Blog #3: Irene

I am not quite sure what to make of Irene. Sometimes she seems like a nice and commendable person, like on page 52 when she states that reason that she did not say anything to Mr. Bellew when he was spewing his racist thoughts was that she did not want to endanger Clare. For all of her speech about how Clare only thinks about herself saying "To count as nothing the annoyances, the bitterness, or the suffering of others, that was Clare" (page 51), she was able to swallow her own thoughts to protect Clare. But rethinking the initial scene at the hotel, when Irene was not worried about being found out as African American, but instead of being kicked out, I have to wonder if the reason she didn't speak up to Mr. Bellew was also a self-serving one. She simply did not want to be embarrassed or brashly thrown out of the house as Mr. Bellew, a vehement racist, would have done.  While she is kind to Clare's face and softens under her presence, she has a lot of bad things to say about her behind her back and that rubbed me as irksome. My thoughts of Irene went from thinking of her as proud and savvy in the Encounter, to being kind of annoying and self absorbed in the Re-Encounter, especially when it comes to her husband. "...it was only in her own way and by some plan of hers for him that she truly desired him to be so. [happy]" (page 61). It was at this point that I started to think that she was self absorbed and controlling in the relationship.