Modernism in "A Lost Lady" vs "Passing".

The essence of a person lingers in one's memory even long after that person has gone away. In the two modernist novels, A Lost Lady and Passing, the authors were both concerned with that indispensable property that characterizes a person rather than their reality. Larsen and Cather tell the story of women who existed in literature primarily as an incorporeal being. By using the non-traditional topics that classify realist literature, each author builds a woman's …

…reader. Even after she disappears from Niel's life, he remembers her as the Captain's wife, how he understood her best; "But eventually, after she had drifted out of his ken, when he did not know if Daniel Forrester's widow were living or dead, Daniel Forrester's wife returned back to him, a bright, personal memory." (Cather, pg. 146-47) Cather creates a powerful memory to captures that unmistakably captures the essence of Marian Forrester for her readers.