Passing

What happens when a carefully constructed identity begins to slip out of your control? 'Passing' by Nella Larsen is a classic modernist and Harlem Renaissance novel that explores race, identity, friendship, desire, and the dangerous pressures of social expectations. First published in 1929, this concise but psychologically rich work follows two Black women whose lives take very different paths because of the way they are perceived by society.

The story centers on Irene Redfield, a respectable woman living comfortably in Harlem with her husband and children. Her seemingly settled life is disrupted when she unexpectedly encounters Clare Kendry, a woman she knew years earlier. Clare is light-skinned enough to “pass” as white, and she has chosen to live on the other side of the racial divide, even marrying a white man who does not know her true background. Their reunion brings old memories to the surface and gradually draws Irene into Clare’s complicated world.

Clare is intelligent, beautiful, confident, and deeply aware of the possibilities that her appearance gives her. Yet beneath her glamorous life is a constant tension: she must conceal an essential part of herself from the people closest to her. Irene, meanwhile, has chosen a different kind of security by openly living as a Black woman within Harlem’s community. Although she is unsettled by Clare’s choices, she is also fascinated by her friend’s boldness and the freedom—and danger—that comes with crossing racial boundaries.

As their relationship develops, Larsen examines the complicated emotions between the two women. Friendship becomes intertwined with envy, attraction, suspicion, and insecurity, while the boundaries between racial identity and personal identity become increasingly difficult to maintain. The novel also explores marriage, motherhood, class, and the limited choices available to women in the early twentieth century.

'Passing' is powerful precisely because Larsen avoids simple answers. Instead, she creates an atmosphere of quiet tension in which ordinary conversations and social encounters can carry enormous consequences. With its elegant prose and penetrating psychological insight, the novel invites readers to think about how much of ourselves we reveal, how much we hide, and what we risk when we try to live according to someone else’s expectations. As Irene and Clare’s lives become increasingly entangled, the question is not simply who is passing, but what each woman is willing to sacrifice to become the person she wants to be.

Nella Larsen (1891-1964) was the author of two novels and several short stories. She received a Guggenheim fellowship to write a third novel in 1930 but, unable to find a publisher for it, she disappeared from the literary scene and worked as a nurse.

Passing by Nella Larsen is a powerful and psychologically subtle novel about race, identity, desire, marriage, social expectations, and the dangerous consequences of living between two worlds. Published in 1929 during the Harlem Renaissance, the novel follows two Black women, Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry, both of whom are light-skinned enough to “pass” as white. Through their complicated relationship, Larsen explores the emotional cost of hiding one’s racial identity and the difficult choices created by a society built on racial discrimination.

The story begins when Irene Redfield, a respectable Black woman living in Harlem, unexpectedly encounters Clare Kendry in a hotel in Chicago. Irene is there temporarily, and because she is light-skinned, she is also mistaken for a white woman. Clare, however, is deliberately passing as white. Irene recognizes her former childhood friend immediately, but Clare is delighted by the meeting. The encounter brings back memories of their shared childhood and reveals how differently the two women have chosen to live their adult lives.

Clare has married John Bellew, a wealthy white man who believes that she is white. He is openly racist and frequently makes cruel remarks about Black people, ironically unaware that his own wife is Black. Clare has never told him the truth about her background. Irene finds this disturbing, not only because Clare is deceiving her husband but because she is placing herself in a potentially dangerous situation. Yet Clare seems almost fascinated by the risk. She has deliberately entered a white world that offers her wealth, comfort, and social privilege.

Irene, in contrast, has chosen to live openly as a Black woman. She is married to Brian Redfield and has two sons. Her family belongs to the Black middle class in Harlem, and Irene takes pride in the community around her. She values stability, respectability, and security. Her life may not be perfect, but it is structured and familiar. Unlike Clare, she has no desire to permanently abandon her racial identity.

The meeting between the two women gradually becomes more complicated. Clare is intensely attracted to the life Irene represents. Although Clare enjoys the material advantages of passing as white, she misses the Black community and longs to reconnect with the world she left behind. Irene becomes the doorway through which Clare can return to Harlem without exposing herself to the dangers of revealing her secret to her husband.

Clare begins visiting Irene and her friends in Harlem. She becomes increasingly involved in their social life, attending gatherings where she can openly participate as a Black woman. These visits give her a sense of belonging that her life with John cannot provide. At the same time, Irene becomes increasingly uncomfortable with Clare’s presence. Clare’s beauty, confidence, and emotional intensity attract attention wherever she goes. Irene worries about the effect Clare may have on her own family and marriage.

The novel becomes especially tense because Clare’s relationship with Irene is difficult to define. There is affection between them, but also jealousy, fascination, suspicion, and competition. Irene is drawn to Clare even as she distrusts her. Clare, meanwhile, seems to depend on Irene for access to a part of herself that she has suppressed. Larsen deliberately leaves some aspects of their relationship emotionally ambiguous, allowing readers to sense feelings that the characters themselves may not fully acknowledge.

Irene’s marriage to Brian is another important source of tension. Brian is intelligent, restless, and deeply frustrated by racial injustice. He wants to move to Brazil with the family, partly because he believes their children might experience less racial prejudice there. Irene strongly opposes the idea. She wants to protect the stable life she has built in Harlem. Their disagreement reveals a deeper difference between them: Brian is more willing to challenge social conventions, while Irene places enormous value on security and control.

Irene also becomes increasingly suspicious of Clare’s interest in Brian. She begins to believe that Clare may be attracted to her husband. Whether her suspicions are entirely justified remains uncertain, and this uncertainty is central to the novel’s psychological power. Larsen does not simply tell the reader what is true. Instead, she shows events through Irene’s consciousness, making us experience her doubts, fears, jealousy, and uncertainty.

Clare’s presence gradually threatens the carefully organized life Irene has constructed. She is unpredictable where Irene is cautious, passionate where Irene is controlled, and willing to take risks that Irene considers dangerous. Clare seems to possess a freedom that Irene both admires and fears. At the same time, Clare’s freedom is an illusion because her entire existence depends upon maintaining a secret.

The racial dimension of the story becomes increasingly dangerous when John Bellew discovers that Clare has been spending time with Black people. He has no idea that his wife is Black and continues to express racist opinions in front of her. The irony is painful: Clare must listen silently to insults directed at people who share her own racial identity. Her secrecy protects her privileged life, but it also forces her to live inside a constant contradiction.

Eventually, the tension reaches its climax during a gathering at which John unexpectedly appears. He has discovered Clare’s racial identity and confronts her. What follows is chaotic and frightening. Clare moves toward a window, and then she falls from the building to her death. Larsen deliberately leaves the exact circumstances uncertain. Irene is close to Clare at the crucial moment, but the novel never gives a completely clear answer about whether Clare fell accidentally, was pushed, or deliberately took her own life.

This ambiguity is one of the novel’s greatest strengths. Irene’s thoughts immediately become defensive and confused. Her behavior suggests that she may have played a role in Clare’s death, but she never openly admits what happened. Larsen leaves the reader to confront the uncomfortable possibility that Irene’s jealousy, fear, and desire to protect her marriage may have influenced the tragedy.

The title Passing refers not only to Clare’s racial identity but also to the many ways people perform versions of themselves in order to survive. Irene, too, “passes” in broader emotional and social ways. She presents herself as a secure wife and mother even when her marriage is troubled and her inner life is full of anxiety. Clare passes as white, but she also passes through different social worlds, never completely belonging to any of them.

Ultimately, Passing is a novel about the price of denying parts of oneself and the dangers of trying to control how others see us. Larsen shows that race is not merely a matter of appearance; it shapes relationships, opportunities, fears, and social power. Clare’s tragedy comes partly from the impossible contradictions of her life, while Irene’s psychological crisis comes from her desperate desire to preserve order in a world that cannot be controlled.

The novel remains compelling because Larsen refuses to offer simple moral judgments. Clare is neither merely a victim nor merely a reckless woman. Irene is neither simply innocent nor clearly guilty. Both women are shaped by a racist society that forces them to make difficult choices. In the end, Passing asks a haunting question: how much of ourselves can we hide, change, or deny before the boundaries between our different identities begin to collapse?

Chapter 1

It was the last letter in Irene Redfield’s little pile of morning mail. After her other ordinary and clearly directed letters the long envelope of thin Italian paper with its almost illegible scrawl seemed out of place and alien. And there was, too, something mysterious and slightly furtive about it. A thin sly thing which bore no return address to betray the sender. Not that she hadn’t immediately known who its sender was. Some two years ago she had one very like it in outward appearance. Furtive, but yet in some peculiar, determined way a little flaunting. Purple ink. Foreign paper of extraordinary size.

It had been, Irene noted, postmarked in New York the day before. Her brows came together in a tiny frown. The frown, however, was more from perplexity than from annoyance; though there was in her thoughts an element of both. She was wholly unable to comprehend such an attitude towards danger as she was sure the letter’s contents would reveal; and she disliked the idea of opening and reading it.

This, she reflected, was of a piece with all that she knew of Clare Kendry. Stepping always on the edge of danger. Always aware, but not drawing back or turning aside. Certainly not because of any alarms or feeling of outrage on the part of others.

And for a swift moment Irene Redfield seemed to see a pale small girl sitting on a ragged blue sofa, sewing pieces of bright red cloth together, while her drunken father, a tall, powerfully built man, raged threateningly up and down the shabby room, bellowing curses and making spasmodic lunges at her which were not the less frightening because they were, for the most part. Ineffectual. Sometimes he did manage to reach her. But only the fact that the child had edged herself and her poor sewing over to the farthermost corner of the sofa suggested that she was in any way perturbed by this menace to herself and her work.

Clare had known well enough that it was unsafe to take a portion of the dollar that was her weekly wage for the doing of many errands for the dressmaker who lived on the top floor of the building of which Bob Kendry was janitor. But that knowledge had not deterred her. She wanted to go to her Sunday school’s picnic, and she had made up her mind to wear a new dress. So, In spite of certain unpleasantness and possible danger, she had taken the money to buy the material for that pathetic little red frock.

There had been, even in those days, nothing sacrificial In Clare Kendry’s idea of life, no allegiance beyond her own immediate desire. She was selfish, and cold, and hard. And yet she had, too, a strange capacity of transforming warmth and passion, verging sometimes almost on theatrical heroics.

Irene, who was a year or more older than Clare, remembered the day that Bob Kendry had been brought home dead, killed in a silly saloon-fight. Clare, who was at that time a scant fifteen years old, had just stood there with her lips pressed together, her thin arms folded across her narrow chest, staring down at the familiar pasty-white face of her parent with a sort of disdain in her slanting black eyes. For a very long time she had stood like that, silent and staring. Then, quite suddenly, she had given way to a torrent of weeping, swaying her thin body, tearing at her bright hair, and stamping her small feet. The outburst had ceased as suddenly as it had begun. She glanced quickly about the bare room, taking everyone in, even the two policemen, in a sharp look of flashing scorn. And, in the next instant, she had turned and vanished through the door.

Seen across the long stretch of years, the thing had more the appearance of an outpouring of pent-up fury than of an overflow of grief for her dead father; though she had been, Irene admitted, fond enough of him In her own rather catlike way.

Catlike. Certainly that was the word which best described Clare Kendry, if any single word could describe her—she was hard and apparently without feeling at all; sometimes she was affectionate and rashly Impulsive. And there was about her an amazing soft malice, hidden well away until provoked. Then she was capable of scratching, and very effectively too. Or, driven to anger, she would fight with a ferocity and impetuousness that disregarded or forgot any danger; superior strength, numbers, or other unfavourable circumstances. How savagely she had clawed those boys the day they had hooted her parent and sung a derisive rhyme, of their own composing, which pointed out certain eccentricities in his careening gait! And how deliberately she had!

Irene brought her thoughts back to the present, to the letter from Clare Kendry that she still held unopened in her hand. With a little feeling of apprehension, she very slowly cut the envelope, drew out the folded sheets, spread them, and began to read.

It was, she saw at once, what she had expected since learning from the postmark that Clare was in the city. An extravagantly phrased wish to see her again. Well, she needn’t and wouldn’t, Irene told herself, accede to that. Nor would she assist Clare to realize her foolish desire to return for a moment to that life which long ago, and of her own choice, she had left behind her.

She ran through the letter, puzzling out, as best she could, the carelessly formed words or making instinctive guesses at them.

“... For I am lonely, so lonely... cannot help longing to be with you again, as I have never longed for anything before; and I have wanted many things in my life... You can’t know how in this pale life of mine I am all the time seeing the bright pictures of that other that I once thought I was glad to be free of... It’s like an ache, a pain that never ceases...” Sheets upon thin sheets of it. And ending finally with, “and it’s your fault, ‘Rene dear. At least partly. For I wouldn’t now, perhaps, have this terrible, this wild desire if I hadn’t seen you that time in Chicago...”

Brilliant red patches flamed in Irene Redfield’s warm olive cheeks.

“That time in Chicago.” The words stood out from among the many paragraphs of other words, bringing with them a clear, sharp remembrance, in which even now, after two years, humiliation, resentment, and rage were mingled.

Chapter 2

This is what Irene Redfield remembered.

Chicago. August. A brilliant day, hot, with a brutal staring sun pouring down rays that were like molten rain. A day on which the very outlines of the buildings shuddered as if in protest at the heat. Quivering lines sprang up from baked pavements and wriggled along the shining car-tracks. The automobiles parked at the kerbs were a dancing blaze, and the glass of the shop-windows 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.

It was on that day of all others that Irene set out to shop for the things which she had promised to take home from Chicago to her two small sons, Brian junior and Theodore. Characteristically, she had put it off until only a few crowded days remained of her long visit. And only this sweltering one was free of engagements till the evening.

Without too much trouble she had got the mechanical aeroplane for Junior. But the drawing-book, for which Ted had so gravely and insistently given her precise directions, had sent her in and out of five shops without success.

it was while she was on her way to a sixth place that right before her smarting eyes a man toppled over and became an inert crumpled heap on the scorching cement. About the lifeless figure a little crowd gathered. Was the man dead, or only faint? someone asked her. But Irene didn’t know and didn’t try to discover. She edged her way out of the increasing crowd, feeling disagreeably damp and sticky and soiled from contact with so many sweating bodies.

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 safety, she lifted a wavering hand In the direction of a cab parked 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.

There was that little grating sound of the clutch being slipped in as the man put the car in gear and slid deftly out into the boiling traffic. Reviving under the warm breeze stirred up by the moving cab, Irene made some small attempts to repair the damage that the heat and crowds had done to her appearance.

All too soon the rattling vehicle shot towards the sidewalk and stood still. The driver sprang out and opened the door before the hotel’s decorated attendant could reach it. She got out, and thanking him smilingly as well as in a more substantial manner for his kind helpfulness and understanding, went in through the Drayton’s wide doors.

Stepping out of the elevator that had brought her to the roof, she was led to a table just in front of a long window whose gently moving curtains suggested a cool breeze. It was, she thought, like being wafted upward on a magic carpet to another world, pleasant, quiet, and strangely remote from the sizzling one that she had left below.

The tea, when it came, was all that she had desired and expected. In fact, so much was it what she had desired and expected that after the first deep cooling drink she was able to forget it, only now and then sipping, a little absently, from the tall green glass, while she surveyed the room about her or looked out over some lower buildings at the bright unstirred blue of the lake reaching away to an undetected horizon.

She had been gazing down for some time at the specks of cars and people creeping about in streets, and thinking how silly they looked, when on taking up her glass she was surprised to find it empty at last. She asked for more tea and while she waited, began to recall the happenings of the day and to wonder what she was to do about Ted and his book. Why was it that almost invariably he wanted something that was difficult or impossible to get? Like his father. Forever wanting something that he couldn’t have.

Presently there were voices, a man’s booming one and a woman’s slightly husky. A waiter passed her, followed by a sweetly scented woman in a fluttering dress of green chiffon whose mingled pattern of narcissuses, jonquils, and hyacinths was a reminder of pleasantly chill spring days. Behind her there was a man, very red in the face, who was mopping his neck and forehead with a big crumpled handkerchief.

“Oh dear I” Irene groaned, rasped by annoyance, for after a little discussion and commotion they had stopped at the very next table. She had been alone there at the window and it had been so satisfyingly quiet. Now, of course, they would chatter.

But no. Only the woman sat down. The man remained standing, abstractedly pinching the knot of his bright blue tie. Across the small space that separated the two tables his voice carried clearly.

“See you later, then,” he declared, looking down at the woman. There was pleasure in his tones and a smile on his face.

His companion’s lips parted in some answer, but her words were blurred by the little intervening distance and the medley of noises floating up from the streets below. They didn’t reach Irene. But she noted the peculiar caressing smile that accompanied them.

The man said: “Well, I suppose I’d better,” and smiled again, and said good-bye, and left.

An attractive-looking woman, was Irene’s opinion, with those dark, almost black, eyes and that wide mouth like a scarlet flower against the Ivory of her skin. Nice clothes too, just right for the weather, thin and cool without being mussy, as summer things were so apt to be.

A waiter was taking her order. Irene saw her smile up at him as she murmured something—thanks, maybe. It was an odd sort of smile. Irene couldn’t quite define it, but she was sure that she would have classed it, coming from another woman, as being just a shade too provocative for a waiter. About this one, however, there was something that made her hesitate to name it that. A certain impression of assurance, perhaps.

The waiter came back with the order. Irene watched her spread out her napkin, saw the silver spoon in the white hand slit the dull gold of the melon. Then, conscious that she had been staring, she looked quickly away.

Her mind returned to her own affairs. She had settled, definitely, the problem of the proper one of two frocks for the bridge party that night, in rooms whose atmosphere would be so thick and hot that every breath would be like breathing soup. The dress decided, her thoughts had gone back to the snag of Ted’s book, her unseeing eyes far away on the lake, when by some sixth sense she was acutely aware that someone was watching her.

Very slowly she looked around, and into the dark eyes of the woman in the green frock at the next table. But she evidently failed to realize that such intense interest as she was showing might be embarrassing, and continued to stare. Her demeanour was that of one who with utmost singleness of mind and purpose was determined to impress firmly and accurately each detail of Irene’s features upon her memory for all time, nor showed the slightest trace of disconcertment at having been detected in her steady scrutiny.

Instead, it was Irene who was put out. Feeling her colour heighten under the continued inspection, she said her eyes down. What, she wondered, could be the reason for such persistent attention? Had she. In her haste in the taxi, put her hat on backwards? Guardedly she felt at it. No. Perhaps there 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?

Again she looked up, and for a moment her brown eyes politely returned the stare of the other’s black ones, which never for an instant fell or wavered. Irene made a little mental shrug. Oh well, let her look! She tried to treat the woman and her watching with indifference, but she couldn’t. All her efforts to ignore her, it, were futile. She stole another glance. Still looking. What strange languorous eyes she had!

And gradually there rose in Irene a small inner disturbance, odious and hatefully familiar. She laughed softly, but her eyes flashed.

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.

Suddenly her small fright Increased. Her neighbour had risen and was coming towards her. What was going to happen now?

“Pardon me,” the woman said pleasantly, *’but I think I know you.” Her slightly husky voice held a dubious note.

Looking up at her, Irene’s suspicions and fears vanished. There was no mistaking the friendliness of that smile or resisting its charm. Instantly she surrendered to it and smiled too, as she said: “I’m afraid you’re mistaken.”

“Why, of course, I know you!” the other exclaimed. “Don’t tell me you’re not Irene Westover. Or do they still call you ‘Rene?”

In the brief second before her answer, Irene tried vainly to recall where and when this woman could have known her. There, in Chicago. And before her marriage. That much was plain. High school? College? Y. W. C. A. committees? High school, most likely. What white girls had she known well enough to have been familiarly addressed as ‘Rene by them? The woman before her didn’t fit her memory of any of them. Who was she?

“Yes, I’m Irene Westover. And though nobody calls me ‘Rene any more, it’s good to hear the name again. And you—” She hesitated, ashamed that she could not remember, and hoping that the sentence would be finished for her.

“Don’t. You know me? Not really,’ Rene?”

“I’m sorry, but just at the minute I can’t seem to place you.”

Irene studied the lovely creature standing beside her for some clue to her identity. Who could she be? Where and when had they met? And through her perplexity there came the thought that the trick which her memory had played her was for some reason more gratifying than disappointing to her old acquaintance, that she didn’t mind not being recognized.

And, too, Irene felt that she was just about to remember her. For about the woman was some quality, an intangible something, too vague to define, too remote to seize, but which was, to Irene Redfield, very familiar. And that voice. Surely she’d heard those husky tones somewhere before. Perhaps before time, contact, or something had been at them, making them into a voice remotely suggesting England. Ah! Could it have been in Europe that they had met? ‘Rene. No.

Perhaps,” Irene began, “you—”

The woman laughed, a lovely laugh, a small sequence of notes that was like a trill and also like the ringing of a delicate bell fashioned of a precious metal, a tinkling.

Irene drew a quick sharp breath. “Clare!” she exclaimed, “not really Clare Kendry?”

So great was her astonishment that she had started to rise.

“No, no, don’t get up,” Clare Kendry commanded, and sat down herself. “You’ve simply got to stay and talk. We’ll have something more. Tea? Fancy meeting you here! it’s simply too, too lucky!”

“it’s awfully surprising,” Irene told her, and, seeing the change In Clare’s smile, knew that she had revealed a corner of her own thoughts. But she only said: “I’d never in this world have known you if you hadn’t laughed. You are changed, you know. And yet, in a way, you’re just the same.”