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The Beginning and End of Nella Larsen’s Passing
by Sarah Magin
Nella Larsen’s novel Passing is centered on the character Clare Kendry, a light-skinned,
biracial woman living as a white woman. She has married a white man who knows nothing of
her race and enjoys all the social comforts of being white. In this way, this novel breaks down
the thematic binary of black and white with its depiction of racial passing. In addition to the
reconstructed as fluid binary of black and white, Larsen’s novel simultaneously explores the
thematic binary of homosexuality and heterosexuality. Deborah McDowell observes of the
racial issues of Passing that “underneath the safety of that surface is the more dangerous story–
though not named explicitly–of Irene’s awakening sexual desire for Clare” (xxvi). Corinne
Blackmer notes that the encounter between Irene and Clare “instigates a potent desire in her,
described in an effusive letter intertwining romantic and racial longings for Irene” (52). Thus,
not only does Passing make fluid the binary of black and white, but also that of heterosexual and
homosexual. Further, the novel also renders fluid the apparently solid barrier of class. Biman
Basu observes that “Clare Kendry’s passing. . . is predicated on a crossing over into otherwise
barricaded economic zones” (384). Neil Sullivan summarizes, usefully, that “For Larsen”
“‘race’ is inextricable from the collateral issues including class, gender and sexuality, and
rivalry-that bear upon the formation of identity” (373). This introduces the concept that these
fluid binary oppositions of race, sexuality and class are themselves interlinked under the larger
rubric of identity formation.
But in order to fully understand this connection between the thematic binaries that shape
identity, binaries rendered fluid in Passing, the reader must also of necessity examine other
foundational binaries of literary form, including narrative structure and focalization. For
example, the novel is constructed around the two significant meetings of Clare Kendry and Irene
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Redfield. The book itself is separated into three parts; the encounter, the re-encounter and the
finale. From this, it is clear that there are two significant parts of this book--thesis and antithesis
if you will--and then an added synthesis to complete the structure. Obviously, the use of the
terms encounter and re-encounter further demonstrates an opposition and at the same time a
relationship between two meetings. Similarly, the last sentence of the first chapter of part three
of this novel is “But it didn’t matter” (95). Then, chapter two of part three opens with the words
“But it did matter. It mattered more than anything had ever mattered before” (96). What this
manifests is a textual dialectic, a formal combination of two ideas, which are opposed to each
other. These two opposite statements have been juxtaposed, relaxing their barrier and making it
fluidly synthetic as well. A more interesting manifestation of fluid formal binaries is evident in
the narrative focalization of the text. This novel is written in the third person, yet gives insight
into Irene’s character that would only come with a first person narration. Because of this, Irene
is often credited as the narrator of this book, even though the marking term of ‘I’ is almost never
used. In fact, at the conclusion of this novel, Irene faints while trying to utter this highly
problematic “I–” (114). Early in the novel, Irene receives a letter from Clare. Of this letter, it is
said “It had been, Irene noted, postmarked in New York the day before. Her brows came
together in a tiny frown” (9). This first sentence relays the internal thought process of Irene
while referring to her in third person. The second sentence is entirely in third person and thus
suggests a narrator other that Irene herself. For this reason Sullivan suggests that the title
Passing “hints at the subject’s disappearance in the narrative” (373). Irene’s account of the
encounter with Clare is provided, in third person, by the words “This is what Irene Redfield
remembered” (12). With this, the third person narrative of the encounter is encompassed within
the consciousness of Irene, which puts her in the position of textual narrator. At very least, such
movements break down the barrier between these two narrative positions and create a fluid
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binary, which expresses aspects of both third and first person narration. These reformed-as-fluid
literary binaries unveil the unstable formal foundation of Passing.
But I would argue that the most fundamental and significant literary binary that has its
parameters redefined to reveal the instability of this work is the binary of beginning and end.
The literary beginnings and ends of novels are obviously regarded as the start and the finish of
the work. Yet, like the thematic and formal binaries that I have already discussed, the barrier
between the two parts has been on occasion critically disputed. Milorad Pavic states “Let us put
the question of when, where, and in which part of the text the reading of a novel starts, and when
and where the reading of a novel ends” (142). He cites “a good example” of a precise and stable
novel as having an “unforgettable beginning” and “an undeniable and unforgettable end” (142)
and then observes “but this is not always the case with other novels” (142). John Young
supports this claim with his statement that “There is almost never such thing as a single, stable
text” (632). This is certainly the case with Nella Larsen’s Passing, for there is an obvious
temporal discrepancy between the narrative time line of this work and the linear structure of this
novel. The narrative time line actually begins in the second chapter of Passing after “This is
what Irene Redfield remembered” (12). The ending of the novel, disturbingly if metaphorically,
will make reference to a time “centuries after” the conclusion of this text (114).
In the first chapter of this book, Irene receives a letter from Clare that “was a piece with
all she knew of Clare Kendry” who was “stepping always on the edge of danger” (9). This letter
causes Irene to recall her encounter with Clare in Chicago, marking the beginning of the fictional
time line of this text. In this beginning, it was “a brilliant day, hot, with a brutal staring sun
pouring down rays that were like molten rain” (12). This was “A day on which the very outlines
of the buildings shuddered as if in protest at the heat (12). The reader immediately encounters
“wilting pedestrians” and “what small breeze there was seemed like the breath of a flame fanned
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by slow bellows” (12). Continually emphasized in the beginning of Passing is this intense heat.
While Irene was walking on the Chicago streets, “right before her smarting eyes” she witnessed a
stranger who “toppled over and became an inert crumpled heap on the scorching cement” (12).
Around “the lifeless figure a little crowd gathered” with questions of “Was the man dead, or only
faint” (12). It is noted that “Irene didn’t know and didn’t try to discover” (12) and instead
quickly “edged her way out of the increasing crowd” where she “for a moment stood fanning
herself” (12) until suddenly "aware that the whole street had a wobbly look, and realized that she
was about to faint” (12-13). Lightheaded, Irene then “lifted a wavering hand in the direction of a
cab” and duly “sank down on the hot leather seat” (13). “For a minute her thoughts were
nebulous” and then she informs the driver that “‘it’s tea I need. On a roof somewhere’” (13).
The ending of Passing, and of the life of Clare Kendry, begins on the sixth floor of an
apartment complex at a party in the home of Felise and Dave Freeland. At the party, Irene
comments “it seems dreadfully warm in here. Mind if I open this widow?” and then proceeds to
“open one of the long casement-windows” (110). Of course, the emphasis on how hot Irene is
evokes the beginning of the novel, which opened on “a brilliant day, hot, with a brutal staring
sun” (12). Abruptly, Clare’s husband, John Bellew, storms into the party. Having recently
discovered Clare’s secret of being part black, he confronts her with a shout of “So you’re a
damned dirty nigger!” (111). Rather than a dramatic reaction, “Clare stood at the window, as
composed as if everyone were not staring at her” (111). The narrator notes that “she seemed
unaware of any danger or uncaring” and that “there was even a faint smile on her full, red lips,
and in her shining eyes” (111). In particular “it was this smile that maddened Irene” and causes
her to run across the room towards Clare (111) where she lays her hand upon her friend with one
thought in her mind, that “she couldn’t have Clare Kendry cast aside” by her husband (111).
Yet, exactly what happens thereafter is unknown because “what happened next, Irene Redfield
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never afterwards allowed herself to remember” (111). All the reader is informed of is that “one
moment Clare had been there, a vital glowing thing, like a flame of red and gold” and “the next
she was gone” (111). Irene herself later reiterates that Clare “just fell” (113).
What is made clear in these descriptions of Clare’s fall is that it is in some sense out of
her own control; the event just happens with no clear explanation. But again this provides a
significant parallel with the beginning of this work; once again someone collapses onto a public
street and their falling is shrouded in uncertainty. While the cause of the man’s falling is
unknown to Irene because she quickly flees the scene, the reason for Clare’s falling being
uncertain is because Irene immediately represses this memory. Here, one might argue, in both
the beginning and the end of this text the cause of falling is unknown to Irene because she
wilfully choses to refuse this knowledge, either by rushing away or repression. In both cases,
Irene is unaware of the reason behind the fall because of a necessary distancing of herself, in the
beginning physically and in the end psychologically. Moreover, in both instances the person
who falls is instantaneously removed from the narrative. The man just “toppled over and became
an inert crumpled heap on the scorching cement” (12), Clare "just tumbled over and was gone
before you could say Jack Robinson” (113). The connection between the beginning and the end
is also reinforced by a syntactic similarity. For example, in the beginning of this novel we
discover “what small breeze there was seemed like a breath of a flame fanned by slow bellows”
(12). These same images are revisited in the conclusion. At the time of her fall, Clare is “a
flame of red and gold (111) with an irate John Bellew lurching towards her. Not only does her
approaching husband’s name resemble the word bellow, but at the party he actually "bellows" to
Clare “So you’re a damned dirty nigger”(111). Thus, in both the beginning and end of Passing,
we find an imagery of bellows moving towards a flame.
After Clare falls, everyone but Irene ran down to see if Clare was okay in “a frenzied rush
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of feet down long flights of stairs” (111). “Irene stayed behind” and “remained quite still, staring
at a ridiculous Japanese print on the wall” (111). As in the first falling incident, Irene chooses to
separate herself from the crowd. Yet, because she is so connected with this later event, she must
eventually make her way to the street. While on her way downstairs Irene had to “grasp hold of
the banister to save herself from pitching downwards” (113). As in the beginning, Irene almost
faints soon after the falling of another. How Irene “managed to make the rest of the journey
without fainting she never knew” (113). The questions she asks of herself are these: “what
would the others think? That Clare had fallen? That she had deliberately leaned
backwards?”(111). She wonders “What if Clare was not dead?”(113). Similarly, in the
beginning of the novel, a fainting was surrounded by questions of whether the collapsed man had
fainted or was dead. When she reached the street “she came upon the others, surrounded by a
little circle of strangers” (113). Like the street scene in the beginning of this novel, Irene is once
again part of a huddled crowd around an unconscious body on a city street. If Irene again feels
the desire “to turn and rush” away, she is too much a part of this situation to do as she had done
before. If, in the first incident, she had almost fainted, Irene was able to avoid this by rushing
away “with a quick perception of the need for immediate safety” (13). In the repetition of the
incident, of the trauma one might say, Irene almost faints once again, but because she separated
herself from the group that ran downstairs, has been able to pull herself together. But although
Irene is able to mentally distance herself from the causes of Clare's falling, she is now unable to
physically separate herself from the huddled group outside and, losing that sense of "safety" and
feeling “her quaking knees gave way under her” she does indeed faint (114). The novel ends in
the darkness Irene so fears.
Curiously, what renders the ending of Passing even more ambiguous is the fact that, as
Young notes, “the ending is actually unknowable, because the original last paragraph
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disappeared from the first edition’s third printing, and no extant evidence can explain this
change.” The Penguin Classics copy of Passing, cited in this paper, comes with a note that
claims “The text of this edition is based on the first edition, first printing of Passing” (xxxv).
This suggests that the unstable ending paragraph is intact in this version. Moreover, in the before
mentioned note in the Penguin Classics copy of Passing, it is stated that “there is no indication
that Nella Larsen herself recommended, sought, or approved the excision of the final
paragraph”(xxxv). Yet, Mark Madigan claims that this final paragraph was actually omitted from
the third printing in accordance with Larsen’s instructions, apparently to add ambiguity and
suspense to the ending. All that is reinforced by these contradicting accounts is Young’s
statement that Passing is “one of the most widely read New Negro Renaissance in recent years,
but no one really knows how it ends” (632).
But the unstable provenance of the ending paragraph only further deconstructs the key
literary binary of the beginning and the end. Indeed, Young’s “larger claim” is that Passing “has
no ‘definite’ ending, and so any reading should account for this level of textual instability within
its broader response” (639). The consequence of an unstable and fluid text is that it puts the
reader “face to face with questions we cannot answer, and with a history we cannot write, thus
directing them to confront such gaps in the literary past and to address them openly in the future”
(652). In the case of the textual history of Passing what this means is that the questioning of an
uncertain and unstable literary text forces the reader into a better comprehension of the instability
of the related histories of race, sexuality and class. Young further explains the significance of
this “fragile text” by noting how that fragility produces a dual audience: “the gullible audience
becomes those readers who do not question its textual status, and the knowledgeable audience
those who recognize its material uncertainties” (652). Young goes on to remark, pointedly, that
“an inauthentic sense of textual stability betrays a historical attitude that has not privileged the
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archival records of writers like Larsen as worth preserving” (652). In this way, not only are the
thematic binaries of Passing thoroughly interlinked as previously discussed: these oppositions
are also inextricable from the other binaries of literary form. This would have to include
Passing’s later audience reception, because, as Larsen herself seems to have realized, in order to
fully understand the fluid instability of race, sexuality and class, readers must acknowledge the
more fundamental fluidity of history itself, and come to some deeper comprehension of a past
where an end may, in fact, contain nothing less than its own beginning.