Summary Of Irene By Erne Larsen

of telling John of his wife’s true origins but knows that she could not bring herself to betray to Clare in that way. Larsen writes that Irene “was caught between two allegiances, different, yet the same. Herself. Her race. Race! The thing that bound and suffocated her. Whatever steps she took, or if she took none at all, something would be crushed. A person or the race. Clare, herself, or the race. Or, it might be, all three. Nothing, she imagined was ever more completely sardonic” (98). The syntax in this passage is fragmented. Irene’s frustration is palpable, her confusion is illustrated through the short, abrupt sentences. The choppy syntax is indicative of broader issues she faces. The questions of race cause a fracture of the self, a schizophrenia of her identity.
To black people in general? To women like Clare who share her physical characteristics? Is there anyway she could be loyal to all of them? Can she judge someone for wanting to escape racial prejudice by any means necessary? Her race “binds and suffocates her” in multiple ways. On one level because of the oppression she faces and another because of her sense of loyalty to her black identity. It is no longer simply a black-or-white question, the notion of her identity is complicated by a this liminal space. She’s someone who exists between blackness and whiteness. Irene looks beyond the definition of race that was prevalent in the 1920s, the black-white dichotomy. She struggles with understanding how to deal with the intersection of her race, class, and gender. The strict lines she felt comfortable abiding by are called into question and her schism is present in her