The Passing By Nella Larsen Summary

The book I have chosen for this essay is the Passing by Nella Larsen. Passing is Larsen’s second as well as her last book given that she stopped pursuing her writing career due to others accusing her of plagiarism. Though she was acquitted of such allegations, Larsen stopped writing due to a high level of embarrassment. Passing deals with the topic of race; particularly race being used in one’s decision on whether or not to acknowledge one part of their race. Then, one would make the conscious decision to engage due to practice of racial passing. For this book, a main character, Irene Redfield focuses on her childhood friend’s, Clare Kendry, decision to pass as a white woman in society, even though Clare is (as well as Irene are) also black. As a result, as Irene is attempting to discover her own identification, it is evident that there are ramifications of such actions in the eyes of Nella Larsen. It is important for readers to take this perspective and have it applied to the overall text because it touches basis on how deeply a person is impacted, and is impacting others, as he or she goes through this intense process of learning to identifying him or herself. Therefore, this essay sets out to exploring the psychological and mental …show more content…
For Irene, it was during her battle of choosing to identify herself with not only her marriage, but also with her life. This is seen through Irene’s “feeling of being 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 as well” (Larsen 24-25). This quote strongly represents how Irene must go through this internal process of identifying herself, but at the same time, having to push others away in order to gain a better sense of who she is and how she identifies