Women and Modernism: Nella Larsen Study Guide
Courtney McAllister
Natalie Smith
Personal Background
Nella Larsen was born Nellie Marie Walker on April 13, 1891 in Chicago. Her mother
was Danish and her father was from the West Indies. After her father’s death when she was two
years old, her mother remarried a white man, Peter Larsen, and they had a daughter, Anna. She
attended predominantly white schools until her entrance into Fisk University Normal School,
where she was trained as a teacher. Later on, she attended New York’s Lincoln Training School
for Nurses. During her career as a nurse, she worked at Tuskegee Institute and the New York
City Department of Health. She married Dr. Elmer Imes, a research physicist, in 1919. They
later divorced because of his infidelity, and they had no children. In 1925 Larsen showed the
first signs of deteriorating health. She suffered from periodic bouts of colds, influenza, and other
ailments, leaving her in frail physical condition for the remainder of her life.
Literary Beginnings
Larsen was admitted into the New York Public Library’s training program in 1922. In
order to qualify for the program, she had to pass an exam which required extensive knowledge of
history, literature, and foreign languages. She even taught herself French so that she could pass
the exam. It was during this period of her life that she developed an interest in writing. She was
exposed to many kinds of literature and ideas during her exam preparation and throughout her
employment at the library. Many believe that her career as a librarian had a significant impact
on her writing. Her mentor during the majority of her literary career was Carl Van Vechten, a
white writer who is known for having published severely degrading representations of African
Americans.
Becoming a Novelist
Despite the publication of two short stories two years earlier, Larsen’s career as a writer
skyrocketed when her first novel, Quicksand, was published in 1928. The novel was wellreceived. W.E.B. DuBois called it “the best piece of fiction that Negro America has produced
since the heyday of Chesnutt.” It is regarded as an intensely biographical novel because
elements of Larsen’s life are mirrored in that of the protagonist, Helga Crane. The following
year, Larsen published her second novel, Passing, which was also praised, although its ending is
criticized for being abrupt and unsatisfying.
Scandal and Fall From Grace
Larsen published a controversial short story, “Sanctuary,” in 1930 in the journal Forum.
Immediately after its publication, she was accused of plagiarizing Sheila Kaye-Smith’s “Mrs.
Adis.” While Larsen was found innocent of plagiarism charges, most critics agree that she
strategically altered “Mrs. Adis” as a means of manipulating assumptions about black female
identity and Western notions of ownership, as well as Modernist trends in general. After the
“Sanctuary” scandal, Larsen withdrew from the Harlem literary scene. She continued to write
sporadically, but her later works were never published and have not resurfaced since her death.
Posthumous Recognition
Larsen is considered part of the Harlem Renaissance, despite the fact that she was always
on the periphery of that social and literary scene. She died in obscurity in 1964, but she is now
recognized as a provocative writer who disappeared at the height of her literary prowess. Her
works received attention after her death, especially during the Black Arts movement in the late
1960s. Feminist critics were also drawn to her work in the 1980s, particularly for her
representations of female sexuality. Both groups were intrigued by her success as a woman
writer during the Harlem Renaissance, because most of the recognizable figures of the period
were men, such as Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen. This legacy is somewhat inconsistent
with Larsen’s tendency to resist and complicate classifications of race, gender, and class.
Nella Larsen’s Works
A Review of Kathleen Norris’s Certain People of Importance (essay) 1922
“Freedom” (short story) 1926
“The Wrong Man” (short story) 1926
Quicksand (novel) 1928
Passing (novel) 1929
“Sanctuary” (short story) 1930
Bibliography
Davis, Thadious. Nella Larsen, Novelist of the Harlem Renaissance: A Woman’s Life Unveiled.
Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1994.
Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 51: Afro-American Writers from the Harlem
Renaissance to 1940. A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Edited by Trudier Harris,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Gale Group, 1987. pp. 182-192.
Haviland, Dorothy. “Passing from Paranoia to Plagiarism: the Abject Authorship of Nella
Larsen.” Modern Fiction Studies 43.2 (1997) 295-318.
Hoeller, Hildegard. “Race, Modernism, and Plagiarism: The Case of Nella Larsen’s
‘Sanctuary.’” African American Review 40:3 (2006 Fall), 421-37. Includes illustration.
Hostetler, Ann E. “The Aesthetics of Race and Gender in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand.” PMLA:
Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 105:1 (1990 Jan), 35-46.
Larson, Charles R. Invisible Darkness: Jean Toomer and Nella Larsen. Iowa City: U of Iowa P,
1993.
McDowell, Deborah E. “Introduction to Quicksand and Passing.” Quicksand and Passing.
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1986.
Mclendon, Jacquelyn Y. “Nella Larsen.” African American Writers (1991) 263-272.
“Nella Larsen.” Contemporary Authors Online, Gale 2002. University of Mary Washington
Literature Resource Center. 4 Mar. 2008. <http://www.galenet.com.ezproxy.umw.edu>.
Major Works on Nella Larsen
Dawahare, Anthony. “The Gold Standard of Racial Identity in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand and
Passing.” Twentieth-Century Literature 52.1 (2006 Spring), 22-41.
Doyle, Laura. “Transnational History at Our Backs: A Long View of Larsen, Woolf, and Queer
Racial Subjectivity in Atlantic Modernism. Modernism/modernity 13.3 (2006) 531-559.
DuBois, W.E.B. “The Browsing Reader: Two Novels.” Crisis, XXXV (1928), 202.
Hutchinson, George. In Search of Nella Larsen: A Biography of the Color Line. Cambridge,
MA: Belknap Press, 2006.
Landry, H. Jordan. “Seeing Women Anew through Lesbian Desire in Nella Larsen’s Passing.”
Rocky Mountain Review 60:1 (2006 Spring), 25-52.
McLendon, Jacquelyn Y. “‘That nameless…shameful impulse’: Sexuality in Nella Larsen’s
Quicksand and Passing.” Black Feminist Criticism and Critical Theory. Eds. Joe
Weixlmann and Houston A. Baker. Greenwood, FL: Penkevill, 1988. 139-167.
Thornton, Hortense. “Sexism as Quagmire: Nella Larsen’s Quicksand.” CLA Journal, XVI
(March, 1973), 285-301.
Wall, Cheryl A. Women of the Harlem Renaissance. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1995.