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In Passing, Larsen presents two childhood friends reunited after years of separation, during which they have come to approach their race in wildly divergent ways. While Irene has settled into the life of a doctor's wife and socialite in Harlem, surrounded by a community of other black people, Clare presents herself as white and has married a white man, keeping her background a secret from him.
Larsen is an astute observer of social dynamics, from the ruthlessness of women appraising one another over tea, to the voyeurism of white people consuming and profiting from black culture, and she describes these vividly and with great wit. People tend to talk about how Passing tackles race, but they don't often highlight the fact that it's fun to read.
Some readers/critics also miss another aspect of the book: the thread of gay subtext that runs throughout the plot and stitches together every interaction between Irene and Clare. Irene is clearly as taken with Clare's beauty as she is threatened by it, and without spoiling the plot too much, I'll say that I think that her feelings of being threatened are a projection of her own desire for Clare. I recognized much of Irene's preoccupation with Clare mingled with resentment of her because I've felt similarly about women when I was in the closet. Sometimes it's feels easier and safer to decide to hate someone to whom you are attracted, because it insulates you from your real feelings and from the possibility of having to act upon them.
Irene's husband, Brian, also strikes me as being a closeted gay man. He and Irene share neither a bedroom nor an acknowledgement of Clare's attractiveness, and his restlessness (seen in his desire to move to Brazil, apparently more permissive than the US both in terms of race and sexuality) and his dissatisfaction (he bitterly describes sex as a joke) read as evidence of suppressed homosexual desire.
Taken this way, Larsen examines passing not only in terms of race (passing for white), but in terms of sexual orientation (passing for straight).
In terms of race, Larsen acknowledges and plays with stratification not only between black and white, but within the black community. Her characters inhabit various positions depending on how light or dark they are, and respond to how they are racialized in different ways. So much depends upon context; for example, Irene is perceived as white in the context of Clare's racist husband's home, sitting alongside Clare, but the same person perceives Irene as black when he sees her walking arm-in-arm with her darker-skinned friend. This mutability of categorization highlights emphasizes that race is socially constructed.
Even so, Irene becomes increasingly torn between her loyalties to Clare as a friend and her loyalties to her race, which I read as the social order to which she belongs and the connections that she has cultivated. Clare has divorced herself from such a community, but desires proximity to black culture, which she accesses with increasing frequency through Irene's home and friend group. It was unclear to me if her motivations are fully articulated. There is some implication that she is acting out of shallow curiosity or a voyeurism similar to that of white visitors, but I also think it's uncharitable to assume that anyone in a situation of hiding their history and background in favor of moving through an assumed culture would not long for moments of authenticity, despite the benefits conferred upon them in exchange for rejecting their original culture. Regardless of her motivations, Clare's actions do endanger both Irene and herself, resulting in a sudden and tragic conclusion (though not the one I was expecting).
I have mixed feelings about that conclusion. While I appreciate the subversion of expectation--what I saw coming would have been pretty stereotypical--it does conveniently absolve Larsen from resolving some plot threads.
Read with my girlfriend (whose perspectives, as a black woman who is often perceived as white, I'm interested in hearing) in preparation for watching the upcoming film adaptation.
Larsen is an astute observer of social dynamics, from the ruthlessness of women appraising one another over tea, to the voyeurism of white people consuming and profiting from black culture, and she describes these vividly and with great wit. People tend to talk about how Passing tackles race, but they don't often highlight the fact that it's fun to read.
Some readers/critics also miss another aspect of the book: the thread of gay subtext that runs throughout the plot and stitches together every interaction between Irene and Clare. Irene is clearly as taken with Clare's beauty as she is threatened by it, and without spoiling the plot too much, I'll say that I think that her feelings of being threatened are a projection of her own desire for Clare. I recognized much of Irene's preoccupation with Clare mingled with resentment of her because I've felt similarly about women when I was in the closet. Sometimes it's feels easier and safer to decide to hate someone to whom you are attracted, because it insulates you from your real feelings and from the possibility of having to act upon them.
Irene's husband, Brian, also strikes me as being a closeted gay man. He and Irene share neither a bedroom nor an acknowledgement of Clare's attractiveness, and his restlessness (seen in his desire to move to Brazil, apparently more permissive than the US both in terms of race and sexuality) and his dissatisfaction (he bitterly describes sex as a joke) read as evidence of suppressed homosexual desire.
Taken this way, Larsen examines passing not only in terms of race (passing for white), but in terms of sexual orientation (passing for straight).
In terms of race, Larsen acknowledges and plays with stratification not only between black and white, but within the black community. Her characters inhabit various positions depending on how light or dark they are, and respond to how they are racialized in different ways. So much depends upon context; for example, Irene is perceived as white in the context of Clare's racist husband's home, sitting alongside Clare, but the same person perceives Irene as black when he sees her walking arm-in-arm with her darker-skinned friend. This mutability of categorization highlights emphasizes that race is socially constructed.
Even so, Irene becomes increasingly torn between her loyalties to Clare as a friend and her loyalties to her race, which I read as the social order to which she belongs and the connections that she has cultivated. Clare has divorced herself from such a community, but desires proximity to black culture, which she accesses with increasing frequency through Irene's home and friend group. It was unclear to me if her motivations are fully articulated. There is some implication that she is acting out of shallow curiosity or a voyeurism similar to that of white visitors, but I also think it's uncharitable to assume that anyone in a situation of hiding their history and background in favor of moving through an assumed culture would not long for moments of authenticity, despite the benefits conferred upon them in exchange for rejecting their original culture. Regardless of her motivations, Clare's actions do endanger both Irene and herself, resulting in a sudden and tragic conclusion (though not the one I was expecting).
I have mixed feelings about that conclusion. While I appreciate the subversion of expectation--what I saw coming would have been pretty stereotypical--it does conveniently absolve Larsen from resolving some plot threads.
Read with my girlfriend (whose perspectives, as a black woman who is often perceived as white, I'm interested in hearing) in preparation for watching the upcoming film adaptation.