Conditions of Freedom

Dear Irene Redfield,
What does it mean to be free?
You constantly worry over the possibility of Clare Kendry being “freed” from her relationship with the horribly racist John Bewell. In being “freed” from his grasp, Clare would have the agency to return to her black identity and rejoin black society - and, you fear, joining your husband.
But isn’t Clare passing as a white woman for that very reason - to be free? To be free from the disadvantages of a black identity - the economical, the social, the political. Couldn’t one argue that as a white woman, Clare is infinitely more free than she ever could be as a black one?
Or is it less simple than that? Is freedom to be defined as situational, or is it, as an influential black singer and activist in your distant future will say, to live without fear? If it is the latter, Mrs. Redfield, you are the farthest from free.

Lucy Sandeen

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