Summary Of Passing By Nella Larsen

Identity and Duality in Nella Larsen’s Passing
The Harlem Renaissance was a 1920’s cultural movement that allowed African Americans growth after years of discrimination hindered them culturally. There are many well renowned writers associated with the movement, however although unrecognized Nella Larsen was a very relevant and important contribution with her novels Passing and Quicksand. Her novel Passing in particular, focuses on the lives of Irene and Brian Redfield and John Bellow and how their lives are affected by Clare-Kendra Below. The title “Passing,” is significant itself because it is according to Ohio State Law Journal, “a deception that enables a person to adopt certain roles or identities from which he would be barred by prevailing

social standards in the absence of his misleading conduct. Duality or Double Consciousness, coined by W. E. B. Dubois, is the psychological theory that African Americans have acquired and require two different identities as an African American and as an American in order to endure and press forward to succeed. In his famous book The Souls of Black People, Dubois described it as, “twoness - An American, a negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, two warring ideals in one dark body.” Nella Larsen’s novel Passing exemplifies the themes of duality and identity as the characters struggle with their identity as African Americans, victims of racism, and as women.
Aside from the time period, Passing is relevant to the personal pain of the author and her life as a mulatto woman.

Nella Larsen was born in 1891, the daughter of a Danish woman and a West Indian man; but after her father passed and her mom married a white man, she was looked down upon as the the only colored person in her white family. Consequently her characters were surrounded by convicted views of identity, race, and societal pressures, but their issues are not so direct. In this novel, her main characters are Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry, two beautiful, wealthy black women who are able to “pass.” Clare is unfulfilled by her loveless marriage and boring life as a housewife rather than her heritage and therefore reaches out to her friend for a good time and something to do. Meanwhile Irene is unhappy with her marriage and is basically co-parenting because she is inhibiting her husband from following her dreams of financial and social stability in

Brazil.
By developing unstable characters, Larsen conveys how easy it is to lose one’s sense of self. Clare Kendry, who breaks the tragic mulatto stereotype, never has the chance to align to a particular race because of her untimely death, while Irene Redfield, who becomes obsessed with and jealous of Clare, single-handedly destroys her own sense of self by committing psychological suicide. Nella Larsen's own struggle identifying with other people leads to a modernist expression of delusion, uncertainty and ambiguity in her novellas. While discussing racial passing, the novella also analyzes gender passing, or a person’s ability to establish and follow society’s expectations of a certain gender through physical and behavioral cues. Irene’s relationship with Clare is based on desire, jealousy, and obsession, and she develops an infatuation for her that combats societal expectations. In addition, Larsen attempts to pass not only her characters, but herself as a novelist and her novel as a fiction. By exposing the convention of the mulatto as unsympathetic instead of tragic, Larsen ironically captures her readers. She tries to “pass” her novel by writing about something she thinks they will want to read, but destroys their expectations by shattering the mulatto stereotype and concentrating more on gender passing, eventually exposing presupposed identity for what it is: malleable, even nonexistent. Both Clare and Irene fail in trying to pinpoint their identities, and by offering nothing but ambiguity in the point of view and the final scene of the novella, Larsen presents identity itself as ambiguous, transient, and never fully identifiable.
Her problems of duality are most clearly depicted in Passing, and by creating characters who are detached from the black community, she mirrors herself. In Passing, Clare Kendry takes a risk, living without the comforts of her race and rebelling against the white-dominated, male-dominated society. But Larsen shows that passing is a ridiculous means of salvation for woman, and this is most clear when Clare either falls or is pushed from the window, falling to her death, just as Larsen is pushed into obscurity. It was even difficult for biographers to find her obituary. The exact specifics behind both Clare’s and Irene’s death are uncertain, but the end of the novel is abundant “with images of numbness, suffocation, blunted perceptions, loss of consciousness and invisibility” (Washington 355). Larsen, living detached from any racial or cultural identity just like her characters, predicts her own obscurity. In the ending of Passing, one can see that she laments the society that allows for such a complete destruction of the outsider.
Despite Irene Redfield’s fascination with Clare Kendry’s character, Clare’s perceived threat to Irene’s marital and social security causes the deterioration of their relationship. Clare’s “torturing loveliness” made Irene to feel “dowdy and commonplace,” despite her own physical beauty and intelligence (111, 42 Larsen). These feelings of inferiority and her own paranoid ideas of Brian’s dubious personal aspirations lead Irene to believe Brian and Clare are conducting an adulterous affair. Though Brian and Irene are married with two children, both treated the relationship as a parenting team rather than a marriage; they slept in separate bedrooms, complacent in their roles but lacking “love or some wild ecstasy” (107 Larsen). Above all, Irene wished to keep “undisturbed the routine of her pleasant life” (101 Larsen). This shield extends to her children, as Irene does not allow the reality of racism to “encroach upon the security of home and family,” denying such discussions in front of her young, but curious, children (Wall 108). Wanting only for her children and herself to find happiness, Irene carries on her assumed role as a mother and wife of Brian. Irene’s sanity and emotional well-being are dependent upon her, "ability to keep up appearances” (Wall 107).
In the end of the novella, Clare Kendry, when her racist husband John Bellew confronts her about being black, backs into a window.

Irene, confused by conflicting instincts to protect one of her race and to be “rid forever of Clare” (Larsen 69), holds on to her arm. The ending’s ambiguity begins here. Although Irene grips her arm, Clare suddenly falls to her death, and Irene refuses to remember the moment with any sort of clarity. “One moment Clare had been there, a vital glowing thing, like a flame of red and gold. The next she was gone” (Larsen 79). Irene’s paranoia resurfaces for a moment, as she wonders if people will think she pushed Clare, but she finally succumbs to body-wracking sobs, completely overtaken by her simultaneous love and hatred for Clare, who impressed and aroused her like no one else. Irene, in refusing to remember the facts clearly, commits psychological suicide. Although many would argue that she did commit verifiable homicide, and is responsible for the death of Clare Kendry, readers should in fact embrace the ambiguity in this ending. Obviously, Larsen intends for no right or wrong answer, for one should not find the answer to all their questions in this novella. Its ambiguity directly reflects the ambiguity of Larsen’s own life, and her thoughts that identifying identity is impossible. Clare, a creature so revered and yet so unreal, embodies something that cannot exist in the story frame: certainty. For by the end of the novel, Clare knows who she

is and to where she would like to return, and once she makes that decision, she is doomed. Larsen portrays the impossibility of identifying identity, but also allows for multiple perspectives like did Clare commit suicide, or did Irene commit homicide? She uses her characters to represent more than cardboard cut-out representations of women of color. By showing the hopelessness of identifying identity as a fixed landscape (for when Clare decides who she is, she dies, and Irene lives only in murky psychological memories), emphasizing subjectivity in Irene’s narrative, and underscoring fragmentation in the plot, Nella Larsen’s Passing works as a modernist fiction.
Larsen's own particular vague, dark life is reflected in Passing through her characters, her plot gadgets, and the fiction medium itself. Her own particular perplexity about racial or sex passing, her goal as an an author, and her attempt to pass her fiction from unclear to comprehensive specifically influences the plot and characters in Passing. At last, as both characters veer towards devastation, Larsen deconstructs the general concept of personality. Passing, consequently, is a commentary on sexual and racial identity