Nella Larsen's Passing

In Nella Larsen’s Passing, Clare Kendry passes variously as black or white, but never represents herself as the biracial individual she is. Despite being predominantly white, Clare is considered black by white society because her grandmother was black. She is in fact distinctly biracial, yet society rejects the possibility simultaneous inclusion in two racial groups, and Clare is forced to pass as white and conceal a part of her identity in order to live in a society in which identity is perceived as singular and fixed. Contradictory imagery, Clare’s facial expressions, and the language of otherness and mystery which characterize(s?) her convey the subversive nature of her identity as well as the fluidity of identity in general.
The contradictory imagery throughout Passing is suggestive of the seemingly contradictory quality of Clare’s identity. The apparent duality of her racial identity is reflected in the description of the hot Chicago day of Irene’s and Clare’s encounter: “Sharp particles of dust rose from the burning sidewalks,

stinging the seared or dripping skins of wilting pedestrians” (Larsen 56).

The precise meaning of this sentence is ambiguous. It might alternately indicate that each pedestrian is either seared or dripping, but never both, “seared” and “dripping” are qualities which are not readily differentiated from each other, and that these states are mutually exclusive, that is, one cannot be both seared and dripping. All three readings, however, reflect the imposed binary aspect of racial identity, which Josh Toth, in his essay “Deauthenticating Community: The Passing Intrusion of Clare Kendry in Nella Larsen’s Passing,” calls “society’s compulsion to organize itself according to absolute and fixed categories, or communities, of being” (56). Just as the description of people’s skin in the heat illustrates a

setting in which one cannot be both seared and dripping, Clare must make her way in a world that does not allow her to live with her true identity. She cannot be black and white, as she is, but is compelled to either assimilate to black society because her grandmother’s blood “taints” her whiteness, or suppress what is part of herself, her black ancestry, and live among white society. She must deny some aspect of herself, whether it be the white if she seeks inclusion in black society, or the black, which she does when she chooses to pass for white. In a society with such strict racial delineations, there is no place biracial people like Clare to retain their complete identities. One is only ever seared or dripping; black or white. Dualities are impossible.
The day is further described as “brilliant...hot, with a brutal staring sun pouring down rays that were life molten rain” (Larsen 8). In addition to the contradictory comparison of sun rays to rain, the simile describes rain in terms applied to metallic or other solid matter which has been liquefied, not to something that is already in a liquid state. Thus the sun’s rays are represented as possessing qualities of water and metal, liquid and solid, and hot and cold. The discrepancy present in this description recalls the apparent discrepancy of Clare’s racial identity, but that the sun’s rays hold such apparently incongruous properties reflects the fact that despite society’s efforts to separate black from white and deny the existence of biraciality as distinctly different from its definition of black and white, the fact of such biracial identity is nonetheless present and undeniable in Clare Kendry. According to Toth, “Clare passes...because these categories of being are insufficient, impractical, illusory; they simply allow us to deny the impossibility of fixed identities, the impossibility that Clare’s passing state ultimately signals” (56). The formation of identity along strict racial lines is “insufficient, impractical, [and] illusory” for Clare because such a definition of race is simply irreconcilable with her racial truth. Though Clare’s passing as white would indicate an attempt to conform to such racial division, her “passing state,” that is, her way of passing from white society to black society and adopting a new identity according to her surroundings, serves as a literal expression of the fluid and multifaceted nature of identity. Toth differentiates Clare’s way of passing from the act of simply passing irreversibly as white: “Derived from the Latin passus (‘to step or pace’), ‘passing’ connotes transience, the sense of being between places, of being neither outside (yet both inside and outside) a particular space or grouping” (57). Through passing, Clare is able to be both black and white, though not at once, and in this way subvert the imposed binarity of racial identity, a subversion which is apparent in the contradictory manner in which that Chicago day is described.
The incongruity present in much of the imagery in Passing is used extensively in regards to Clare, particularly to characterize her facial expressions. Irene first notes the paradoxical nature of Clare’s expressions on the Chicago rooftop: “[Clare’s] was an odd sort of smile. Irene couldn’t quite define it, but she was sure that she would have classed it, coming from another woman, as being just a shade too provocative for a waiter. About this one, however, there was something that made her hesitate to name it that” (Larsen 16). Something that would have been decidedly too provocative in another person is, coming from Clare, both indefinable and possessing of some other probably contradictory quality. This discordance is further emphasized as Irene tries to recall how she knows Clare: “For about the woman was some quality, an intangible something, too vague to define, too remote to seize, but which was, to Irene Redfield, very familiar” (22). In Irene’s eyes, there is something about Clare that is inexplicably distant and vague, something which she can’t name, and yet is well known to her. Considering Clare, Irene is faced with the contradiction of knowing something almost intimately and yet not even knowing what it is. Clare’s indefinable qualities reflect both the indefinability of her identity in terms of societal expectations of racial identity, as well as belying the insufficiency of society’s strict categorization of identity in that it renders the truth, in this case the truth of Clare’s identity, both racial and in this instance her personal identity (Irene does not at first know who she is), unrecognizable.
In another instance, Irene is once again puzzled by Clare, this time as to the meaning of her look: “All indication of tears had gone from her eyes and voice, and Irene Redfield, searching her face, had an offended feeling that behind what was now only an ivory mask lurked a scornful amusement” (36). Clare’s face is constantly shifting between opposing expressions. In one moment she appears hurt and nearly cries, and in the next her face is blank, yet possibly concealing scorn for her audience. While Clare does present an incredibly dualistic nature which is reflective of the duality of her racial identity, much of the inconsistencies in her expressions are present only in Irene’s interpretation of them. While Irene’s readings of Clare could easily be accurate, they are always presented as just that, her interpretation or “feeling,” and not as objective truths. Toth claims that “racially and sexually ambiguous characters like Clare frustrate essentialist notions of identity” (56), and this frustration is met with an inability to comprehend the truth of complex identity when it is presented in Clare as Irene denies its existence. Because society does not allow for “simultaneous” community associations, Clare’s identity is not seen as complex, but is rather interpreted as being comprised of opposing qualities that apparently should not be able to coexist.