Ana Navarro Moyano
The Tragic Mulatto
PASSING,
Nella Larsen
Nella Larsen was an American novelist and she is
considered to be one of the most important female
voices of the Harlem Renaissance. The daughter of a
white Danish mother and a black West Indian father, she
explored issues in her works such as racial identity and
identification in her fiction. Larsen was the first black
woman to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship for creative
writing and her greatest works are Quicksand (1928) and
Passing (1929).
Background
The historical context is set in the 1920s in the United States:
- It is the explosion of the Harlem Renaissance, also known as the “New Negro
Movement”.
- The Great Migration brought a great number of black people from the South to
Harlem, a neighbourhood of New York City.
- The “colour line” between blacks and whites still divided the world in two.
- “Passing” became a way of crossing that line by attempting to claim recognition
in the white world. This topic is seen by other authors such as Faulkner (Light in August,
1932) or Roth (The Human Stain, 2000).
Passing
It was published in April 1929 by Knopf in New York City and it had positive
reviews, but little attention outside the city. However, since the late 20th century,
there has been a revival of Larsen’s writing due to the issues she addressed.
1
Heidelberg University
BY NELLA LARSEN
Passing: Content
Larsen’s Passing tells the story of the friendship between two light-skinned
black women: Irene and Clare. Clare “passes” for white, eventually abandoning
her black heritage, while Irene, who can also pass, is proud of her racial
background and cannot understand the decision of her childhood friend.
The story is divided in three parts:
- Part One: “Encounter”. The two women meet after a long time and Irene discovers
that Clare has passed for white and she is married to a white and racist rich man. At the end
of this part, Irene tries to get away from her friendship to Clare because of these facts.
- Part Two: “Re-encounter”. Clare comes back to Irene’s life and she becomes part of it:
she goes to parties with Irene’s family and spends time with the black community. At the
end of this part, Irene starts thinking that Clare and her husband are having an affair.
- Part Three: “Finale”. Since Irene presumes that Clare is making her situation unstable,
she decides she has to find a way to get rid of her childhood friend. After seeing Clare’s
husband when Irene was shopping with a black friend, she does not tell a single thing in
order to make Clare’s husband aware of the truth that his wife is hiding from him. At the
end of this part, Clare’s husband comes out of the blue to Irene’s party in Harlem and
discovers that she is black. Irene, as an attempt to “save” her, gets closer to her, near a
window. Clare falls over the window and dies. Irene feels guilty and Clare’s husband runs
away.
 Ana Navarro Moyano
The Tragic Mulatto
Heidelberg University

Passing: The “Tragic Mulatto” Bibliography

The tragic mulatto image is a mixed-race character that is either tragically torn
emotionally in their racial identity or one that becomes a tragic victim of a flaw which
ultimately led to an unpleasant ending for themselves and the people that surrounded them.
Passing conforms to the stereotype or the Tragic
Mulatto in its portrayal of Clare. While Irene feels proud of
her black heritage, Clare is still struggling between the
“white world” and the “black world”. As a reader, one can
see that Clare thinks that she fits in the white world
because of her appearance, but she prefers having fun in the
black world. Therefore, Irene induces the reader to believe
that Clare is selfish and she does not care about the race,
but the benefits that both worlds bring to her.
- Hutchinson, G. (1997). Nella Larsen and the veil of race. American Literary
History, vol.9, no.2, pp. 329-349. Published by: Oxford University Press.
- Pabst, N. (2003). Blackness/Mixedness: Contestations over Crossing Signs.
Culture Critique (No. 54), pp. 178-212
- Wall, C.A (1986). Passing for what? Aspects of Identity in Nella Larsen’s
Novels. Black American Literature Forum, vol. 20, no.1/2, pp. 97-111. Published
by African American Review (St. Louis University).
- Watson, R. (2002). The Tragic Mulatto image in Charles Chesnutt’s “The house
behind the cedars” and Nella Larsen’s “Passing”. CLA Journal, vol. 46, no.1
pp.48-71. Published by: College Language Association.

However, Clare declares that she feels lonely because,

after all, she does not belong to any of those worlds. Here lies the real struggle of
Clare and the reason why she is a “tragic mulatto”. In addition, she dies because of
two possible reasons: either her husband cannot stand her racial background or her
childhood friend cannot stand her in her life, because Irene treats her as an
intruder. Therefore, being a tragic victim and struggling tragically with her
emotions is what make her a “Tragic Mulatto”.

This “Tragic Mulatto” issue could also be applied to Nella Larsen, giving her
biological heritage. She became the sole black member of a white family, when
her mother remarried a white man and had a daughter with him. This could be just
mere autobiographical detail, but, it easily made her question the racial loyalties
the same way as her character Clare.