Art & Identity in New Orleans

In Bellocq’s Ophelia, race plays a strong role as it plays a much bigger role in comparison to The Awakening, A Streetcar Named Desire, and The Moviegoer. Upon first glance, anyone could say “It’s because the main characters in the other three stories are white, while Ophelia is white-passing.” While that is true, it speaks to a much larger observation. In the stories where the main focus is on a white character, any and all Black characters are pushed to the sidelines. This is the exact opposite of how New Orleans is usually depicted these days. When people think of New Orleans, they think of jazz, second line, Mardi Gras, and maybe Princess and the Frog if you’re lucky. For example, in The Awakening, there was a Black woman who was looking after the Pontellier boys. Readers aren’t given any information about her. We don’t know her name, her background, whether or not she has her own children, etc. She was just there. The same could be said in A Streetcar Named Desire, where any Black person was only mentioned in passing as they are in the background. This time, it’s the exact opposite. Ophelia is a white-passing black woman who has memories of living on a plantation. Her father is a white man, most likely her former enslaver, whom her mother forces her to obtain the approval of. One of the poems references a lynching and how her mother would go to great lengths to hide so they would not get in trouble (Page 22).