The one thing most people know about Nella Larsen’s Passing is that it explores a peculiar kind of deception — being born into one marginalized racial category and slipping into another, for privilege, security, or power.
For Irene Redfield, a proper Black doctor’s wife and a doyenne of Harlem society, passing is a petty indulgence, something she dabbles in on occasion, for “the sake of convenience.” Her racial dexterity gains her “restaurants, theater tickets, and things like that.” But to beautiful, orphaned Clare Kendry, passing is a means of survival.
Clare lives as white in a gilded cage, a fashionable beauty with a touch of what the book calls “the tar-brush,” married to a racist boor who would definitely not approve of her past identity or her connections.
In contrast, Irene lives carefully within walls of her own construction.
The contrast, parallels, and interplay between these two women is part of what makes Passing so beautifully constructed.
The words came to Irene as she sat there on the Drayton roof, facing Clare Kendry.
Some of the mood-making is subtle; Irene’s mindset gets increasingly tense as her liaison with Clare deepens and she begins to feel that the glamorous interloper is threatening the life she’s built.
Published in 1929, during the Harlem Renaissance — a movement its author was deeply entrenched in — Passing caused more of a ripple than a sensation at its release, with critical acclaim far outstripping its sales.
In 19th and early 20th century literature, the “tragic mulatto” was a stock figure, a person of mixed background whose African heritage and longing for a white existence causes great isolation and suffering.