Rowan Dobranski's Blog

Here is an excerpt from my recent essay on Passing. We were given five prompts to choose from, and I chose to write about Irene’s desire for Clare in relation to race and sexuality. We were given two 45 minute class periods and 20 additional minutes to write our essays, and we were told to begin with a thesis and then jump right into our body paragraphs, no introduction.

Irene’s desire, especially for Clare, relates ideas of race and sexuality to authenticity, and conveys the idea that to be authentic to yourself if to allow yourself to change. 

In the beginning of the novel when Irene meets Clare at the Drayton in Chicago, Irene does not recognize her. Once Clare laughs, however, Irene immediately realizes who she is talking to and is quite surprised. She tells Clare “I never would have known you if you hadn’t laughed. You are changed, you know. And yet, in a way, you’re just the same” (19). This introduction to Clare that we get is one of the first mentions of change, specifically in relation to appearances. Clare’s life, as she is someone who is passing as white, is very much intertwined with the concept of concealment and appearances. The fact that Irene only recognizes Clare by her laugh suggests that passing is unnatural, as a laugh is something that isn’t purposefully controlled to sound a certain way, and is simply an authentic bit of yourself that you broadcast to the world. The conclusion that Irene draws in the beginning of this exchange, that Clare is changed yet somehow the same, is seemingly contradictory. However, this contradiction is resolved when one considers the depth of human identity. Clare may have changed in outward appearance, but her inner emotions and character has remained the same. Her eyes are described as “dark” (25), and as eyes are commonly portrayed as a “window into the soul,” this trait of Clares represents that she is still black at her core, and that she is being inauthentic in the act of passing. However, the notion that one simply cannot change their identity and must instead simply live inauthentically is rather pessimistic. A more positive interpretation of this description is that even in changing her appearance, Clare has remained authentic to herself. She has pursued her desires, just as she continues to do in her chasing after a connection with Irene. We see this idea again throughout the novel, as although Clare’s emotions and true feelings are hard to pin down, her “having” nature (21) and disregard for how getting what she wants may negatively impact others (47) is a constant way that Irene describes her. Such a negative trait may seem unattractive, but this is one of the factors that draws Irene to Clare. Irene is also captivated by Clare’s “tempting mouth,” the “soft lustre” of Clare’s “ivory skin,” and her “arresting eyes,” which Irene determines to be the deciding factory which makes Clare’s “loveliness” “absolute” (30). These two aspects of Clare, her “having” nature and her physical beauty are both attractive to Irene, and for the same reason. It seems that Irene desires the mix of races that Clare’s beauty captures, as both her “ivory skin” and, as mentioned before, “dark” eyes, are cited as reasons for Irene’s attraction to Clare. Such a mix is not forbidden, but is, as in Clare’s situation, dangerous and rare. Irene is attracted to the freedom that Clare expresses with this combination of races she achieves through passing. Clare’s “having” nature is merely the emotional cause of this mix, as Clare desired wealth and therefore disregarded even her own safety and married a rich white man, John Bellew, despite the danger inherent in the marriage of a vicious racist and a woman passing as white. Although Irene hates change (58), prefering security and monotony, the words “tempting” and “arresting” used in the description of Clare’s features reveal that Irene may not be being entirely authentic to herself in what she expresses as her desires. The word “tempting” means captivating and available yet coming with perhaps a drawback, and the word “arresting” suggests a lack of control in Irene’s desires, as one’s control is taken when they are arrested. Irene’s attraction to Clare reveals her inescapable desire to be authentic that she is suppressing. Additionally, the homoerotic nature of this scene and Irene’s description of, for example, Clare’s “tempting mouth” highlights that Irene’s attraction to such ideas that Clare represents is perhaps out of line with the norms present in her life, as was homosexuality in society during the time period in which this novel is set, meaning that Clare presents Irene with a view of what her life could look like were the safe and predictable monotony of it to come to an end.

We have been reading Passing by Nella Larsen in class recently, and today we had a very insightful discussion. Passing is the story of Irene Redfield, who is a black woman living in New York. Clare Kendry, an old childhood friend, butts her way back into Irene’s life and disrupts many of Irene’s ideas about herself and the world she lives in. 

We began class with an exercise where we picked a word that we thought the book was about, for example “envy”. We were told to take this word and think about an expected approach to thinking about it as well as an unexpected approach. It is very clear that Irene is in some way envious of Clare, but less obvious or expected that Irene might envy her son’s ability to discern the emotions and outbursts of her husband, Brian. I chose the word “belonging,” and I began by thinking about different types of belonging. I decided that there were two types of belonging in the book, the communtiy one is a part of and identitfies with as well as servitude or a kind of obligation towards something or someone. In a discussion with a classmate, I shared my ideas about how Junior, named after his father Brian, belongs to him in a way and is forced by Brian to conform to the standards he sets for his son. Brian wants Junior to be just like him, but Junior is said to be more like his mother, Irene. I also discussed how Irene talks about Clare with Brian one day, saying that “eighteenth-century France would have been a marvellous setting for her” (90) and making it clear that she did not believe Irene belonged in her life or community. 

My classmate relayed their thoughts on the word they chose, “satisfaction,” to me, and we spent some time after class discussing. I really liked their idea about how Clare disrupted Irene’s satisfaction with her life, and they furthered this idea by bringing in the topic of opportunity and how each of the characters see each other as a kind of opportunity, which I hadn’t considered before. 

This made me think about how race interacts with belonging in the book, both dictating what circle you belong to and perhaps to an extent who you belong to, as race and power and wealth are very closely related. I began to think about Irene also says that Clare would belong in the South if she hadn’t made the “mistake” of being born black. This comment is very loaded in many ways, but after the discussion I had I was most interested in this quote as an example of how Irene voices her ideas about race and belonging. She herself is black, and although Clare passes as white, she is actively seeking out a connection to the black community which she abandoned after childhood. Irene making this very harsh comment clearly demonstrates how she does not want Clare in her life, and that she feels that Clare belongs more with the white community she has forced herself to belong in by passing rather than the community she was born into. Such an idea contrasts how Irene uses passing, as she goes back and forth as it is convenient for her. For her to feel that Clare does not belong in her community since she passes is slightly hypocritical, but also demonstrates Irene’s discomfort with the danger and deception present in passing and is maybe even worried about what passing would do to her sense of belonging, both in her family and community.