Identity in “Passing”

Posted in Articles, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Passing on 2012-12-19 17:15Z by Steven

Identity in “Passing”

Allison Tetreault, Journalist and Student
November 2011

Allison Tetreault

Nella Larsen’s Passing destabilizes the traditional conception of ethnic, racial, and gender integrity, revolutionizing the very idea of an accepted definition of identity. By developing unstable characters, Larsen conveys how easy it is to lose one’s sense of self. Clare Kendry, who breaks the tragic mulatto stereotype, never has the chance to align to a particular race because of her untimely death, while Irene Redfield, who becomes obsessed with and jealous of Clare, single-handedly destroys her own sense of self by committing psychological suicide. Nella Larsen herself wrestles with identity, as she was raised in an all-white household after her father, a black West Indian, disappeared from her life; her own struggle identifying with other people leads to a modernist expression of delusion, uncertainty and ambiguity in her novellas. While overtly discussing racial passing, the novella also covertly analyzes gender passing, or a person’s ability to reify society’s expectations of a certain gender through physical and behavioral cues. Irene’s relationship with Clare is based on desire, jealousy, and obsession, and she develops an infatuation for her that combats societal expectations. In addition, Larsen attempts to pass not only her characters, but herself as a novelist and her novel as a fiction. By exposing the convention of the mulatto as unsympathetic instead of tragic, Larsen ironically captures her readers. She tries to “pass” her novel by writing about something she thinks they will want to read, but destroys their expectations by shattering the mulatto stereotype and concentrating more on gender passing, eventually exposing presupposed identity for what it is: malleable, even nonexistent. Both Clare and Irene fail in trying to pinpoint their identities, and by offering nothing but ambiguity in the point of view and the final scene of the novella, Larsen presents identity itself as ambiguous, transient, and never fully identifiable…

Read the entire essay here.

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