23.1

neither the omniscient narrator nor Irene comment[s] upon this transgression. The entire event [of passing] merely occurs in the blank margin of the page. ... Irenes omission in the scene suggests that she is comfortable with such transgressions (1057). Moreover, Irene does not pass in just this scene, but passes throughout the narrative in her continued assimilation to white and middle-class standards. Irene uses passing as a social device in order to blind herself to a social context rife with lynchings and Jim Crow laws (Marren 1996, 138), a context that Brian continuously brings to her attention in his attempts to convince her to move to another country. Although she views passing as only a physical act, we see throughout the narrative that Irene passes just as much as Clare does, but in her own way: Irene stays in a loveless marriage because it affords security, she shops tirelessly for the perfect gifts for her two sons to whom she otherwise barely pays attention, and she refers in her mind to her black servant Zulena as creature when she sits down to a proper breakfast, in her proper middle-class home with her proper middle-class husband (Passing, 184). In other words, Irene passes as a happy, middle-class wife and mother. She does not speak of passing consciously or unconsciously because it is an unspeakable matter to her; her belief that passing is only a physical action allows Irene to deceive herself about her own mental and emotional passing and facilitates her judgment of Clares passing. Yet, her desire to ask Clare about it, as well as her own acts of passing, show the depth of her self-deception. All of Irenes repression and self-deception lead to the final and most important example of the unspeakable. Right before Clare dies, while Irenes hand is on Clares arm and the two stand in front of the open window, the narrative tells us that [w]hat happened next, Irene Redfield never afterwards allowed herself to remember. Never clearly. One moment Clare had been there, a vital glowing thing, like a flame of red and gold. The next she was gone (239, emphasis added). The word allowed speaks volumes about Irenes character. To disallow means to refuse to admit something, not to be unable to admit something. Ultimately, what this sentence, particularly the words never and allowed, suggests is that Irene is perfectly aware of what happened to Clare, but refuses to think about it, remember it, and acknowledge it. Whether or not that makes her culpable is beside the point; the point is that Irene is so invested in living a life that she perceives to be secure that she is willing to allow Clares ambiguous death to go unsolved. At the end of the narrative, Clare is dead and Larsen leaves Irene, literally, in the dark (the novel ends with these words: Then everything was dark [242]). Irenes self-deception and repression make it impossible for her to achieve a standpoint; the result of that failure is no less than the literal death of one woman and the figurative death of another. In these scenes, we see that Irene both refuses and, at some points, is unable to examine herself, as well as examine the racial and sexual oppression that she shares with Brian, her sons, and Clare. Doing so would not only lead to a

Caresse A. John 111

stronger sense of self-worth and self-definition, but would also strengthen her ties with these individuals and groups of people with which she shares certain types of oppression, perhaps leading to a stronger resistance of those oppressions. But it is also scenes like these that show that Larsens understanding of her social context is broader than Irenes; while Irene does not fully come to terms with the racism and sexism around her, Larsen does. One wonders, then, how to read Irenes repression and self-deception: Should we see it as reasonable, considering that one could argue that Irenes repression saves her life? Or should we see it as deplorable, considering that it leads to a clearly empty and unsatisfying existence? Irenes contexther lifemakes it very difficult for her to achieve a standpoint. Like Helga, Irene exists between and among different groups with various degrees of power and powerlessness: On the one hand, standpoint theory does not adequately account for situations or locations such as Helgas and Irenes; but on the other, perhaps it is standpoint theory itself that shows us how difficult it is for people such as Helga and Irene to achieve something like a standpoint. While Larsen leaves both women in bleak situations and shows us the depth of their self-deception, she also implicates characters like Anne Grey, James Vayle, Dr. Anderson, and John Bellew (Clares husband), as well as social contexts like hotels and taxis that only serve white people or marriages based on the need for security. Standpoint theorists should begin to examine why women such as these fail to achieve a standpoint; after all, the goal of standpoint theory is to examine what we know about the world, and why we know it, from the lives of women. So what is it about their lives, their contexts, their situations that makes these characters unable to achieve a standpoint? And what does it mean that Larsen chooses to demonstrate this failure, rather than saving her protagonists? As an outsider within herself, Larsen was very aware of the complex power relations that black middle-class women needed to negotiate in 1920s America; her novels about women like Helga and Irenewomen whose literal survival depended upon identifying with roles that did not always mesh with their own self-identificationhighlight how very difficult the process of achieving a standpoint can be, and the potential social and personal downfalls of being unable to achieve a standpoint. Perhaps one final example of Larsens representation of Irenes failure to achieve a standpoint will help to further answer these questions. Larsen draws connections between Clare and Irene in both her content and style, and these similarities show the depth of Irenes self-deception. Thematically, both Clare and Irene view their children as measures of security, being the glue that holds their marriages together. But that security does not equal happiness for either of them, and recognition of this fact is one of the only things that Irene allows herself to agree with Clare about. At one point in the narrative, Clare says to Irene, I think that being a mother is the cruellest [sic] thing in the world. Irene, the narrative tells us, softly agreed. For a moment she was unable to say more,

112Feminist Formations 23.1

so accurately had Clare put into words that which, not so definitely defined, was so often in her own heart of late (197). Although Irene follows this realization with a lecture on responsibility, the narrator has made clear that Clare and Irene, while in very different marriages, are in similar situations. A few pages later, after Clare has left, the narrative reveals Irenes thoughts on Clare: Clare, it seemed, still retained her ability to secure the thing she wanted in the face of any opposition. ... About her there was some quality, hard and persistent, with the strength and endurance of rock, that would not be beaten or ignored. She couldnt, Irene thought, have had an entirely serene life (201). Much of the same could be said of Irene: She seems to be able to obtain what she wants in the face of opposition, especially when it comes to keeping Brian and her family in the States; she is incredibly stubborn and can be hard and persistent; she most certainly does not have an entirely serene life; and there are plenty of emotions and feelings that Irene keeps hidden in the background of her own consciousness. While Irene allows herself a moment of realization that she and Clare share similar oppressions, she does not allow this moment to become something morea continued recognition and awareness of her similarities to and differences from Claresomething that could lead her toward achieving a standpoint. Additionally, Larsen places Clare and Irene side by side stylistically, using the same wording to describe them and thus calling to readers minds their similarities. For example, early in the narrative, Irene describes Clare as catlike (144). Much later, when Irene and Brian are talking about Clare, Irene insults Clares intelligence, and Brian responds by saying that he takes Irenes comment as slightly feline in its implication (216). More significantly, when Clare and Irene are talking about Bellew potentially realizing that Clare is not white, Clare says: But its true, Rene. Cant you realize that Im not like you a bit? Why, to get the things I want badly enough, Id do anything, hurt anybody, throw anything away (210). Right before the end of the narrative, after Irene sees Bellew and thinks about telling Clare, she reflects: No! At all costs, Clare was not to know of that meeting with Bellew. Nor was Brian. It would only weaken her own power to keep him. ... And she would do anything, risk anything, to prevent him from finding out that truth (236). Ethically, Irene must keep Clares secret from Bellew, for Clares own safety. In the same vein, she should tell Clare of this meeting because it could put Clare in danger if Bellew realizes that she, like Irene, is black. Of course, this passage further suggests that Irene did do anything when Clare dies. Whether or not this implicates Irene, the similarities between Irene and Clare show readers how deeply Irene deceives herself. For as much as she hates Clare, she is not able or not willing to recognize that she and Clare are very much like each other, in that both would do anything to maintain their lifestyles and marriages. While Irene cannot see these similarities, the readers do; Larsens context and strategic ambivalence criticize not just the kind of mindset that does not allow

Caresse A. John 113

one to recognize ones limiting social situation and how that oppression relates to the oppression of others (especially when the oppression is shared, as between Clare and Irene), but also the socially limiting situations themselves in which Clare and Irene are encased. At the end of the narrative, Irene is enclosed in darkness, suffering the consequences of not achieving a standpoint. But Larsen does not necessarily suggest that Irene is fully culpable for this failure; indeed, as stated above, Larsens choice in fashioning her protagonists in this manner invokes some important questions for feminist standpoint theorists. For example, is it possible for figures like Clare, Irene, or Helga (or even Larsen herself), who negotiate among various social locations, to achieve a standpoint, especially when that negotiation is necessary to surviveliterally? If so, how? What if ones survival depends upon not thinking about ones social situation too deeply? And, most importantly, how does one negotiate multiple and intersecting social locations, and attempt the achievement of a standpoint amid those locations? Larsens protagonists show us, at the very least, how difficult it is to negotiate multiple social situations and therefore achieve a standpoint. The kinds of self-deception in which Helga and Irene are involved, while severe, are perhaps not unusual. We all suffer from a lack of critical knowledge about ourselves and those around us, hence the need for a theory like standpoint theory. But we should not be too quick to judge characters like Larsens; instead, we should take their stories as starting points for discussions about the difficulties in achieving a standpoint. Concluding Remarks We would be wise to take note that Larsens works, the actual products of her writing, show us that resistance is an important part of the achievement of a standpoint. In the very act of writing, Larsen enacted her own struggle with and her critical thinking about the racial and sexual politics of her own time. Susan Hekman (1997) defines political resistance as challenging the hegemonic discourse that writes a particular script for a certain category of subjects. Resistance is effected by employing other discursive formations to oppose that script (357). Although Helga and Irene fail to achieve a standpoint, Larsens strategic ambivalence, her distinct discursive formations, allows her to critique the kinds of racial and sexual politics that make these women unable or unwilling to speak about, understand, and authorize their experiences. Larsen does not explicitly criticize the racial and sexual politics of her day, but she does implicitly call attention to the destructive situations that these politics produce, especially for mixed-race and middle-class black women. Her narrative technique of strategic ambivalence calls attention to Helgas and Irenes lack of standpoints. As we have seen, Irene and Helga do not ask of themselves the following questions: Who am I? How have I been oppressed? Have I

114Feminist Formations 23.1

oppressed others? This failure on the part of Larsens characters, however, does not preclude readers from asking these questions; in fact, Larsens content and narrative techniques highlighting her women characters self-deception prompt us, the readers, to ask these questions about her characters. Further, these characters sad fates prompt us to ask these questions about ourselves as well. For approximately the last thirty years of her life Larsen was no longer a visible member of the Harlem Renaissance, living instead the quiet life of a nurse in Brooklyn. Her so-called disappearance from the Harlem Renaissance has often overshadowed the unique contribution she made not only to it, but also to American literature in general. Larsen had complex racial and sexual experiences within her socio-historical context, which she wrote about in a literary tradition that was predominantly white and male. Her characters represent and communicate the concreteness of some of her personal experiences of being a woman, of being black and middle-class, of being biracial, of being able to pass, and of being an intellectual. The multiplicity of these experiences represents how difficult it can be to achieve a standpoint. In discussions of what it takes to achieve a standpoint, feminist standpoint theorists would do well to remember the multiplicity and intersectionality of experience that they often aim to calls others attention to. They would do well to discuss what it means for women like Helga and Irene and Larsen to attempt to achieve a standpoint and for what reasons they may fail or succeed. If we are to heed Hardings call to begin our thinking and research from womens lives, we must take into account the harsh realities many women face. Our assumption that a standpoint is something to be achieved by the nonmarginalized has led us to overlook what achieving a standpoint would mean for the marginalized. Had Helga and Irene been able to achieve standpoints, they no doubt would have met different and, perhaps, better ends. But Larsen does not allow the achievement; rather, in her protagonists failures she displays the devastating effects of not analyzing oneself or others, and in their sad fates she reveals the social detriment that one may face in attempting the achievement at all. Acknowledgments I owe thanks to two anonymous peer readers for their insightful comments, and to Diana L. Swanson and Mark Van Wienen for their guidance, suggestions, and patient encouragement as I worked on drafts of this article. Caresse A. John is an assistant professor at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. Her research and teaching interests are nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature, gender studies, and many kinds of theory, especially feminism, narratology, and standpoint. She is currently at work on a book-length project that builds on the material in this article, applying standpoint theory to the narrative techniques of American women writers. She can be reached at caresse.john@belmont.edu.

Caresse A. John 115

Notes
1. For examples of application of feminist standpoint theory to literary works, see Brooke Lenz, Postcolonial Fiction and the Outsider Within: Toward a Literary Practice of Feminist Standpoint Theory (2004); Danielle Fuller, Helen Porters Everyday Survival Stories: A Literary Encounter with Feminist Standpoint Theory (1999); and Marjorie Pryse, Writing Out of the Gap: Regionalism, Resistance, and Relational Reading (1998). 2. Nancy Naples offers an important discussion that parallels nicely with my following discussion of standpoint theory. In chapter 5 of her book Feminism and Method: Ethnography, Discourse Analysis, and Activist Research (2003), Naples outlines the beginnings of standpoint theory, some of its key criticisms, and then develops what she calls a multidimensional standpoint framework, which reveals multiple approaches to the construction of standpoint: as embodied in womens social location and social experience, as constructed in community, and as a site through which to begin inquiry (7475). Napless framework, in fact, addresses some of the concerns about standpoint theory that I raise in my discussion. My thanks to an anonymous peer reader for guiding me to this important work. 3. See Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, 2nd ed. (2000), particularly chapter 5, in which she focuses on the individual level. See also Collins, Comment on Hekmans Truth and Method: Feminist Standpoint Theory Revisited: Wheres the Power? (1997), in which she focuses on the collective; and Sandra Harding, Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Womens Lives (1991), particularly chapters 57, 11, which include comments regarding both the individual and collective levels, but not regarding how these levels are related. 4. Standpoint theorists have remained virtually silent about the marginalized achieving standpoints. A notable exception, of course, is Collins (2000), in which she discusses the achievement of a standpoint by black women domestic workers. Since her work, however, most standpoint theorists assume or suggest that the achievement is something that must be done by the nonmarginalized. 5. See, for example, Thadious Davis, Nella Larsen, Novelist of the Harlem Renaissance: A Womans Life Unveiled (1994), 6768; and Charles Larson, Invisible Darkness: Jean Toomer and Nella Larsen (1993), 18489. 6. After the appearance of Sanctuary, Larsen was accused of plagiarizing the story from Sheila Kaye-Smiths story Mrs. Adis. Some scholars have noticed the striking similarities between the stories, suggesting that she read Mrs. Adis and remembered much of it as she was writing her own story. Many also suggest that the accusations of plagiarism were what drove Larsen into obscurity, although she continued to write for many years after Sanctuary. See the works by Davis and Larson for excellent, thorough coverage of Larsens life. 7. See, for example, Kathleen Pfeiffer, Race Passing and American Individualism (2003), 14243. 8. For further information on the reception and reviews of Larsens novels, see Deborah McDowells Introduction to Quicksand and Passing (1986), ixx. 9. For more discussion of the ideals of black womanhood in Larsens time, see McDowell and Ann duCille, Blue Notes on Black Sexuality: Sex and the Texts of Jessie Fauset and Nella Larsen (1993).

116Feminist Formations 23.1 10. Toni Morrisons article Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature (2000) adds a level of complexity to my discussion of Irenes use of language. Morrison shows the ways in which race is still a virtually unspeakable thing, particularly in our construction and maintaining of the American literary canon (26). She also offers an explication of some of her own use of language in her novels to underscore that how she practice[s] language is a search for and deliberate posture of vulnerability to those aspects of culture that can inform and position my work (55). Thus, Morrisons article can enhance our reading of Irenes (and ultimately Larsens) use of language in important ways. My thanks to an anonymous peer reader for drawing my attention to this article.

References
Branzburg, Judith Vivian. 1984. Women Novelists of the Harlem Renaissance: A Study in Marginality. PhD diss., University of Massachusetts. Brody, Jennifer DeVere. 1992. Clare Kendrys True Colors: Race and Class Conflict in Nella Larsens Passing. Callaloo 15(4): 105365. Collins, Patricia Hill. 2000. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge. . 1997. Comment on Hekmans Truth and Method: Feminist Standpoint Theory Revisited: Wheres the Power? Signs 22(21): 37581. . 1986. Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought. Social Problems 33(6): S14S32. Davis, Thadious M. 1994. Nella Larsen, Novelist of the Harlem Renaissance: A Womans Life Unveiled. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. duCille, Ann. 1993. Blue Notes on Black Sexuality: Sex and the Texts of Jessie Fauset and Nella Larsen. In American Sexual Politics: Sex, Gender, and Race since the Civil War, ed. John C. Fout and Maura Shaw Tantillo, 193219. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Fout, John C., and Maura Shaw Tantillo, eds. 1993. American Sexual Politics: Sex, Gender, and Race since the Civil War. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press. Fuller, Danielle. 1999. Helen Porters Everyday Survival Stories: A Literary Encounter with Feminist Standpoint Theory. Atlantis 24(1): 12233. Harding, Sandra, ed. 2004. The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies. New York: Routledge. . 1991. Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Womens Lives. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Hekman, Susan. 1997. Truth and Method: Feminist Standpoint Theory Revisited. Signs 22(21): 34165. Hirschmann, Nancy J. 1997. Feminist Standpoint as Postmodern Strategy. In Politics and Feminist Standpoint Theories, ed. Sally J. Kenney and Helen Kinsella, 7392. New York: Haworth Press. Johnson, Barbara. 1998. The Feminist Difference: Literature, Psychoanalysis, Race, and Gender. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Larsen, Nella. [1928, 1929]1986. Quicksand and Passing. Ed. Deborah E. McDowell. American Women Writers Series. Reprint, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Caresse A. John 117 Larson, Charles R. 1993. Invisible Darkness: Jean Toomer and Nella Larsen. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. Lenz, Brooke. 2004. Postcolonial Fiction and the Outsider Within: Toward a Literary Practice of Feminist Standpoint Theory. NWSA Journal 16(2): 98120. Marren, Susan Marie. 1996. Passing for American: Establishing American Identity in the Work of James Weldon Johnson, F.Scott Fitzgerald, Nella Larsen, and Gertrude Stein. PhD diss., University of Michigan. McDowell, Deborah E. [1928, 1929]1986. Introduction. In Quicksand and Passing, ed. Deborah E. McDowell, ixxxxv. American Women Writers Series. Reprint, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Morrison, Toni. 2000. Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature. In The Black Feminist Reader, ed. Joy James and T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, 2456. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Naples, Nancy. 2003. Feminism and Method: Ethnography, Discourse Analysis, and Activist Research. New York: Routledge. Pels, Dick. 2004. Strange Standpoints, or How to Define the Situation for Situated Knowledge. In The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies, ed. Sandra Harding, 27389. New York: Routledge. Pfeiffer, Kathleen. 2003. Race Passing and American Individualism. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Pryse, Marjorie. 1998. Writing Out of the Gap: Regionalism, Resistance, and Relational Reading. In A Sense of Place: Re-Evaluating Regionalism in Canadian and American Writing, ed. Christian Riegel and Herb Wyile, 1934. Edmonton, Alberta: University of Alberta Press. Rabin, Jessica G. 2004. Surviving the Crossing: (Im)migration, Ethnicity, and Gender in Willa Cather, Gertrude Stein, and Nella Larsen. New York: Routledge. Riegel, Christian, and Herb Wyile, eds. A Sense of Place: Re-Evaluating Regionalism in Canadian and American Writing. Edmonton, Alberta: University of Alberta Press. Wall, Cheryl A. 1995. Women of the Harlem Renaissance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Wintz, Cary D. 1988. Black Culture and the Harlem Renaissance. Houston, TX: Rice University Press. Wood, Julia T. 2005. Feminist Standpoint Theory and Muted Group Theory: Commonalities and Divergences. Women and Language 28(2): 6164.