Two mothers (noted as related) with their children in a home on a Wake County tobacco farm. (Photograph by Dorothea Lange; Dated July 1939.)

The image displayed above is two mothers and their children on a farm and portrays the love that they have for their children, despite the conditions that they might be living in. I chose this image to correlate with motherhood because it shows that mother’s play an important role in their child’s life and they expose them to love and affection, despite the circumstances that they might be facing.

To be a mother in Nella Larsen’s Passing is to be either a mother, who loves her children and wants to protect them from the dangers of society or it can be to not giving your child the love and attention that they deserve. During the time mother’s were the ones who stayed home and cared for the children, took care of the household and her husband. Her duties lied in the home, but for Irene, she took her job as a mother seriously because she didn’t have anything in her life that was more significant than being a wife and mother. It was her security as a mother that prevented her husband Brian from leaving and that is why she considered herself as, an “obstacle” in his life that he couldn’t leave because she was the mother of his children. However, this does not shy away from the importance of how her role as a mother is quintessential to her children because she is able to give them something her husband cannot.  

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