Nella Larsen’s Passing

Passing, a novel by Nella Larsen is divided into three sections like a play, ending with tragedy. The novel is separated into these sections to discuss the transition in life for the two main characters Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield. The novel takes place in 1920’s Harlem and captures society’s effects on intersectionality.  Class is used to both positively and negatively affect the characters. Gender is significant because both women have different modes of how they perform their roles as women, whether it is motherhood or their responsibility of wives. The question we will attempt to answer is how does the gender roles affect both women positively and negatively (differently).  How do the four themes race, sexuality, gender and class force characters such as Irene and Clare to conform to a way of living. What are the effects?

Race

Did that woman, could that woman, somehow know that here before her very eyes on the roof of the Drayton sat a Negro?

Absurd! Impossible! White people were so stupid about such things for all that they usually asserted that they were able to tell; and by the most ridiculous means, finger-nails, palms of hands, shapes of ears, teeth, and other equally silly rot. They always took her for an Italian, a Spaniard, a Mexican, or a gipsy. Never, when she was alone, had they even remotely seemed to suspect that she was a Negro. No, the woman sitting there staring at her couldn’t possibly know.

Nevertheless, Irene felt, in turn, anger, scorn, and fear slide over her. It wasn’t that she was ashamed of being a Negro, or even of having it declared. It was the idea of being ejected from any place, even in the polite and tactful way in which the Drayton would probably do it, that disturbed her.

But she looked, boldly this time, back into the eyes still frankly intent upon her. They did not seem to her hostile or resentful. Rather, Irene had the feeling that they were ready to smile if she would. Nonsense, of course. The feeling passed, and she turned away with the firm intention of keeping her gaze on the lake, the roofs of the buildings across the way, the sky, anywhere but on that annoying woman. Almost immediately, however, her eyes were back again. In the midst of her fog of uneasiness she had been seized by a desire to outstare the rude observer. Suppose the woman did know or suspect her race. She couldn’t prove it.

*****************

 

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.”

“Instinct of the race to survive and expand.”

“Rot! Everything can’t be explained by some general biological phrase.”

“Absolutely everything can. Look at the so-called whites, who’ve left bastards all over the known earth. Same thing in them. Instinct of the race to survive and expand.”

With that Irene didn’t at all agree, but many arguments in the past had taught her the futility of attempting to combat Brian on ground where he was more nearly at home than she. Ignoring his unqualified assertion, she slid away from the subject entirely.

“I wonder,” she asked, “if you’ll have time to run me down to the printing-office. It’s on a Hundred and Sixteenth Street. I’ve got to see about some handbills and some more tickets for the dance.”

“Yes, of course. How’s it going? Everything all set?”

“Ye-es. I guess so. The boxes are all sold and nearly all the first batch of tickets. And we expect to take in almost as much again at the door. Then, there’s all that cake to sell. It’s a terrible lot of work, though.”

“I’ll bet it is. Uplifting the brother’s no easy job. I’m as busy as a cat with fleas, myself.” And over his face there came a shadow. “Lord! how I hate sick people, and their stupid, meddling families, and smelly, dirty rooms, and climbing filthy steps In dark hallways.”

*********************

 

“For Gertrude too had married a white man, though it couldnt be truthfully said that she was “passing”. Her husband – what was his name ?- had been in school with her and had been quite well aware, as had his family and most of his friends, that she was a Negro. It hadn’t, Irene knew seemed to matter to him then. Did it now, she wondered . Had Fred – Fred Martin, that was it- had he ever regretted his marriage because of Gertrude’s race ? Had Gertrude? ”

*****************

The tea-things had been placed on a low table at Clare’s side. She gave them her attention now, pouring the rich amber fluid from the tall glass pitcher Into stately slim glasses, which she handed to her guests, and then offered them lemon or cream and tiny sandwiches or cakes.]

****************

At that reply Clare turned on Irene her seductive caressing smile and remarked a little scoffingly: “I do think that coloured people — we — are too silly about some things. After all, the thing’s not Important to Irene or hundreds of others. Not awfully, even to you, Gertrude. It’s only deserters like me who have to be afraid of freaks of the nature. As my inestimable dad used to say, ‘Everything must be paid for.’ Now, please one of you tell me what ever happened to Claude Jones. You know, the tall, lanky specimen who used to wear that comical little moustache that the girls used to laugh at so. Like a thin streak of soot. The moustache, I mean.”

At that Gertrude shrieked with laughter.’Claude Jones!” and launched into the story of how he was no longer a Negro or a Christian but had become a Jew.

“A Jew!” Clare exclaimed.

“Yes, a Jew. A black Jew, he calls himself. He won’t eat ham and goes to the synagogue on Saturday. He’s got a beard now as well as a moustache. You’d die laughing if you saw him. He’s really too funny for words. Fred says he’s crazy and I guess he Is. Oh, he’s a scream all right, a regular scream!” And she shrieked again.

**************

“I can’t see It. I’m going to write Clare. Today, If I can find a minute. It’s a thing we might as well settle definitely, and immediately. Curious, isn’t it, that knowing, as she does, his unqualified attitude, she still—”

Brian interrupted: “It’s always that way. Never known it to fail. Remember Albert Hammond, how he used to be for ever haunting Seventh Avenue, and Lenox Avenue, and the dancing-places, until some ‘shine’ took a shot at him for casting an eye towards his ‘sheba?’ They always come back. I’ve seen it happen time and time again.”

”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.”

Sexuality

 

“Irene hung up the reciever with an emphatic bang, her thoughts immediately filled with self-reproach. She’d done it again. Allowed Clare Kendry to persuade her into promising to do something for which she had neither time nor any special desire. What was it about Clare’s voice that was so appealing, so very seductive? Clare met her in the hall with a kiss. ”

*********************************************************************************************************************

“But she had had something more than a vague suspicion of its nature. For there had been rumors. Rumors that were, to the girls of eighteen and nineteen years, interesting and exciting. There was the one about Clare Kendry’s having been seen at the dinner hour in a fashionable hotel in company with another woman and two men, all of them white. And dressed! And there was another which told her driving in Lincoln Park with a man, unmistakably white, and evidently rich. Packard limousine, chauffeur in livery, and all that. There had been others whose context Irene could no longer recollect. but all pointing to the same glorious direction.”

*********************************************************************************************************************

“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. Just as she’d always had that pale gold hair, which, unsheared still, was drawn loosely back from a broad brow, partly hidden by the small close hat. Her lips, painted a brilliant geranium red, were sweet and sensitive and a little obstinate. A tempting mouth. The face across the forehead and cheeks was a trifle too wide, but the ivory skin had a peculiar soft luster. And the eyes were magnificent! Dark, sometimes absolutely black, always luminous, and set in long, black lashes. Arresting eyes, slow and mesmeric, and with, for all their warmth, something withdrawn and secret about them.”

**********************************************************************************************************************

“Clare went on: ‘Every day I went to that nasty little post office place. I’m sure they were all beginning to think that I’d been carrying on an illicit love affair and that the man had thrown me over. Every morning the same answer: ‘nothing for you.’ I got into an awful fright, thinking that something might have happened to your letter, or to mine. And half the nights I would lie awake looking out at the watery stars-hopeless things, the stars-worrying and wondering. But at least it soaked in, that you hadn’t written and didn’t intend to. And then- well, as soon as ever I’d seen jack off for Florida, I came straight here. And now, ‘Rene, please tell me quite frankly why you didn’t answer my letter.”

***********************************************************************************************************************

“Yes, Irene softly agreed. For a moment she was unable to say more, so accurately had Clare put into words that which, not so definitely defined, was so often in her own heart of late. At the same time she was conscious that here, to her hand, was a reason which could not be lightly brushed aside. ‘Yes,’ she repeated, “and the most responsible, Clare. We mothers are all responsible for the security and happi- ness of our children. Think what it would mean to your Margery if Mr. Bellew should find out. You’d probably lose her. And even if you didn’t, nothing that concerned her would ever be the same again. He’d never forget that she had Negro blood. And if she should learn — Well, I believe that after twelve it is too late to learn a thing like that. She’d never forgive you. You may be used to risks, but this is one you mustn’t take, Clare. It’s a selfish whim, an unnecessary and –”

 

Class – Re-encounter

Instead, it was Irene who was put out. Feeling her color heighten under the continued inspection, she slid her eyes down. What, she wondered, could be the reason for such persistent attention? Had she, in her haste in the taxi, put her on backwards? Guardedly she felt at it. No. Perhaps the was a streak of powder somewhere on her face. She made a quick pass over it with her handkerchief. Something wrong with her dress? She shot a glance over it. Perfectly all right. What was it?

**************************

For a moment she stood fanning herself and dabbing at her moist face with an inadequate scrap of handkerchief. Suddenly she was aware that the whole street had a wobbly look and realized that she was about to faint. With a quick perception of the need for immediate directly in front of her. The perspiring driver jumped out and guided her to his car. He helped, almost lifted her in. She sank down on the hot leather seat.

For a minute her thoughts were nebulous. They cleared.

“I guess,” she told her Samaritan, “it’s tea I need. On a roof somewhere.”

“The Drayton, ma’am?” he suggested. “They do say as how it’s always a breeze up there.”

“Thank you. I think the Drayton’ll do nicely,” she told him.

**************************

The telephone. For hours it had rung like something possessed. Since nine o’ clock she had been hearing its insistent jangle. Awhile she was resolute, saying firmly each time: “Not in, Liza, take the message,” And each time the servant returned with the information: “It’s the same lady, ma’am; she’ll call again.”

But at noon, her nerves frayed and her conscience smiting her at the reproachful look on Liza’s ebony face as she withdrew for another denial, Irene weakened.

**************************

He roared with laughter. Clare’s ringing bell-like laugh joined his. Gertrude, after another uneasy shift in her seat, added her shrill one. Irene, who had been sitting with lips tightly compressed, cried out: “That’s good!” and gave way to gales of laughter. She laughed and laughed and laughed. Tears ran down her cheek. Her sides ached. Her throat hurt. She laughed on and on and on, long after the others had subsided. Until, catching sight of Clare’s face, the need for a more quiet enjoyment of this priceless joke, and for caution, struck her. At once she stopped.

Clare handed her husband his tea and laid her hand on his arm with affectionate little gesture. Speaking with confidence as well as with amusement, she said: “My goodness, Jack! What difference would it make if, after all these years, you were to find out that I was one or two percent colored?”

**************************

In Irene, rage had not retreated but was held by some dam of caution and allegiance to Clare. So, in the best casual voice she could muster, she agreed with Bellew. Though, she reminded him, it was exactly what Chicagoans were apt to say of their city. And all the while she was speaking, she was thinking how amazing it was that her voice did not tremble, that outwardly she was calm. Only her hands shook slightly. She drew them inward from their rest in her lap and pressed the tips of her fingers together still them.

“Husband’s a doctor, I understand. Manhattan, or one of the other boroughs?”

Manhattan, Irene informed him and explained the need for Brian to be within easy reach of certain hospitals and clinics.

” Interesting life, a doctor’s.”

” Ye-es. Hand, though. And, in a way, monotonous. Nerve-racking too.”

**************************

But she had had something more than a vague suspicion of its nature. For there had been rumors. Rumors that were, to girls of eighteen and nineteen years, interesting and exciting.

There was the one about Clare Kendry’s having been seen at the dinner hour in a fashionable hotel in company with another woman and two men, all of them white. And dressed! And there was another which told of her driving in Lincoln Park with a man, unmistakably white, and evidently rich. Packard limousine, chauffeur in livery, and all that. There had been others whose context Irene could no longer recollect, but all pointing in the same glamorous direction.

Gender: Motherhood

“Yes,” Irene softly agreed. For a moment she was unable to say more, so accurately had Clare put into words that which, not so definitely defined, was so often in her own heart of late. At the same time she was conscious that here, to her hand, was a reason which could not be lightly brushed aside. “Yes,” she repeated, “and the most responsible, Clare. We, mothers, are all responsible for the security and happiness of our children. Think what it would mean to your Margery if Mr. Bellew should find out. You’d probably lose her. And even if you didn’t, nothing that concerned her would ever be the same again. He’d never forget that she had Negro blood. And if she should learn—Well, I believe that after twelve it is too late to learn a thing like that. She’d never forgive you. You may be used to risks, but this is one you mustn’t take, Clare. It’s a selfish whim, an unnecessary and— 

**********************

She hung up and turned back to Clare, a little frown on her softly chiselled features. “It’s the N. W. L. dance,” she explained, “the Negro Welfare League, you know. I’m on the ticket committee, or, rather, I am the committee. Thank heaven It comes off tomorrow night and doesn’t happen again for a year. I’m about crazy, and now I’ve got to persuade somebody to change boxes with me.”

“That wasn’t,” Clare asked, “Hugh Wentworth? Not the Hugh Wentworth?”

Irene inclined her head. On her face was a tiny triumphant smile. “Yes, the Hugh Wentworth. D’you know him?”

“No. How should I? But I do know about him. And I’ve read a book or two of his.”

“Awfully good, aren’t they?”

“U-umm, I s’pose so. Sort of contemptuous, I thought. As if he more or less despised everything and everybody.”

********************

Her mental and physical languor receded. What did it mean? How could it affect her and the boys?  The boys! She had a surge of relief. It ebbed, vanished. A feeling of absolute unimportance followed. Actually, she didn’t count. She was, to him, only the mother of his sons. That was all. Alone she was nothing. Worse. An obstacle.

Rage boiled up in her.

There was a slight crash. On the floor at her feet lay the shattered cup. Dark stains dotted the bright rug. Spread. The chatter stopped. Went on. Before her, Zulena gathered up the white fragments.

As from a distance Hugh Wentworth’s clipt voice came to her, though he was, she was aware, somehow miraculously at her side. “Sorry,” he apologized. “Must have pushed you. Clumsy of me. Don’t tell me it’s priceless and irreplaceable.”

************************

“You’re absolutely wrong! If, as you’re so determined. they’ve got to live in this damned country, they’d better find out what sort of thing they’re up against as soon as possible. The earlier they learn it, the better prepared they’ll be.”

“I don’t agree. I want their childhood to be happy and as free from the knowledge of such things as it possibly can be.”

“Very laudable,” was Brian’s sarcastic answer. “Very laudable indeed, all things considered. But can it?”

“Certainly it can. If you’ll only do your part.”

“Stuff! You know as well as I do, Irene, that it can’t. What was the use of our trying to keep them from learning the word ‘nigger’ and its connotation? They found out, didn’t they? And how? Because somebody called Junior a dirty nigger.”

“Just the same you’re not to talk to them about the race problem. I won’t have it.” They glared at each other.

“I tell you, Irene. they’ve got to know these things, and it might as well be now as later.”

“They do not!” she insisted, forcing back the tears of anger that were threatening to fall.

Brian growled: “I can’t understand how anybody as intelligent as you like to think you can show evidences of such stupidity.” he looked at her in a puzzled harassed way.”

*******************

“Stupid!” she cried. “Is it stupid to want my children to be happy?” Her lips were quivering.

“At the expense of proper preparation for life and their future happiness, yes. And I’d feel I hadn’t done my duty by them if I didn’t give them some inkling of what’s before them. It’s the least I can do. I wanted to get them out of this hellish place years ago. You wouldn’t let me. I gave up the idea, because you objected. Don’t expect me to give up everything.”

Under the lash of his words, she was silent. Before any answer came to her, he had turned an gone from the room.

Sitting there alone in the forsaken dining-room, unconsciously pressing the hands lying in her lap, tightly together, she was seized by a convulsion shivering. For, to her, there had been something ominous in the scene that she had just had with her husband. Over and over in her mind his last words: “Don’t expect me to give up everything,” repeated themselves. What had they meant? What could they mean? Clare Kendry?

********************************

Ted nodded in his engaging grave ay.” I see. Maybe we can talk about it tomorrow on the way to school.”

“That’ll be fine.”

“Brian!”

“Mother,” Junior remarked, “that’s the third time you’ve said ‘Brian’ like that.”

“But not the last, Junior, never you fear,” his father told him.

After the boys had gone up to their own floor, Irene said suavely: “I do wish, Brian, that you wouldn’t talk about lynching before Ted and Junior. It was really inexcusable for you to bring up a thing like that at dinner. There’ll be time enough for them to learn about such horrible things when they’re older.”

“You’re absolutely wrong! If, as you’re so determined, they’ve got to live in this damned country, they’d better find out what sort of thing they’re up against as soon as possible. The earlier they learn it, the better prepared they’ll be.”