The only thing keeping Clare from exposing her true race is her husband, not the wealthy lifestyle and security as Irene thinks. Clare desperately wants to “see Negroes, to be with them again, to talk to them , to hear them laugh,” but it is Jack who “keeps [her] out of everything”, “everything [she] wants” (56). She longs for the companionship of black women because she can truly express herself to them. She can never connect with her white people because they will never truly know who she is no matter how much she pretends. She expresses these thoughts to Irene, the look on her face is so “hopeless” that Irene caves in and decides to invite her to the Negro dance (56). At a party of Dave and Felise, Irene carefully studies Clare’s face and notices that it is “beautiful and caressing” as always but “maybe today a little masked”, “unrevealing”, “unaltered and undisturbed by any emotion with or without” (73).…show more content… Clare “had always seemed to know what other people were thinking” (86) and at the party she seems to wear a mask to hide her emotions about John finding out her identity. When John arrives at the party, Clare stands “as composed as if everyone were not staring at her”, “as if the whole structure of her life were not lying in fragments before her” (90). “There was even a faint smile on her full, red lips, and in her shining eyes” (90). She is not scared, instead she accepts that her time “passing” as white is over. Before this, Clare wore a mask permanently because she felt pressured to conform to society’s role of a white women, portraying a wealthy perfect lifestyle. But once she interacts with Irene and people of the Harlem society, her masks slowly comes off as she embraces her true identity and expresses her discomfort in living as
