ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysis has been used by feminist theorists to theorize sexual difference as a distinct and fundamental set of linguistic and cultural relations. This privileging of sexual difference implies not only that sexual difference should be understood as more fundamental than other forms of difference, but that other forms of difference might be derived from sexual difference. Agreeing that Nella Larsen's most striking insights are into psychic dilemmas confronting certain black women, Cheryl Wall argues that what appear to be the tragic mulattoes of literary convention are also the means through which the author demonstrates the psychological costs of racism and sexism. The logic of passing and exposure came to afflict and to end Nella Larsen's own authorial career, for when she published a short story, Sanctuary, in 1930, she was accused of plagiarism.
