Now that you’ve gotten your hot little hands on a copy of Nella Larsen’s Passing (You did, didn’t you? If you didn’t, you are excused from class with my blessing), it is time for us to go on and on about it until someone turns the lights off and lets us know that they’re closing in five minutes.
Item the first: ”It was the last letter in Irene Redfield’s little pile of morning mail” is perhaps one of the loveliest and cunning-est ways to start a novel. It’s the kind of sentence that makes you settle happily into your chair and allow yourself a small smile. It tells you that the author is the kind of woman you can trust. It’s ridiculous and infuriating that she couldn’t find a publisher for her third book, particularly when one thinks of how many Rabbit Run novels John Updike has thrust upon a reluctant and unwilling public. I know, of course, that it’s an exercise in frustration to ask questions like what else could she have accomplished if only there hadn’t been so many impediments to her writing career, but I still wonder.
Item the second: Clare. “[There was] nothing sacrificial in Clare Kendry’s idea of life, no allegiance beyond her own immediate desire.” Oh, God, Clare. How many feelings did Clare make you feel? SO MANY. If nothing else, I thought her beautiful, unbearable selfishness went a long way to subvert the “tragic mulatto” archetype — she suffered, but she didn’t exist to suffer, and she made others suffer too, and she wanted things, and she made sure that she got what she wanted. She’s very powerful and easy to love and hard to know. She smiles provocatively at waiters. She is Trouble.
“The trouble with Clare was, not only that she wanted to have her cake and eat it too, but that she wanted to nibble at the cakes of other folk as well.” Are you thinking of your Clare right now with a mixture of relief that she’s no longer a part of your life and a strange and sudden desire to see how she’s doing?
(Last Clare quote. For now.) “‘Of course,’ she declared, ‘that’s what everybody wants, just a little more money, even the people who have it. And I must say I don’t blame them. Money’s awfully nice to have. In fact, all things considered, I think, ‘Rene, that it’s even worth the price.”
Item the third: Just how gay is this book? Sort of gay, or very gay? The letter Clare sends Irene in the beginning is — I mean, that’s a “let’s make up, lover” letter, right? It’s perfumed and it talks about wild and painful desires and how everything is sort of Irene’s fault for looking so good in Chicago. And the scene in the restaurant in Chicago! Where they keep sneaking glances at each other and then blushing and then looking away and then not being able to look away for another second!
Item the fourth: Was Brian sleeping with Clare? Oh God, that scene where Irene is putting on cold cream and realizes he’s invited Clare over without asking her slayed me. I will be the first to confess that I do not understand Brian at all. ”If I could only be sure that at bottom it’s just Brazil.”
Item the fifth: “Everything can’t be explained by some general biological phrase.” Did Nella Larsen anticipate and ridicule the wave of pop-evolutionary psychology that was to come? Was she a witch?
Item the sixth: “Absurd! Impossible! White people were so stupid about such things for all that they usually asserted that they were able to tell; and by the most ridiculous means, finger-nails, palms of hands, shapes of ears, teeth, and other equally silly rot. They always took her for an Italian, a Spaniard, a Mexican, or a gipsy. Never, when she was alone, had they even remotely seemed to suspect that she was a Negro.” It’s just a great line.
Item the seventh: The end, guys. The end. “Gone! The soft white face, the bright hair, the disturbing scarlet mouth, the dreaming eyes, the caressing smile, the whole torturing loveliness that had been Clare Kendry. That beauty that had torn at Irene’s placid life. Gone! The mocking daring, the gallantry of her nose, the ringing bells of her laughter.”
She pushed her. Right? She absolutely pushed her. The only question is how much she pushed her to keep her away from Brian, and how much she pushed her to keep her away from herself.
Tags: books, lesbian subtext, nella larsen, passing, the harlem renaissance
The only question is how much she pushed her to keep her away from Brian, and how much she pushed her to keep her away from herself.
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also, “disturbing scarlet mouth”… although I have to say if I hadn’t been primed for the potentially gay subtext I probably would have missed it altogether; older books tend to be a bit florid in their descriptions of friend-love.
Do you think Clare really was banging Brian? I am not sure. The whole thing of being married to someone and finding out they are not the person you thought you married and trying to stuff them back into that box, I thought was perfectly described.
Also, how would we cast this movie? A gender-bended version, obviously Wentworth Miller as Clare and Harry Connick Jr. as Irene, but a proper version…?
right on hahaha
She pushed her, for sure.
What I loved about this book is how, at the beginning, you think Irene = good guy and Claire = selfish, manipulative bad guy, because Irene is the narrator and that’s what she says. By the end, I had entirely switched my views of the two women.
SO GAY. The tension between the two of them, with Clare being a self that Irene both craved and hated…. oh man.
I don’t think Clare was banging Brian, mainly because it’d be too easy, too fish-in-a-barrel.
I can’t read the final scene without thinking of the “SPLAT” episode of SATC (sorry not sorry).
SATC LIFTED THAT SCENE FROM NELLA LARSEN
One of my main reasons for thinking Clare and Brian were NOT getting it on is because it seems like all the erotic tension is between Clare and Irene. I just assumed that sex with a man was part of the price Clare was paying for security, not something she was actually interested in for itself.
“I’m so bored I could die.”
But how big was this window? To the floor? How is that allowed on the 17th floor? I could not push a person over with just one hand. I need to understand these logistics!
it was a casement window, like french doors. It went almost entirely to the floor and opened outward with no screen, and it happened on the 6th floor.
Disclaimer: didn’t get to re-read, but love this book with a thousand loves.
I definitely don’t think that Clare was banging Brian. I know that Jazz Age folks had some kinds of contraceptives, but that was all still pretty touch-and-go, and remember the gripping terror of wondering if her babies would look nonwhite?
But the thing is that Clare would have had him if she could, and Brian might have, and Irene can’t trust anyone, least of all herself.
I’ve been thinking about Nella Larsen in respect to your mocha-skin post, Mallory. Nella Larsen describes her characters’ skin luxuriously. Sometimes as food, sometimes as fabrics or precious metals (Brian is copper-colored, I think). Lots of different kinds of things, not just coffee and cocoa, but all desirable and sensuous.
Oh, gosh, that post! I think the way Nella does it, though, is really different from how a lot of ridiculous white dudes do it now (I mean, obviously, I think we all think that). She is SUCH a sensual, evocative writer, I think. Her attention to detail is just lovely.
No, I agree, when white dudes (and ladies!) do it, it’s the verbal equivalent of Sandra Lee icing her Kwanzaa cake with nasty cinnamon icing. “Hm, what are Kwanzaa festive colors? Brown, I guess.” When Nella Larsen does it, it’s beautiful and perfect and resists some of the pressure all of her characters feel to conform to white standards of beauty.
Yes! I think the beauty and sensuality of it (describing Brian as having copper-colored skin is a great example) is a kind of quiet celebration of something that’s distinctly not-white.
I know this book is not really about men, but whenever I read it I get all hung up on Irene’s little boys and how horrified and embarrassed Irene’s friends are to find out that they’re dark.
The little boys! I get actually sad for them, even though they’re not real people.
Pretty gay. Prettttty gay. Also add me to the “pushed her!” team.
I really like Larsen’s style. It’s–decorative is the wrong word. It makes me feel like I’m in the best antique store in the world discovering treasures. She tells you all the right details without being overly descriptive.
She definitely pushed her. Brian is a little sketchy about Clare, but I don’t really think they’re sleeping together. I think he just likes Clare like everyone else does: because she’s fun and friendly and beautiful and whatnot, and Irene is a strange and cold and controlling (and clearly doesn’t understand sex: her own especially). Plus, she’s weirdly, meanly proud of the way she’s kept Brian from doing what he actually wants to do.
Nella Larsen’s books are both pretty disturbing. The ending of Quicksand? Gives me the shivers.
[Edited because apparently even in my own head I cannot keep Clare and Irene separate. Clare. CLARE is fun and friendly and beautiful. No one has ever described Irene that way in the history of describing Irene.)
Can we read Quicksand too, Mallory? Can we? I LOVE QUICKSAND.
So now may be the best/worst time to mention that I have a chapter about Quicksand in a book about skin and psychoanalysis. It is about Helga’s love of “things”–what she calls her beautiful and sumptuously described clothes–and how she displaces onto them her anxieties about racial and sexual oppression.
Nella Larsen! So many layers, so many beautiful descriptions, so many shivers!
Sharing is caring. I would love to know the title of this book! 😀
It’s called Skin, Culture, and Psychoanalysis. Hey, I think the three editors are Canadian, since we’re talking about Canadian writers elsewhere on the site today! I’ve misplaced my copy but I know it covers film, fashion, self-harm, and race among other things.
Awesome, thank you!
Yes! I just started Quicksand. I guess Nella really likes those heart-wrenching endings.
Oh, and in response to item the third, in case it wasn’t clear from my previous comment: so very, very gay, from first to last page. Is how I read it.
Pretty darn gay. There’s so much longing in the book it makes me a little breathless. It might be longing for freedom, ‘whiteness’, money, the ability to be authentic with each other and/or deceive each other completely, but the longing seems so visceral and the writing is so sensual…
I vote “very gay.” Also, “she pushed her.” (The first time I read it, I was sure her husband was going to kill her. The actual ending is way better.)
Also, that constant tension and fear of being found out – Clare scorned her husband, I think in part for not being able to tell what she was, but her life depended on him not ever finding out, and yet she danced on that line, going to the dance party, inviting Irene & the other lady over… not something I could live with but Larsen does a great job of making Clare’s decision believable given her personality.
I mean, the whole time she was pregnant just going “shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit” and crossing her fingers…
I also feel that there is an implication that part of Clare’s risk-taking personality developed because of the way she was privileged and elevated as a particularly beautiful blonde white-looking lady. Maybe it made her feel a little invincible, knowing how much she could get away with. I mean, Irene was a little surprised to be rescued by a white man during a heatweave–it doesn’t happen to her *every* day–but she rolls easily enough with it because isn’t she a lady? doesn’t she deserve a cool drink in a nice hotel? For Clare, that’s like her whole charmed life.
Oh, very well put. Yes, and each time she got away with something she pushed a little more and a little more.
“It was that smile that maddened Irene. She ran across the room, her terror tinged with ferocity, and laid a hand on Clare’s bare arm.”
This description made me sure that everyone would know that Irene had pushed Clare because I pictured her as a bit of a charging bull but I suppose it could’ve been interpreted by others that she had rushed to Clare to protect her.
She definitely pushed her. The question is, did she do it completely on the spur of the moment, or was she thinking about it from the moment earlier when she opened the window?
I thought the Brazil thing with Brian represented his desire to opt out of the Amercian racial setup. Irene can’t imagine abandoning her community, either by passing or by emigrating, but Brian has the impulse to escape in common with Clare.
So I’m going to miss most of the great discussion here because I had work until just now and classes in half an hour for 4 hours BUT put me down for 3. very gay and 7. DEFINITELY PUSHED.
Also, re: the 6th item: Yes! What a great line. And this isn’t quite what Larsen’s talking about, but something that white strangers/acquaintances apparently love to do with me is guess what kind of asian I am and then (after guessing wrongly but before I have a chance to tell them so) tell me exactly how they “knew” by the shape of my nose, distance between my eyes, etc.
No, I think that’s at least partially what that line is about, which is the stupid, not-funny joke that is the way people pretend that race can be pinned down based on arbitrary and meaningless visual markers. The other (another) part of it is how complex and muddy and intermingled our heritages actually are, the thing that makes the designation of racial whiteness (e.g., Italian, Spanish, Mexican, or Roma) as defined against other groups with their “visual markers of race” another stupid, not-funny joke.
Oh, of course. The only reason I said “not quite” was because here Larsen is specifically talking about how Irene, as a light-skinned woman of color, is able to pass for white, and obviously that’s not my experience at all. But the rest of it, for sure.
It's called Skin, Culture, and Psychoanalysis. Hey, I think the three editors are Canadian, since we're talking about Canadian writers elsewhere on the site today! I've misplaced my copy but I know it covers film, fashion, self-harm, and race among other things.
My votes are: pretty gay; don’t think Brian was sleeping with Clare; distinct possibility that Irene pushed her.
I don’t think Clare would have slept with Brian, because she was worried enough about whether her daughter would be dark, and that was her daughter with her white husband. No way would she risk that again. But whether Brian and Clare were actually sleeping together, I think, isn’t the interesting thing. the interesting thing is that Irene suspects it, and what she does with that suspicion. which is where the pushing comes in.
in general terms… this was my first experience of Nella Larsen, and I loved every word of it, and I’m in the middle of Quicksand at the moment.
I’ve been stalking this site and holding my commenting tongue until now, but I had to put my two cents in on this one. Irene definitely pushed Clare. The moment where she drops the teacup, smashing it, then makes an endearing joke about it being a convenient way to get rid of something one never liked anyway? THE TEACUP IS CLARE GUYS!!
OMG! I totally missed the teacup foreboding! I mean, obviously when they’re on the 17th-whatever floor and she opens the casement window whatshername is so proud of, someone’s heading out it. But I didn’t even notice the teacup story. Nicely spotted!
Yes, but OKAY: “Can’t you realize that I’m not like you a bit? Why, to get the things I want badly enough, I’d do anything, hurt anybody, throw anything away: Really, ‘Rene, I’m not safe.”
So if we accept Irene’s basic reliability as a narrator (do we? I do, even after everything), it’s not Brian who Clare seduced, but Irene, and once seduced to her way of thinking, oh, damn but did Clare unleash a dangerous creature.
Maybe I just love Irene so much for things like when she was talking to Hugh at the dance, and points out to him that white people can’t pass, and then tweaks him for never having looked at it from that perspective before. And the genuine gut-wrenching despair when she suspected Brian, even though she was wrong. Larsen just destroyed me so throughly with the way she wrote Irene’s pain, so yes, even though she TOTALLY pushed Clare, I didn’t stop feeling her, too.
Call me naive, but I missed the gay subtext — get it now, of course. Hmmm. And yes, I agree that Irene pushed Claire. Brilliant spotting of the teacup foreshadowing, Quinn!
One of the things I thought most interesting was how Irene was almost repulsed by the idea of living as a white woman, but wasn’t above using her white skin in a pinch. For me it was all about how we compromise to get what we want. That and the character development. Larsen was so skillful; I lost faith with Irene just at the point I should have been completely sympathetic, but her pain over the thought of losing Brian to Clare made her own self-serving behavior very clear. She kept saying the boys, the boys, when in reality all her choices were about her own security.
Ok, I’m late to this party, but, gay subtext between Clare and Irene is clear. I’m not sure if its fully mutual, or if Clare recognizes Irene’s attraction and manipulates it, or if Irene is so obsessive/vulnerable that she interprets perfectly innocent actions on Clare’s parts as manipulative, because she’s a hella unreliable narrator.
Did anyone else think that Brian was gay or perhaps asexual? One of Irene’s first comments about him is “‘Brian doesn’t care for ladies…. I sometimes wish he did.” He describes sex as a “grand joke” and expresses incredulity about white men’s desire for black women. They sleep in separate beds and even when Irene’s describing her attraction to him she is anxious to point out he is not “pretty or effeminate” (I’m not sure if this anxiety is on his behalf or her own).
Also, then the idea that Clare and Brian are having affair does double (triple?) repressive duty: “obviously *Brian* is the one that is attracted to Clare, because Brian is totally attracted to women.”