The Character Analysis Of Irene's Identity In Passing

Irene spends a great deal of time in Passing struggling with her opinion of Clare. While she makes Clare out to be a horrid person who disregards other’s feelings, Irene continually interacts with her. This double standard also appears in Irene’s view of passing. Even though she condemns Clare for taking part in passing, Irene, herself, will occasionally take part in the act of passing. Irene dislikes for passing can be explained by her struggle with her identity, and this struggle with her identity makes Irene into an unreliable narrator because all of Irene’s actions are based on how she believes she should act, and her opinion on how she identifies conflicts with how she presents herself and other characters. Throughout Passing, Irene clings to her identity as a black woman by living where she grew up in New York and marrying a black man, and this need to be a black woman …show more content…
Irene simply becomes worried that the woman staring at her will realize she is a Negro (Larsen 7). When the word “passing” is first introduced on page 15, the word is used to show Irene’s curiosity about passing as if she never takes part in the act (Larsen), but the fact that she can pass may explain why she clings so hard to her black identity. The reader is told that “never, when she was alone, had they even remotely seemed to suspect she was a Negro” (Larsen 8). If Irene can only be identified as black when surrounded by other black people, Irene would most likely desire to stay near people of her race. This desire can explain her fondness for her husband’s skin color shown when she comments how Brian’s would be “ordinary looking” if it were not for “the beauty of his skin” (Larsen 40). Irene fails to mention the fact that she was passing at Drayton because she could not be blamed for the fact that the white people could not tell the difference. Because she thinks of herself