Passing

by Nella Larsen

Who is allowed to make mistakes? Who is allowed to transgress? The answers to those questions, especially when they are posed in fiction, point to whom we understand to be human.

Fiction can explicitly map the possibility of redemption for everyone, regardless of race or gender, while reminding us of the material limitations of access to that redemption. That access is often based on characters’ identity. History, in contrast, reminds us that entire state apparatuses are set up to ensure that some people have access to the possibility of redemption after transgression, and others, decidedly, do not.

I think the reason passing took on a different meaning on the page than it did in lived experience is because passing challenged the biological essentialism at the core of newly developing race theory of the late nineteenth century. For whites actively working to segregate public and private life throughout the United States, passing was an active threat. The moral basis of white support for segregation and racial terrorism was the “fact” that humans belonged to separate races, with inherent, immutable traits that directly aligned with moral aptitude and capabilities. So what was a segregated society to make of an individual who could slip between? And not only slip between, but move back and forth?

I think this is also why gender nonconformity, queerness, transness similarly see such an obsession. What is a structure such as patriarchy dependent on gender essentialism to do with people who slip its bounds?

The novel as a form also had a long history as a space for reinforcing and shaping middle-class desires and self-understanding. Novels written under those terms could not hold within their imagination the life of a black person who passed without tragic consequence. Therefore, passing, in the literary tradition, did not allow for an exchange. Despite personal narratives to the contrary, in the collective imagination of many poets and novelists, the color line became insurmountable, a great divide that allowed for no border crossings. You were either on one side or on the other, and to be discovered between meant you were to be damned. The discrepancy between passing in the artist’s imagination and passing in history belies one of America’s most cherished myths about art—that somehow, it will get closer to the truth than recorded facts ever will. The discussion of passing in literature points out that sometimes the limits of the artist’s imagination overlooks whole swaths of experience.

Later, Irene notes that Clare brings with her the “menace of impermanence.” What a telling phrase. It gets to the heart of why passing as an act fascinates. It is the instability, the mutability, that terrifies and disturbs.

When I read their relationship, I think of the Toni Morrison quote on female friendship—that there is always the friend who transgresses, and the friend who watches her transgression. But the genius of this book is that the question becomes, who is transgressing? Clare, or Irene? Or both women? Clare may be the physical embodiment of the trap of believing the lies a white supremacist society feeds black women. But Irene’s transgressions are more intimate. Her sexual jealousy of Clare that borders on the erotic and her deep rage at both of their circumstances skirt “acceptable” emotions from black women in literature. Irene may present as an elegant, society matron. But inside she is that figure that is despised and ridiculed in American culture—the angry black woman.

Indeed, after Irene reads Clare’s poignant letter, Irene ignores it. And this is because of her own “humiliation, resentment, and rage.” In this decision, Irene subverts our expectations of female friendship, especially friendship between black women. But sisterhood is too hollow, too saccharine a phrase to describe whatever is passing between Clare and Irene.

This, she reflected, was of a piece with all that she knew of Clare Kendry. Stepping always on the edge of danger. Always aware, but not drawing back or turning aside. Certainly not because of any alarms or feeling of outrage on the part of others.

There had been, even in those days, nothing sacrificial in Clare Kendry’s idea of life, no allegiance beyond her own immediate desire. She was selfish, and cold, and hard. And yet she had, too, a strange capacity of transforming warmth and passion, verging sometimes almost on theatrical heroics.

Catlike. Certainly that was the word which best described Clare Kendry, if any single word could describe her. Sometimes she was hard and apparently without feeling at all; sometimes she was affectionate and rashly impulsive. And there was about her an amazing soft malice, hidden well away until provoked. Then she was capable of scratching, and very effectively too. Or, driven to anger, she would fight with a ferocity and impetuousness that disregarded or forgot any danger; superior strength, numbers, or other unfavorable circumstances.

You can’t know how in this pale life of mine I am all the time seeing the bright pictures of that other that I once thought I was glad to be free of….It’s like an ache, a pain that never ceases….”

Besides, Clare always had a—a—having way with her.” Precisely that! The words came to Irene as she sat there on the Drayton roof, facing Clare Kendry. “A having way.” Well, Irene acknowledged, judging from her appearance and manner, Clare seemed certainly to have succeeded in having a few of the things that she wanted.

Irene wondered if it was tears that made Clare’s eyes so luminous.

The truth was, she was curious. There were things that she wanted to ask Clare Kendry. She wished to find out about this hazardous business of “passing,” this breaking away from all that was familiar and friendly to take one’s chance in another environment, not entirely strange, perhaps, but certainly not entirely friendly. What, for example, one did about background, how one accounted for oneself. And how one felt when one came into contact with other Negroes. But she couldn’t. She was unable to think of a single question that in its context or its phrasing was not too frankly curious, if not actually impertinent. As if aware of her desire and her hesitation, Clare remarked, thoughtfully: “You know, ’Rene, I’ve often wondered why more coloured girls, girls like you and Margaret Hammer and Esther Dawson and—oh, lots of others—never ‘passed’ over. It’s such a frightfully easy thing to do. If one’s the type, all that’s needed is a little nerve.”

“Have you ever stopped to think, Clare,” Irene demanded, “how much unhappiness and downright cruelty are laid to the loving-kindness of the Lord? And always by His most ardent followers, it seems.”

“Of course,” she declared, “that’s what everybody wants, just a little more money, even the people who have it. And I must say I don’t blame them. Money’s awfully nice to have. In fact, all things considered, I think, ’Rene, that it’s even worth the price.” Irene could only shrug her shoulders. Her reason partly agreed, her instinct wholly rebelled.

About her clung that dim suggestion of polite insolence with which a few women are born and which some acquire with the coming of riches or importance. Clare, it gave Irene a little prick of satisfaction to recall, hadn’t got that by passing herself off as white. She herself had always had it.

Gertrude, Irene thought, looked as if her husband might be a butcher. There was left of her youthful prettiness, which had been so much admired in their high-school days, no trace. She had grown broad, fat almost, and though there were no lines on her large white face, its very smoothness was somehow prematurely ageing. Her black hair was clipt, and by some unfortunate means all the live curliness had gone from it. Her over-trimmed Georgette crêpe dress was too short and showed an appalling amount of leg, stout legs in sleazy stockings of a vivid rose-beige shade. Her plump hands were newly and not too competently manicured—for the occasion, probably. And she wasn’t smoking.

I nearly died of terror the whole nine months before Margery was born for fear that she might be dark.1 Thank goodness, she turned out all right. But I’ll never risk it again. Never! The strain is simply too—too hellish.”

Irene, whose head had gone up with a quick little jerk, now said in a voice of whose even tones she was proud: “One of my boys is dark.” Gertrude jumped as if she had been shot at. Her eyes goggled. Her mouth flew open. She tried to speak, but could not immediately get the words out. Finally she managed to stammer: “Oh! And your husband, is he—is he—er—dark, too?”

“It certainly sounds funny enough. Still, it’s his own business. If he gets along better by turning—” At that, Irene, who was still hugging her unhappy don’t-care feeling of rightness, broke in, saying bitingly: “It evidently doesn’t occur to either you or Gertrude that he might possibly be sincere in changing his religion. Surely everyone doesn’t do everything for gain.”

“Hello, Nig,” was his greeting to Clare. Gertrude, who had started slightly, settled back and looked covertly towards Irene, who had caught her lip between her teeth and sat gazing at husband and wife. It was hard to believe that even Clare Kendry would permit this ridiculing of her race by an outsider, though he chanced to be her husband. So he knew, then, that Clare was a Negro? From her talk the other day Irene had understood that he didn’t. But how rude, how positively insulting, for him to address her in that way in the presence of guests! In Clare’s eyes, as she presented her husband, was a queer gleam, a jeer, it might be. Irene couldn’t define it. The mechanical professions that attend an introduction over, she inquired: “Did you hear what Jack called me?” “Yes,” Gertrude answered, laughing with a dutiful eagerness. Irene didn’t speak. Her gaze remained level on Clare’s smiling face. The black eyes fluttered down. “Tell them, dear, why you call me that.” The man chuckled, crinkling up his eyes, not, Irene was compelled to acknowledge, unpleasantly. He explained: “Well, you see, it’s like this. When we were first married, she was as white as—as—well as white as a lily. But I declare she’s gettin’ darker and darker. I tell her if she don’t look out, she’ll wake up one of these days and find she’s turned into a nigger.” He roared with laughter. Clare’s ringing bell-like laugh joined his.

“My goodness, Jack! What difference would it make if, after all these years, you were to find out that I was one or two per cent coloured?” Bellew put out his hand in a repudiating fling, definite and final. “Oh, no, Nig,” he declared, “nothing like that with me. I know you’re no nigger, so it’s all right. You can get as black as you please as far as I’m concerned, since I know you’re no nigger. I draw the line at that. No niggers in my family. Never have been and never will be.” Irene’s lips trembled almost uncontrollably, but she made a desperate effort to fight back her disastrous desire to laugh again, and succeeded.

“So you dislike Negroes, Mr. Bellew?” But her amusement was at her thought, rather than her words. John Bellew gave a short denying laugh. “You got me wrong there, Mrs. Redfield. Nothing like that at all. I don’t dislike them, I hate them. And so does Nig, for all she’s trying to turn into one. She wouldn’t have a nigger maid around her for love nor money. Not that I’d want her to. They give me the creeps. The black scrimy devils.”

This wasn’t funny. Had Bellew, Irene inquired, ever known any Negroes? The defensive tone of her voice brought another start from the uncomfortable Gertrude, and, for all her appearance of serenity, a quick apprehensive look from Clare. Bellew answered: “Thank the Lord, no! And never expect to! But I know people who’ve known them, better than they know their black selves. And I read in the papers about them. Always robbing and killing people. And,” he added darkly, “worse.”

It was, Irene, thought, unbelievable and astonishing that four people could sit so unruffled, so ostensibly friendly, while they were in reality seething with anger, mortification, shame. But no, on second thought she was forced to amend her opinion. John Bellew, most certainly, was as undisturbed within as without. So, perhaps, was Gertrude Martin. At least she hadn’t the mortification and shame that Clare Kendry must be feeling, or, in such full measure, the rage and rebellion that she, Irene, was repressing.

Her understanding was rapidly increasing, as was her pity and her contempt. Clare was so daring, so lovely, and so “having.”

“And imagine her not telling us about him feeling that way! Anything might have happened. We might have said something.” That, Irene pointed out, was exactly like Clare Kendry. Taking a chance, and not at all considering anyone else’s feelings.

“Maybe she thought we’d think it a good joke. And I guess you did. The way you laughed. My land! I was scared to death he might catch on.” “Well, it was rather a joke,” Irene told her, “on him and us and maybe on her.” “All the same, it’s an awful chance. I’d hate to be her.” “She seems satisfied enough. She’s got what she wanted, and the other day she told me it was worth it.”

What right, she kept demanding of herself, had Clare Kendry to expose her, or even Gertrude Martin, to such humiliation, such downright insult?

And all the while, on the rushing ride out to her father’s house, Irene Redfield was trying to understand the look on Clare’s face as she had said good-bye. Partly mocking, it had seemed, and partly menacing. And something else for which she could find no name.4 For an instant a recrudescence of that sensation of fear which she had had while looking into Clare’s eyes that afternoon touched her. A slight shiver ran over her.

What a state she had allowed that horrible Bellew to get her into!

I like how this line is ambiguous about which Bellew is so horrible.

She couldn’t, however, come to any conclusion about its meaning, try as she might. It was unfathomable, utterly beyond any experience or comprehension of hers.

It may be, ’Rene dear, it may just be, that, after all, your way may be the wiser and infinitely happier one. I’m not sure just now. At least not so sure as I have been.

If, at the time of choosing, Clare hadn’t precisely reckoned the cost, she had, nevertheless, no right to expect others to help make up the reckoning.

The trouble with Clare was, not only that she wanted to have her cake and eat it too, but that she wanted to nibble at the cakes of other folk as well.

And mingled with her disbelief and resentment was another feeling, a question. Why hadn’t she spoken that day? Why, in the face of Bellew’s ignorant hate and aversion, had she concealed her own origin? Why had she allowed him to make his assertions and express his misconceptions undisputed? Why, simply because of Clare Kendry, who had exposed her to such torment, had she failed to take up the defence of the race to which she belonged?

She had to Clare Kendry a duty. She was bound to her by those very ties of race, which, for all her repudiation of them, Clare had been unable to completely sever.

Irene doubted the genuineness of it, seeing herself only as a means to an end where Clare was concerned. Nor could it be said that she had even the slight artistic or sociological interest in the race that some members of other races displayed. She hadn’t. No, Clare Kendry cared nothing for the race. She only belonged to it.

Brian, she was thinking, was extremely good-looking. Not, of course, pretty or effeminate; the slight irregularity of his nose saved him from the prettiness, and the rather marked heaviness of his chin saved him from the effeminacy. But he was, in a pleasant masculine way, rather handsome. And yet, wouldn’t he, perhaps, have been merely ordinarily good-looking but for the richness, the beauty of his skin, which was of an exquisitely fine texture and deep copper colour.

“Brian, darling, I’m really not such an idiot that I don’t realize that if a man calls me a nigger, it’s his fault the first time, but mine if he has the opportunity to do it again.”

Besides,” he corrected, “the man, her husband, didn’t call you a nigger. There’s a difference, you know.” “No, certainly he didn’t. Not actually. He couldn’t, not very well, since he didn’t know. But he would have. It amounts to the same thing. And I’m sure it was just as unpleasant.”

“But why?” Irene wanted to know. “Why?” “If I knew that, I’d know what race is.” “But wouldn’t you think that having got the thing, or things, they were after, and at such risk, they’d be satisfied? Or afraid?” “Yes,” Brian agreed, “you certainly would think so. But, the fact remains, they aren’t. Not satisfied, I mean. I think they’re scared enough most of the time, when they give way to the urge and slip back. Not scared enough to stop them, though. Why, the good God only knows.”

She said: “It’s funny about ‘passing.’ We disapprove of it and at the same time condone it. It excites our contempt and yet we rather admire it. We shy away from it with an odd kind of revulsion, but we protect it.”

his profession and his country. A feeling of uneasiness stole upon her at the inconceivable suspicion that she might have been wrong in her estimate of her husband’s character. But she squirmed away from it. Impossible! She couldn’t have been wrong. Everything proved that she had been right. More than right, if such a thing could be. And all, she assured herself, because she understood him so well, because she had, actually, a special talent for understanding him. It was, as she saw it, the one thing that had been the basis of the success which she had made of a marriage that had threatened to fail. She knew him as well as he knew himself, or better.

“Well, what of it? If sex isn’t a joke, what is it? And what is a joke?”

The sooner and the more he learns about sex, the better for him. And most certainly if he learns that it’s a grand joke, the greatest in the world. It’ll keep him from lots of disappointments later on.” Irene didn’t answer.

It was only that she wanted him to be happy, resenting, however, his inability to be so with things as they were, and never acknowledging that though she did want him to be happy, it was only in her own way and by some plan of hers for him that she truly desired him to be so.

She had not carried out her first intention of writing at once because on going back to the letter for Clare’s address, she had come upon something which, in the rigour of her determination to maintain unbroken between them the wall that Clare herself had raised, she had forgotten, or not fully noted. It was the fact that Clare had requested her to direct her answer to the post office’s general delivery.

It wasn’t so much Clare’s carefulness and her desire for secrecy in their relations—Irene understood the need for that—as that Clare should have doubted her discretion, implied that she might not be cautious in the wording of her reply and the choice of a posting-box. Having always had complete confidence in her own good judgment and tact, Irene couldn’t bear to have anyone seem to question them. Certainly not Clare Kendry.