Passing (2004), by Nella Larsen, is a somber novel that is set in the 1925 to 1928-time period in Chicago and Harlem that explores the interactions between two women, Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry who are racial passing. Racial passing in the context of this book means that a person of one race can deceive others into thinking that they are of another race. This action allows for characters to adopt certain roles or identities; in which they can then be socially accepted by the rest of society. The novel deals with bi-racial characters that live life’s with lies and deception about who they are, specifically Irene and Clare. Irene and Clare struggle with crisis of identity throughout the novel. Crisis of identity refers to identity as something
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For example, it effected where they could go. Back in the 1925 to 1928 there was a lot of segregation that limited people’s access to different parts of the city, buildings, etc.… Black people were not allowed in the area for so called white people and vice versa, except on special occasions like the Negro Welfare League dance. In the re-encounter chapter Irene explains to Clare that a white couple like Hugh and Bianca Wentworth were allowed to come to this event because it, “… was the year 1927 in the city of New York, and hundreds of white people of Hugh Wentworth’s type came to affairs in Harlem, more all the time. So many that Brain said: “Pretty soon the coloured people won’t be allowed in at all, or will have to sit in Jim Crowed sections” (54). Other than exceptions of those kinds of events, most colored people were not allowed to be in the same areas as …show more content…
She was someone who felt the need to hide her black side. She felt the need to hide that part of herself, because of her husband John Bellew, who was a big time racist that did not know that his wife was black. As Irene put it Clare, “was someone caught between two allegiances, different, yet the same. Herself. Her race. Race! The thing that bound and suffocated her. Whatever steps she took, or if she took none at all, something would be crushed. A person or the race. Clare, herself, or the race. Or, it might be, all three” (78). Clare’s ‘passing’ and her desire to reenter parts of her black experience was her decision. In the end of the novel before she dies, the readers can assume that Clare truly believed that her true identity was white, because she suppressed her black side for so long. Also in the final scene before she passed away, she wore a red gown that was symbolic of her identity
For example, it effected where they could go. Back in the 1925 to 1928 there was a lot of segregation that limited people’s access to different parts of the city, buildings, etc.… Black people were not allowed in the area for so called white people and vice versa, except on special occasions like the Negro Welfare League dance. In the re-encounter chapter Irene explains to Clare that a white couple like Hugh and Bianca Wentworth were allowed to come to this event because it, “… was the year 1927 in the city of New York, and hundreds of white people of Hugh Wentworth’s type came to affairs in Harlem, more all the time. So many that Brain said: “Pretty soon the coloured people won’t be allowed in at all, or will have to sit in Jim Crowed sections” (54). Other than exceptions of those kinds of events, most colored people were not allowed to be in the same areas as …show more content…
She was someone who felt the need to hide her black side. She felt the need to hide that part of herself, because of her husband John Bellew, who was a big time racist that did not know that his wife was black. As Irene put it Clare, “was someone caught between two allegiances, different, yet the same. Herself. Her race. Race! The thing that bound and suffocated her. Whatever steps she took, or if she took none at all, something would be crushed. A person or the race. Clare, herself, or the race. Or, it might be, all three” (78). Clare’s ‘passing’ and her desire to reenter parts of her black experience was her decision. In the end of the novel before she dies, the readers can assume that Clare truly believed that her true identity was white, because she suppressed her black side for so long. Also in the final scene before she passed away, she wore a red gown that was symbolic of her identity