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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Clare now sees that if her marriage breaks,

2. What did Clare's aunts do to her?

3. Irene knows that she and Brian and their children belong

4. Why does Irene bring up Junior's exposure to sexually tainted jokes?

5. Irene's encounter with John Bellew

Short Essay Questions

1. What is odd about the initial meeting among Irene, Gertrude and Clare? Are these conversations typical among women friends? What, if anything, makes the visit among the three women unusual?

2. How does this time in Helga's life compare to other times? Is it similar or different? In what ways?

3. What is the author's intention when she puts the two women together in the hotel restaurant scene? What conclusions can we draw from Irene's memory of that day?

4. Is there anything we can deduce about Irene's response to Clare's letter without knowing the whole story? If so, what are they?

5. What is your initial assessment of Clare Kendry? Do we know enough about her in these first two chapters to draw any conclusions about her? If so, what would they be?

6. What is the burden that these characters carry with them throughout the story?

7. Hugh Wentworth, the white author, comes back into the story during the afternoon tea scene. What is Wentworth's role? Is he a true friend to Irene? To Clare?

8. What, exactly, does Irene fervently wish John Bellew could know? Why?

9. Speculate on why Clare is silent at the Redfield dinner table, but talkative and gregarious a parties with others. Does she have a split personality, or is she just shy at the Redfields'? How does Larsen let on what is going on without saying it?

10. What kind of parent is Clare Kendry? What are the clues, thus far, that help us to draw conclusions about her parenting abilities? How has Larsen informed us about this?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Research and write about Harlem in the 1920s. What made Harlem the haven it became for African Americans? What kinds of people lived there? What was the basic economic structure at that time? Did people generally live in Harlem and work outside, or vice versa? Was black Harlem closed to white folks?

Essay Topic 2

Write a biography, from what you can find through research, of Nella Larsen and her own experiences that contributed to her stories. Are her stories autobiographical? Where did she gain knowledge of the problems of being bi-racial? What impact, if any, did her writing have on Americans?

Essay Topic 3

Write about Christian spiritualism among African Americans in the 1920s in America. What were their general doctrines, and where did they come from? Did the beliefs come over with slaves from Africa, or were they developed among blacks in America? Where did these ideas come from?

(see the answer keys)

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