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 …showed first 75 words of 2085 total…

…showed last 75 words of 2085 total…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.