Passing by Nella Larson
Rating: 5/10
Passing is about race as a construct in urban America.
The book used the third person to discuss the relationship between childhood friends Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry, two half black women who pass as looking white. Both live in different worlds inside urban America, with Irene married to Brian, a black doctor, and Clare married to Jack Bellew, a wealthy white man with a racist penchant against black people. Bellew is unknowing of Clare's true racial identity and so Clare is seen as 'passing' between the white and black worlds, living a lie that is destined to suffocate her. Irene, though living in a world more truthful to racial identity, feels manipulative to her husband Brian, true goal is to go off to his fascination in Brazil. Irene wants safety for her family and protects the racial community. Ultimately, even when she feels utterly betrayed by Clare and believes that there is an affair, she decides not to directly retaliate on the grounds of their shared blackness.
Nella Larson writes the story in a seductive way. Clare is presented as an almost erotic figure, admired for her beauty and the tiny details from which she symbolizes seduction. The text is also written in the third-person which is vital to analyze a closed-off character like Irene (which could never be done effectively in the first-person).
Unfortunately, most of my more in-depth notes got lost in my bag during the carjacking in Italy.
Zotero annotations:
Funny
“Manufactured conversation. She thought: "I feel like the oldest person in the world with the longest stretch of life before me."”
On passing
“It's easy for a Negro to 'pass' for white. But I don't think it would be so simple for a white person to ‘pass' for coloured.’”
On the controversy of Clare’s race
“Why hadn't she spoken that day? Why, in the face of Bellew's ignorant hate and aversion, had she concealed her own origin? Why had she allowed him to make his assertions and express his misconceptions undisputed? Why, simply because of Clare Kendry, who had exposed her to such torment, had she failed to take up the defence of the race to which she belonged?”
“She had to Clare Kendry a duty. She was bound to her by those very ties of race, which, for all her repudiation of them, Clare had been unable to completely sever.”
“Clare Kendry cared nothing for the race. She only belonged to It”
“Well, Clare can just count me out. I've no intention of being the link between her and her poorer darker brethren”
On Clare’s truer nature
“I knew I wasn't bad-looking and that I could 'pass.' You can't know, 'Rene, how, when I used to go over to the south side, I used almost to hate all of you. You had all the things I wanted and never had had. It made me all the more determined to get them, and others. Do you, can you understand what I felt?”
“Clare, It seemed, still retained her ability to secure the thing that she wanted in the face of any opposition, and in utter disregard of the convenience and desire of others. About her there was some quality, hard and persistent,”
“And yet she hadn't the air of a woman whose life had been touched by uncertainty or suffering.
Pain, fear, and grief were things that left their mark on people. Even love, that exquisite torturing emotion, left its subtle traces on the countenance.
But Clare—she had remained almost what she had always been, an attractive, somewhat lonely child—selfish, wilful, and disturb”“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."”
On money:
“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.”
“As we've said before, everything must be paid for.”
On Irene and Brian:
“Was she never to be free of it, that fear which crouched, always, deep down within her, stealing away the sense of security, the feeling of permanence, from the life which she had so admirably arranged for them all, and desired so ardently to have remain as it was? That strange, and to her fantastic, notion of Brian's of going off to Brazil, which, though unmentioned, yet lived within him; how it frightened her, and—yes, angered her I”
“It was, as she saw it, the one thing that had been the basis of the success which she had made of a marriage that had threatened to fail. She knew him as well as he knew himself, or better.”
On Irene & Brian’s different approaches towards protecting their children
“And you're trying to make a molly-coddle out of him. Well, just let me tell you, I won't have it. And you needn't think I'm going to let you change him to some nice kindergarten kind of a school because he's getting a little necessary education. I won't! He'll stay right where he is. The sooner and the more he learns about sex, the better for him. And most certainly if he learns that it's a grand joke, the greatest in the world. It'll keep him from lots of disappointments later on."”
On Irene and Clare
“Since childhood their lives had never really touched. Actually they were strangers. Strangers in their ways and means of living. Strangers in their desires and ambitions. Strangers even in their racial consciousness. Between them the barrier was just as high, just as broad”
“The letter which she just put out of her hand was, to her taste, a bit too lavish in its wordiness, a shade too unreserved in the manner of its expression. It roused again that old suspicion that Clare was acting, not consciously, perhaps—that is, not too consciously—but, none the less, acting. Nor was Irene inclined to excuse what she termed Clare's downright selfishness.”
Stylistic writing + words
“Brilliant red patches flamed in Irene Redfield's warm olive cheeks.”
“a brutal staring sun pouring down rays that were like molten rain”
“the very outlines of the buildings shuddered as if In protest at the heat.”
“there was a suspicion of a quaver in the husky voice”
“Again that peculiar mellowing smile.”
A motif to the seductive qualities of Clare
“Recrudescence”
the recurrence of an undesirable condition.
“rills of dirty water.”
“Admonition.”
A piece of advice that is also a warning about behavior