Clare Kendry's "True" Colors: Race and Class Conflict in Nella Larsen's Passing

Author(s): Jennifer DeVere Brody

Source: Callaloo , Autumn, 1992, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Autumn, 1992), pp. 1053-1065
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2931920

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 CLARE KENDRY'S "TRUE" COLORS
Race and Class Conflict in Nella Larsen's Passing

By Jennifer DeVere Brody

Interpretations of Nella Larsen's Passing (1929) often have failed to explain the com-
plex symbolism of the narrative. Indeed, dismissive or tendentious criticisms of the
text have caused it to be eclipsed by Larsen's "earlier and more intriguing" book,
Quicksand (1928).1 This essay reexamines Passing as a work concerned with the si-
multaneous representation and construction of race and especially class, within a cir-
cumscribed community. As such, my paper contributes to debates within Black fem-
inist criticism about the value of these aspects of identity in relation to the production
of black female subjectivities. I contend that the novel's main characters are neither
purely "psychological" beings, as Claudia Tate asserts, nor are they essentially "sex-
ual" creatures, as Deborah McDowell argues. Rather, I read Irene Redfield and Clare
Kendry as representatives of different ideologies locked in struggle for dominance.
In her introduction to Passing Deborah McDowell, one of the most astute critics of
Larsen's work, states that "many critics have been misled by the novel's epigraph
... [since] it invites the reader to place race at the center of any critical interpretation."2
It would appear that McDowell herself has been misled by Passing's obviously unre-
liable narrator. So too, McDowell seems to agree with Claudia Tate's belief that, "Race
is peripheral to Passing. It is more a device to sustain the suspense than a compelling
social issue."3 I disagree with these assertions because it seems to me that the text is
"all about race" or rather, the mediation of race in relation to sexuality and class.4
McDowell recognizes certain tropes employed by Larsen and, like many other crit-
ics, she maintains that Irene Redfield is the primary referent of the novel's title. Ul-
timately, however, McDowell is unable to give a full explication of the text's meaning
since she tries to read/uce the text as a tale of latent sexual passion without discussing
the key issues of race and class. Thus, while her discussion is certainly valuable, one
might also say that it reifies sexuality at the risk of not exploring how sexuality is
connected inextricably with other historically produced phenomena such as race and
class. In order to sustain her ingenious reading of Passing as a tale that "passes for
straight" and sublimates lesbian desire, McDowell misses the more intricate impli-
cations addressed by Larsen's work. The iconography McDowell reads as sexual is
simultaneously racial: it also expresses class positionality. For example, the objective
correlative envelope used in the first paragraph of the novel signifies not only the
"sexual" (McDowell reads it as a "metaphorical vagina") but also the sender's race
(alien) and class (elite). Thus, my reading emends McDowell's by insisting on the
importance of race and class in Passing.
If race as well as class conflict must occupy a primary position in any discussion of

Callaloo 15.4 (1992) 1053-1065

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 C ALLALOO

Passing, what is the significance of the first words in the narrative? The epigraph from
Countee Cullen's poem, "Heritage" (1925), reads as follows:

One three centuries removed,

From the scenes his fathers loved,
Spicey grove, cinnamon tree,
What is Africa to me?

This well-known quatrain (repeated twice in Cullen's work) has been used by many
African-American authors to interrogate the "race concept" in the Americas. Indeed,
it is a if not the most problematic question for all African-Americans who must ne-
gotiate the hyphenated divide. In Passing, these couplets become the subconscious
refrain of each of the main characters in the text. However, the question, "What is
Africa to me," is never answered explicitly. Larsen's ambiguity in this matter, as in
the ending of the text, invite the reader to speculate about the meaning of these "priv-
ileged" lines. If "Heritage" is the narrative of one who "tries to define his [sic] rela-
tionship to some white, ontological being and finds that a Black impulse ceaselessly
draws him [sic] back,"5 it would seem to describe Clare Kendry rather than Irene Red-
field, although it could refer to both. Any interpretation would depend upon one's
definition of a "Black" impulse. Indeed, this is the problem Larsen's complex narrative
addresses.
In my reading of Passing, "Africa," as a romanticized Harlem Renaissance construc-
tion, represents liberation for Clare Kendry who ironically comes to represent key
aspects of this "Africa" in the text, and denigration for Irene Redfield. Thus, again, I
argue that readings of race or more accurately, definitions of Blackness are indeed
central to Passing. Ironically, it is Irene Redfield's story; one might even say that, "in
a strange transference of conditions, Irene inherits Clare's life of duplicity and isola-
tion."6 This is ironic because Irene remains at least superficially a part of the Black
world, whereas Clare supposedly leaves this world when she marries a white man.
Irene describes the difference between herself and Clare Kendry in the following
manner:

Since childhood their lives had never really touched. Actually,

they were strangers. Strangers in their desires and ambitions.
Strangers even in their racial consciousness. Between them the
barrier was just as high, just as broad, and just as firm as if in
Clare did not run that strain of black blood. In truth, it was
higher, broader, and firmer; because for her there were perils,
not known or imagined, by those others who had no such secrets
to alarm or endanger them. (192)

Irene correctly delineates the difference between herself and Clare: the two figures
are ideological strangers. However, the readers must guard against believing Irene's
discourse. The key to deciphering the second part of this passage lies in its diction
and in the iconography established in the text. Who builds barriers between herself
and her racial heritage? Who is it who describes herself as being in a perpetual state

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 __ CALLALOO

of alarm, always in danger? Certainly not Clare Kendry: thus, the latter half of this
quotation does not refer to Clare Kendry. This passage is a confession-Irene's con-
fession. It is she who harbors a secret desire to be white and not Clare.7
Irene believes that,

She belongs in [the] world of rising towers. She [is] American

... Race [is that] thing that binds and suffocates her. . . enough
to suffer as a woman and an individual, on one's own account,
without having to suffer for the race as well. It [is] a brutality,
and undeserved. Surely, [there are] no other people so cursed
as Ham's dark children. (225)

This quotation, an interior monologue, expresses some of the most important aspects
of Irene Redfield's ideology. She expresses and embodies numerous stereotypical mid-
dle-class values. So much so, in fact, that she sounds exactly like Clare Kendry's white,
Christian, spinster aunts who tell Clare that Noah "had cursed Ham and his sons for
all time" (159). Clare's aunts view Negroes as either "charities or problems" (159).
Irene also is guilty of treating African-Americans, not as individuals but as objects of
her own ability to serve and have power over them. Like the protagonist in Andrea
Lee's 1985 novel, Sarah Phillips, Irene "locates herself within rather than outside of the
normative community . .. Her very presence within . .. exclusionary communities
suggests that the circumstances of race and gender alone protect no one from the
seductions of reading her own experience as normative and fetishing the experience
of the other."8 In Passing, Irene consistently aligns herself with conservative and bour-
geois elements in American society and views her friend Clare as an "exotic other."
She persistently fights to preserve her "security" and the status quo. "Fixity," "sta-
sis," and above all "security" are her watchwords. Irene's constant attempts to avoid
conflict and confrontation-in short to steer clear of Clare Kendry and the radical el-
ements Clare represents, including, according to McDowell's reading, lesbian sexu-
ality-are not successful. In this, as in so many things, Irene mimics middle-class
culture which often tries to isolate itself from poverty and perversion by situating itself
in a relationship above and beyond the lower-class.9 Irene Redfield desperately desires
to be free of the burden of race-consciousness and to join those who reside in the
rising towers of capitalist American society.
Clare Kendry is simultaneously complicit with and subversive to such middle-class
values. The terror that she incites is "like a scarlet spear . .. leaping at [its] heart"
(217). Clare threatens Irene throughout the novel. Indeed, much of the novel's dra-
matic tension is derived from Irene's attempts to "discipline" Clare in the Foucauldian
sense of "arresting and regulating her movements; clearing up confusion; and dissi-
pating [those like Clare who] wander about the country in unpredictable ways."10 In
other words, Clare's profound contradictions, seen only by Irene who knows Clare's
"true colors," drive the latter to destruction.
Although Clare looks white and is married to someone white, she oddly maintains
a stronger sense of "double-consciousness" than does Irene.1" She remains perpetu-
ally aware of her own racial origin and her duplicitous positionality. This is in contrast
to Irene who has many moments in which she sees herself simply and purely as "an

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 _CALLALOO

American." Both puritanical and anti-theatrical, Irene is threatened by Clare's ability

to simultaneously imitate and denounce white society. She accuses Clare of having a
tendency toward "theatrical heroics" (144). Throughout the text, Clare plays the part
of the trickster and wears her "ivory mask" (157) that "grins and smiles" in the face
of hateful whites (and Irene). Her laugh is "the very essence of mockery . .. and [she]
knows [about Negro culture] as if she'd been there and heard" (154) all along. That is
to say that although Clare has been passing for a number of years, she has managed
to keep abreast of Negro culture. She appropriates white power and uses it to her
advantage.
Interestingly, the first image of Clare shows her "sitting on a ragged blue sofa, sew-
ing pieces of bright red cloth together, while her drunken father [a janitor] . .. raged
... up and down the shabby room, bellowing curses" (143-44). This brief description
provides the reader with much information about Clare's background and class. She
was poor and until her marriage she worked as a domestic for weekly wages at the
home of her white aunts. "In spite of certain unpleasantness and possible danger, she
takes money" (144) [italics mine] in order to sew herself a dress to wear to a Church
picnic. Later, she "steals [time] from her endless domestic tasks" (152) and by impli-
cation, from her white aunts. She tells Irene, "You had all the things I wanted and
never had ... I used to almost hate you for it ... but it also made me more determined
to get them and more" (159). Thus, ironically, we see that one of the prime motivations
for Clare's "passing" is her desire for Irene's appreciation: for approval from her bour-
geois neighbors.
Clare is not a member of the rising Black bourgeoisie nor was she ever a member
of the aspiring middle-classes. She rose rapidly, readily "passed" and in so doing
surpassed Irene in terms of class and material wealth. Yet in shifting her class status,
Clare maintains a clear sense of her prior identity. Her Gatsbyesque ascendance to the
upper-echelons of white society is undercut by her patriotic (not patronizing) racial
sympathies. She occupies an extremely precarious position.
Throughout the pages of Passing, Clare sounds alarms-her laugh is "a trill . .. like
the ringing of bells" (151), she incites outrage, she telephones. Like a revolution, Clare
is not polite. She does not "draw back or turn aside; certainly not because of any alarms
or feeling of outrage on the part of others" (143). She attacks from below. She is dan-
gerous, mysterious, furtive and seductive. Clare has the power to reduce Irene to
reaction. Thus, the narrative plays out a racial, sexual, and class war between these
characters.
The spatial and ideological positions held by Clare and Irene are revealed in several
scenes in which they interact. These scenes occur in the most "civilized" of places-
tea rooms, parlors, boudoirs and ballrooms-but, as in Virginia Woolf's novels, these
genteel settings turn out to be the arenas of the most brutal and biting behavior. The
irony in these scenes, indeed in the book as a whole, is subtle and sophisticated.12
For example, Chapter Two of the first section, entitled "Encounter," begins omi-
nously with

buildings shudder[ing] as if in protest of the heat . .. Quivering

lines [springing] up from baked pavements . . . automobiles
... were a dancing blaze, and the glass of the shop windows

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 CA_____CALLALOO

threw out a blinding radiance. Sharp particles of dust rose from

the burning sidewalks, stinging the seared or dripping skins of
wilting pedestrians. What small breeze there was seemed like
the breath of a flame fanned by slow bellows. (146)

In this description of a scorching summer day in Chicago, Larsen's language is violent.

Things shuddering in protest, dancing blazes, blinding radiances, rising particles,
burning sidewalks-these images suggest a city under siege. The passage brings to
mind the tumultuous race riots of the "Red Summer" of 1919. Paralleling the plot of
Larsen's story, the "outright conflict [of the race riots against white Americans] was
a course pointing to almost certain doom."13 And indeed, this scene marks the begin-
ning of Clare Kendry's ultimately doomed attack upon Irene Redfield.14
Irene Redfield is among the crowds who are fighting the Chicago heat. Character-
istically, she is shopping for "things" to bring back from her visit-the inevitable ma-
terial possessions which are the necessary symbols of wealth. Irene makes her way
about the Chicago streets in the land in which "mechanical aeroplanes are readily
available" but "drawing books are more difficult to acquire" (146) when suddenly a
man collapses in front of her. At this moment, Irene "edges her way out of the in-
creasing crowd feeling disagreeably damp and sticky from contact with so many
sweating bodies" (147). Irene's desire to distance herself from the "sweating masses"
is evidence of her distaste for the working-classes. She feels a "need for immediate
safety" and, feeling faint herself, she hails a taxi.
A remarkable exchange occurs in the blank margin and moment between Irene's
statement to the taxi driver that she "might benefit from some tea" and his suggestion
that she go to the Drayton Hotel. In this moment, Irene passes; and yet, neither the
omniscient narrator nor Irene comment upon this transgression. The entire event
merely occurs in the blank margin of the page. It is so natural for Irene to pass that
she is not even conscious that she is doing so. Astonishingly, during the cab ride she
simply "makes some small attempts to repair the damage that the heat and crowds
had done to her appearance" (147)-had her hair started to "go back"?-and then,
blissfully enters the Drayton Hotel. Irene's omission in the scene suggests that she is
comfortable with such transgressions.
Irene feels "like [she is] being wafted upwards on a magic carpet to another world,
pleasant, quiet and strangely remote from the sizzling one that she had left below"
(147). Safely sequestered on the roof-top of an ivory tower, Irene surveys the "specks
of cars and people creeping about in the streets below [and thinks] how silly they
look" (148). Although Clare Kendry occupies this same space in the text, she never
looks askance at "those below." Again, the text reveals that this distancing-this con-
stant need to move "away from" and "above" is characteristic of Irene and those things
associated with her.
The pleasant quiet of the Drayton turns out to be, like all restricted, "white only"
islands in the white hegemony, only a temporary sanctuary. The "rank" air is broken
by motion, commotion, fluidity and ferocity-by the form of Clare Kendry. Clare con-
tinually collapses the distance between Irene and "the masses" as well as the distance
between Irene's African heritage and her desire to be "white." Much of the novel is
devoted to realizing Irene's desire not to "be the link between [Clare] and her poorer

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 CALLALOO

dark brethren" (185) since such a position would interfere with Irene's view of herself
as a private American citizen. Clare's ability to accomplish this feat is dependent on
her unique position as a black woman who can wear the mask of mimicry (quite lit-
erally she looks like a beautiful white woman) and at the same time, unmask the per-
formative nature of such dominant identities. Clare does pass; but with an altogether
different sensibility than does Irene. As in Jessie Fauset's passing novel, Plum Bun
(1928), a clear distinction is drawn between passing as "play-acting" and "passing
where a principle is involved."15 In both Plum Bun and Passing, "play passing" is ac-
ceptable but principled passing is not. The problem comes in distinguishing between
these two modes. In reading Clare as the "playful passer" and Irene as the "principled
passer" I hope to deconstruct the tensions between these modes.
Clare uses her "ivory mask" as a decoy to distract her adversaries and to allow her
to infiltrate hostile territories. She is never completely comfortable in white society,
as Irene seems to be. Irene, not recognizing Clare as her childhood acquaintance,
admires Clare's appearance-her mastery of the "proper" form. Clare's physical fea-
tures, for the most part, conform to a fixed standard of beauty that Irene idealizes or
affirms as do those in the Black community who label "straight hair" "good hair." It
is only later in the text that Irene sees Clare's "heritage" clearly. Clare had

always had that pale gold hair . .. the ivory skin had a peculiar
soft lustre. And the eyes were magnificent! dark, sometimes ab-
solutely black, always luminous . . . arresting eyes, slow and
mesmeric, and with all their warmth, something withdrawn and
secret about them . . . Ah! Surely! They were Negro eyes! mys-
terious and concealing. And set in that ivory face under that
bright hair, there was about them something exotic. (161)

Even before Irene solves the mystery of Clare's identity, Irene notices that there is
something disturbing about the "attractive [white] woman in the green dress." She
has an "odd sort of smile . .. which Irene would have classed as too provocative for a
waiter" (149) [italics mine]. I assume that the waiter in this scene is Black and that
Clare Kendry's smile is a gesture of identification and/or mutual understanding. Need-
less to say, such an action is deemed "too provocative" by Irene. An analogous sit-
uation occurs later in the book when Irene bristles at the sight of "Clare descending
to the kitchen, and with-to Irene-an exasperating childlike lack of perception,
spending her visit in talk with Zulena and Sadie [Irene's chocolate-colored maids]"
(208).
The ensuing scene between Clare and Irene demonstrates further the manner in
which these two figures struggle to attain and/or maintain power over each other in
the text. The battle begins with a stare from Clare. This action immediately puts Irene
on the defensive: suddenly, she is conscious of her race and the fact that she is passing
when she ought not to be. She claims that "she is not ashamed of being Negro ...
but it is the idea of being ejected from any place . . . that disturbs her" (150). The
difficulty with this position especially in America of the 1920s is that to be a "negro"
is to be perpetually in the position of being ejected from one's "place" (should one be
so fortunate to have a place); or, more commonly, to be put back into a place which
one might not necessarily wish to occupy.

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 L ALLACLLALOO

It is significant that it is Clare's knowing look that incites Irene's insecurities about
her racial, sexual and class status and not, as we might expect, the scrutiny of any of
the white characters in the book. This too is proof that Irene wishes to distance herself
from her background while Clare wishes to collapse the distance between her own
appearance and her current chosen position.
When Clare rises and approaches Irene's table, Irene fears that her status will
change-that she will be "found out." Despite Irene's protestations to the contrary
(she is after all a myopic and unreliable narrator) Irene does fear that her race will be
discovered. In Irene's view of American society, she feels she is forced to value class
over race. Race is that element which, to her mind, hinders one's pursuit of wealth
and happiness. Ironically, race or rather her ability to simulate a racial stereotype,
empowers Clare.
Clare has the advantage at this moment and Irene is forced to "look-up" to her. The
latter decides to "surrender" to Clare's disarming smile-believing all the while that
Clare is white. When Irene discovers Clare's "true" identity (she recognizes Clare's
"ringing" laugh), she immediately "starts to rise" (151), but Clare "commands" her to
remain seated. I cite this seemingly innocuous introduction of "old acquaintances" to
emphasize the shifts in power that reveal Clare's desire for parity with her bourgeois
friends and Irene's equally ironic desire for ascendancy and "white" security. The
omnipresent military metaphors express the seriousness of the racial, sexual and class
conflicts that drive the narrative. Clare has control in this section of the text and the
dynamics of her movement symbolize this fact.
It is in this scene at the Drayton that the reader learns of Irene's thoroughly middle-
class upbringing. Irene went to college, is a member of the Y.W.C.A. committee and
the Negro Welfare League. Even her maiden name, Westover, may be read as a sign
of her status in the book. She values Western traditions over any "African" influences.
Irene has tried to destroy parts of her heritage by insisting that a "rising tower" (the
letter 'I' itself) remain in her name-in short, by calling herself Irene. In her segregated
youth, her Negro friends knew her simply as 'Rene. As she tells Clare, "nobody calls
me 'Rene anymore" (151). Irene is aware that she often feels "outnumbered, a sense
of aloneness in her adherence to her own class and kind; not merely in the great thing
of marriage but in the whole pattern of her life" (166). These details suggest that Clare
ironically infiltrates a particular segment of dominant American society whereas Irene
yearns for assimilation or absorption into that same world.
As the two women "fill in the gap of twelve years with talk" (155), Clare remains
in control of the situation. Actually it is Irene who "pours tea" while Clare "drinks in"
(155) all her mundane gossip. Irene realizes that time is passing and that she must be
going. She realizes also that "she has not asked Clare about her own life and has a
very definite reluctance to do so" (155). Like Clare's aunts, Irene assumes that Clare
is "living in sin" as a "kept woman."
As if reading Irene's mind Clare states, "'Rene dear, now that I've found you [and
found you out?] I mean to see lots and lots of you. We're here for a month . .. Jack,
that's my husband, is here on business" (156). This statement actually is a biting retort
to Irene's unvoiced thoughts. Not only does Clare insist upon calling Irene, 'Rene,
her old "Negro" name, but she also subverts Irene's assumptions about her marital

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 _ _ _ CALLALOO

status. Furthermore, to add insult to injury, Clare gives Irene "a curious little sidelong
glance and a sly, ironical smile . . . as if she had been in the secret of the other's
thoughts and was mocking her" (156).
Clare tells Irene how she managed to pass and marry a wealthy white man. She is
surprised that Irene "never 'passed' over [since] it's such a frightfully easy thing to
do. If one's the type, all that's needed is a little nerve" (158). Irene is falsely fascinated
by this "hazardous business of 'passing,' this breaking away from all that was familiar
and friendly to take one's chances in another environment" (157). If one looks closely
at Irene's statement and thinks back to the beginning of this chapter when she de-
scribes her relief at being "wafted upward ... to another world" (146), it becomes clear
that Irene already knows about passing-that she is already quite comfortable doing
so. Her desire to hear Clare's story is self-indulgent. She hangs on the other's words
as if to say, "if only I could . . . completely." She is upset to hear that Clare's aunts
are white since she has no white relatives. As for Clare, she 'passes' to acquire the
economic advantages she never had and perhaps, ironically, to move closer to the
Black middle-class that once rejected her for being part of the "poorer brethren." Cer-
tainly, one might read Clare as the embodiment of Irene's bourgeois fantasies.
Irene tries to convince herself, as she will do over and over in the text, that she is
"through with Clare Kendry" (163); but Irene (like the white hegemony) does not have
absolute control of the arena and Clare Kendry is not through with her. Clare contin-
ues her assault in Chapter Two of the next section of the book, entitled "Re-
Encounter." In this scene, Clare accosts Irene in her own bedroom. It is during this
encounter that Irene begins to plot Clare's murder. Irene throws a letter from Clare
into the trash and thinks

The thing, the discontent which had exploded into words would
surely die, flicker out, at last . .. conscious that she had been
merely deceiving herself . .. and that it still lived. But it would
die. Of that she was certain ... In the meantime, while it was
still living and still had the power to flare up and alarm her
... it had to be smothered. (188)

The "it" mentioned above is Clare as the phrase, "living things that had the power to
flare up and alarm" Irene, suggests.
Clare slyly invades Irene's space, and "tossing aside" (193) Irene's expressions of
awe, "seats herself slantwise in Irene's favorite chair" (193). She demands to know
why Irene refused to respond to her gestures. Irene "lit a cigarette, blew out the match,
and dropped it . . . She was trying to collect her arguments, for some sixth sense
warned her" (194) that Clare Kendry was a formidable adversary. Indeed, Clare, with
her clarity of vision, sees through Irene's feeble excuses about "running the risk of
knowing Negroes ... and doing the right thing" (194):

The tinkle of Clare's laugh rang out ... Oh 'Rene, . . . the right
thing! Leaning forward [up in her face], Clare looked into Irene's
disapproving brown eyes .... (195)

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 ; CALLALOO

This affront brings Irene to "her feet before she even realized that she had risen" (195).
She tries to retort with more of her bland bourgeois rhetoric about "safety"; Clare flings
this back at her as if to say "Safe! Damn being safe!" (195) to Irene "for whom safety,
security, were all-important" (195). Irene is forced to "sit down" (195). As in the scene
at the Drayton, "Clare's deep voice broke the small silence" of Irene. Clare has taken
control.
The issue of class enters into the discussion when Irene tells Clare that she cannot
come to the Negro Welfare League dance unescorted since, "It's a public thing. All
sorts of people go, anybody who can pay a dollar, even ladies of easy virtue looking
for trade .. . you might be mistaken for one" (199). To Irene's surprise, Clare does not
object to this possibility. Clare claims "her dollar is as good as anyone's" (199), thus
hinting at her knowledge of herself as sexual commodity. This view contrasts sharply
with Irene's iterations of her sentimental sacrifices in the name of "wife and mother."
This scene may be read simultaneously as a scene of suppressed sexual desire, racial
conflict and improper class sympathies. That Clare understands selling one's per-
ceived identity for profit should not surprise us; nor should Irene's prudish revulsion
at the mention of mercenary, market tactics seem a contradiction in her character.
Like Sula and Nel in Toni Morrison's Sula (1973), Clare and Irene are childhood
friends who grow to evince different and conflicting racial, sexual, and class values.
In Sula, Morrison discusses the consequence of what she calls "the free fall." In many
ways, the enunciation of the free fall clarifies the fundamental difference between not
only Nel and Sula but between their ideological counterparts, Irene and Clare (who,
like Nel and Sula, may be caught in an adulterous triangle). In Sula, Morrison describes
Nel's reaction following her discovery of Sula, her best friend, fornicating with Nel's
husband. The passage reads:

Now Nel was one of them. One of the spiders whose only
thought was the next rung of the web, who dangled in dark dry
places suspended by their own spittle, more terrified of the free
fall than the snake's breath below. Their eyes so intent on the
wayward stranger who trips into their net, they were blind to
the cobalt on their own backs, . . . they were merely victims and
knew how to behave in that role (just as Nel knew how to behave
as the wronged wife.) But the free fall, . . . that demanded in-
vention: a thing to do with wings .. . a full surrender to down-
ward flight if they wished to stay alive.16

I quote this passage at length because I feel that it illuminates important aspects of
the intricate relationship between Irene and Clare. Irene, like Nel, concerns herself
with getting methodically to the next rung on the pre-defined ladder of success; so,
too, she is terrified of "falling" -of losing her secure status. She even knows, as we
shall see, how to behave as the wronged wife. Clare, on the other hand, resembles
Sula not only in her attraction to her friend's husband, but more importantly, in her
ability to invent herself and to surrender to an oxymoronic "downward flight."
For Clare, a fall from her achieved position as upper-class "white" wife would be a
desired fall back into her past life as lower-class black Clare Kendry. As Irene notes,
"Clare Kendry had remained almost what she had always been" (202) determined

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lower-class Black girl. Irene, on the other hand, has completely passed over to the
other side as her defense of John Bellew, Clare's white husband, demonstrates. In the
tea party scene (Chapter 3) Irene had been disgusted by Clare's husband's racist re-
marks. However, in this later scene, she defends "his side of the thing" (200). Irene
begs Clare "to be reasonable" when the latter threatens to kill John.
At this point in the text, unorthodox alliances are drawn between the characters.
Suddenly, Irene begins to side with Clare's white husband, John Bellew. If one be-
lieves that Clare and Brian Redfield are having an affair, then Irene's sympathy for
John might be the result of their similar position as cuckolds. McDowell might read
Irene's desire to spare John's life as a symptom of Irene's need for security and the
"cover"/ of heterosexual marriage. However, in my reading, Irene also sympathizes
with John's position because she sees Clare's as he does-as "Nig."
Irene's ability to murder Clare depends in part upon her ability to objectify her in
this manner-to read her disturbingly as the embodiment of her fantasies and of her
worst nightmare. Irene begins to frame Clare (literally and figuratively) when she
mentions that "Eighteenth-century France would have been a marvelous setting for
Clare" (216). Here, Irene hints at the fact that Clare has revolutionary tendencies at
the same time she marks Clare as an historicized Other-as the bearer of a cruel ma-
terial history. This view of Clare prepares the way for Irene's decision to destroy that
"thing" which has terrorized her with thoughts of Past and Passing throughout the
text.
In perhaps the most blatant incident that prefigures Clare's murder, Irene sees
"Clare's ivory face ... what it always was, beautiful and caressing. Or maybe today
a little masked. Unrevealing. Unaltered and undisturbed by any emotion within or
without" (220). Irene is looking at Clare during yet another tea party. Suddenly, "Rage
boils up in [Irene] . . . there is a slight crash. On the floor at her feet lays a shattered
cup. Dark stains dot the bright rug [and] spread" (221). Irene has dropped a cup on
purpose or so she tells Hugh Wentworth. She explains that the cup was

the ugliest thing that your [white] ancestors, the charming con-
federates ever owned. I have forgotten how many thousands of
years ago it was that Brian's great-great granduncle owned it.
But it has, or had, a good hoary history. It was brought north by
way of the ... underground ... I've never figured out a way of
getting rid of it until about five minutes ago. I had an inspiration.
I had only to break it, and I was rid of it forever. So simple! (222)

The cup, like Clare, is an ugly material reminder of Irene's heritage which she can no
longer bear. It is a relic of the Civil War and as a broken vessel it is analogous not only
to the broken body of the Nation, but it also foreshadows Clare's own broken body
at the end of the novel. In this deluded moment, Irene figures out a way to rid her
stable life of Clare Kendry and her "menace of impermanence" (229). The scene ends
with Irene saying, "Goodbye ... Goodbye" (222) not only to her departing tea-guests
but to Clare Kendry as well. Thus, Irene Redfield, like a good upstanding citizen, elects
to fight for her country. Irene follows her instinct to preserve her property and her
place in the world of rising towers. She will do her duty and defend her territory, her
position, her ideology.

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The closing scene in the Finale begins by stating that "the year was getting on to-
wards its end"-so too the narrative and more significantly, Clare's life. Symbolically,
the last battle between Irene and Clare takes place at the end of December. Clare, who
looks "radiant in her shining red gown" (223), arrives at Irene's house ready to attend
what is most likely the last party of the season. Before Clare's arrival, Irene has had
one of her frequent arguments with her husband, Brian Redfield. The fact that Irene
is most often referred to by her married name, Mrs. Redfield, is somewhat of a red
herring; for Brian Redfield is ideologically and iconographically allied with Clare Ken-
dry. Again, we see that Irene occupies a similar position to Clare's white husband:
both she and John Bellew are married to that which, ideologically, they most despise.
Irene detests Brian because he refuses to conform to her vision of their marriage as
exemplifying the status quo. Brian, who hates America, does not want to be the ster-
eotypical Black bourgeois doctor with a light-skinned wife and two sons. He would
like to practice medicine in Brazil-to go beyond the bounds of conventional expec-
tations; but of course, Irene for whom status is everything finds this problematic. In
this last chapter, Irene argues with Brian about a dinner-table topic that Irene believes
is "inappropriate." It is an argument over ideology.
Irene believes that the topic of "why only Blacks are lynched" is something that
should be ignored. No doubt she believes this because lynching as an American phe-
nomenon is intertwined with the history of race, sexuality, and class conflict. Irene
follows her prudish sensibilities and demands that the discussion end; but not before
Brian explains to his sons that Blacks are killed because they are the most hated (194).
The subtext in this conversation is clear/Clare. Irene kills Clare in part because Clare
is Black and "most hated." Irene

Sees with perfect clearness that dark truth which she had from
that first October afternoon felt about Clare Kendry and of which
Clare herself had once warned her-that she got the things she
wanted because she met the great conditions of conquest, sac-
rifice ... If Clare was freed, anything might happen. (236)

As Irene, Brian and Clare walk toward the party, Brian asks Clare about "nigger-
power."17 Not only does Clare instantly get the joke, but she unabashedly tells about
her father being a janitor in the "good ole days" (236) and of frequently having to walk
up long flights of stairs. Again, we see Clare allied, at least metaphorically, with her
poorer Black past.
The scene describes Clare Kendry's only explicit ascent in the novel. Unlike Irene's
consistent upwardly mobile ascents, this scene prepares Clare to take her "free fall."
As she climbs, Clare looks down and notices a "lovely garden with undisturbed snow"
(236). Slowly, she makes her way to the Freeland's top-floor apartment which is, for
her, the "freeland" (i.e., heaven) so often evoked in Negro spirituals.
Moments before her death, Clare is the epitome of composure. This last vision of
Clare suggests that she went to her death knowingly and perhaps proudly as a Black
woman. Thus Clare does not die a "sacrificial lamb on the altar of social and literary
convention"18; rather, "she seemed unaware of any danger ... There was even a faint
smile on her full, red lips and in her shining eyes" (238-39). This reading, of course,

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does not leave out the possibility of Clare's suicide. I believe that Irene misses and
misreads the subtlety of Clare's behavior in this final moment. As I have shown, Clare
has never been afraid of being "found out" -that is Irene's fear. Indeed, Clare might
have looked forward to the moment when Bellew would realize that he had been
duped by his wife. Such is the natural culmination of Clare's tea in Chicago (Chapter
Three, Section I); but Irene never understood that event fully nor is she able to grasp
Clare's role as a triumphant trickster. Irene is much too myopic, too literal, too far
removed from a certain class of her race to comprehend.
Clare's smile finally maddens Irene so that "she runs across the room, her terror
tinged with ferocity, and" (239) the next instant, Clare's body is seen smashed on the
pavement below. While recognizing that the text is not explicit in its ending (we do
not know if Clare commits suicide, is killed by Bellew, or pushed out the window by
Irene); it seems to me that my reading points to Irene as the murderer. Irene eulogizes
Clare and reveals her own fraught fixation for her former friend. She reports:

One moment Clare had been there, a vital glowing thing, like a
flame of red and gold. The next she was gone ... Gone! The soft
white face, the bright hair, the disturbing scarlet mouth, the
dreaming eyes, the caressing smile, the whole torturing loveli-
ness that had been Clare Kendry. That beauty that had torn at
Irene's placid life. Gone! The mocking daring, the gallantry of
her pose, and the ringing bells of laughter. (239)

Although McDowell reads this passage as one "in which all the erotic images used
to describe Clare throughout the novel converge" (xxix), it also inscribes Clare's racial
and class identities which have been represented similarly (e.g., a scarlet spear, the
subversive smile that grins, her Negro eyes, her alarming laugh, etc.). Passing closes
as Irene "sinks down under a great heaviness" (242) which turns everything "dark"
(242). In this final scene, Passing reads as a biting critique of Black bourgeoisie ideol-
ogies. Although Irene Westover succeeds in squelching the revolutionary possibilities
inherent in Clare's character, Clare Kendry remains an intriguingly problematized and
formidable "Black" adversary in Irene's world of rising towers, conventional romance,
and stable class structure. One wonders if "beating against the walled prison of Irene's
thoughts was the'shunned fancy that, though absent, Clare Kendry was still present,
... close" (224).

Notes

1. See Claudia Tate, "Nella Larsen's Passing: A Problem of Interpretation," Black American Literature
Forum 14 (Winter 1980): 180-246; and Deborah McDowell's "Introduction," Quicksand and Passing
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988), ix-xxxvii.
2. See Deborah McDowell, ed., "Introduction," Quicksand and Passing by Nella Larsen (New Bruns-
wick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1986). Subsequent references to this edition are noted in the
text.
3. Tate, 144. Even the most recent critic, Charles Lawson, claims "the primary theme is not race
. . . but marital stability" (xv). See his "Introduction," Intimations of Things Distant: The Collected
Fiction of Nella Larsen (New York: Doubleday Books, 1992).

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4. Although she gives little critical attention to Passing, Hazel Carby summarizes her discussion of
Larsen's novels by stating that "Larsen's representations of both race and class are structured
through a prism of black female sexuality" in Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-
American Woman Novelist (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 174.
5. Houston A. Baker, Jr., The Many-Colored Coat of Dreams: The Poetry of Countee Cullen (Detroit: Broad-
side Press, 1974), 34.
6. Lawson, xv.
7. Lauren Berlant's brief analysis of Passing does account for the complexity of the class, race, and
gender of Larsen's characters and I agree with her assertion that "what Irene wants is relief from
the body she has: her intense class identification with the discipline of the bourgeois body is only
one tactic for producing the corporeal 'fog' in which she walks" (112). However, I disagree with
Berlant's conclusion that Irene's desire is "not to pass as a white woman-but to move uncon-
sciously and unobstructed through the public sphere" (111). It seems to me that this reading
contradicts itself because, as I argue later, to move "unconsciously through the public sphere" is
a right reserved only for unmarked, transcendent bodies-not for bodies such as the one Irene
inhabits. See Lauren Berlant, "National Brands/National Bodies: Imitation of Life," Comparative
American Identities: Race, Sex and Nationality in the Modern Text, ed. Hortense Spillers (New York:
Routledge, 1991).
8. For a more detailed explication of this problem see Valerie Smith's discussion of Sarah Phillips in
"Black Feminist Theory," Changing Our Own Words, ed. Cheryl Wall (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press, 1989), 38-57.
9. For a fuller explication of this dynamic see Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics
of Transgression (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986).
10. See Michel Foucault's discussion of panopticism in Discipline and Punish, trans. Alan Sheridan
(New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 195-228.
11. Dubois uses this phrase in The Souls of Black Folk to describe the sensation of "looking at one's self
through the eyes of others." See W.E.B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk in Three Negro Classics (New
York: Avon Books, 1965), 215.
12. I have chosen two key scenes to discuss in detail. The metaphors that support my reading of the
novel are ubiquitous. Unfortunately, it is beyond the scope of this essay to elucidate each of the
important moments in the book.
13. David Levering Lewis, When Harlem Was in Vogue (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), 24.
14. It should be noted that Clare's married name is Bellew, which is similar to "bellow," the source
of seeming relief in the scene above.
15. Jessie Fauset, Plum Bun: A Novel without a Moral (London: Pandora Press, 1985), 19. There is a
definite difference between Mattie's "play" passing and her daughter Angela's attempts to pass
"on principle."
16. Toni Morrison, Sula (New York: New American Library, 1973), 120.
17. It is interesting to note that "nigger-power" is self-power; it relies upon self-empowerment and
is not dependent upon technology.
18. McDowell, xxx.

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