Open Prompt II--October 2nd: "Passing" Over Answers

2004. Critic Roland Barthes has said, "Literature is the question minus the answer." Choose a novel, or play, and, considering Barthes' observation, write an essay in which you analyze a central question the work raises and the extent to which it offers answers. Explain how the author's treatment of this question affects your understanding of the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary.

Readers tend to look for an “answer” in the text: an argument which can be clearly stated, and is conveyed through all of the texts thematic and stylistic elements.  However, Nella Larsen’s novel Passing offers no such clear-cut solution.  Passing  takes place in Harlem during the 1920’s, during a time when issues of racial and class identity were both very important, and undergoing rapid change and were therefore ambiguous and uncertain. The novel debates these issues, asking the reader to question what it means to be “black” or “white,” among other issues of class, sexual orientation, jealousy, and self-awareness.  But the novel never gives answers to any of the questions.  Larsen uses a limited narrative perspective and that perspective’s lack of awareness of the world around her and herself, as a tool to convey the impossibility of answering definitively the larger issues raised in the novel.

The novel is narrated in 3^rd person, but the narration is closely allied with the protagonist Irene Redfield, an upper middle class, light-skinned black woman.  As the novel follows her life and her family—specifically focusing on her relationship with her friend Clare, an African-American woman “passing” as white—the reader can see that they cannot rely on Irene’s perspective to tell the complicated tale.  Unfortunately, this is the only option the readers have: because of this limited narrative perspective, you as the reader only know what she knows.  Larsen’s protagonist is delusional, not self-aware, suspicious, prejudiced, and as confused as the readers, creating ambiguity that could not have been achieved any other way.  Irene doesn’t know what to think, and neither does the reader.

This ambiguity becomes apparent on the first page of the novel, when Irene does not recognize Clare at a fancy (essentially white) restaurant.  She sees Clare with another man, not her husband, which becomes important later in the novel when Irene suspects Clare of having an affair with her husband Brian.  Because the narrative is closely aligned with Irene’s consciousness, the reader is inclined to look at things her way, and so initially are shocked and panicked with her and the infidelity.  However, as time goes on, the reader realizes that Irene has absolutely no proof of the affair, and that it could very well be her imagination.

This flight of fancy could even be interpreted as a manifestation of her jealousy of either Brian or Clare.  The reader realizes it may be possible that Irene herself is attracted to Clare, and is jealous of her possible relationship with Brian.  Irene describes Clare as sensuous, beautiful, glowing, graceful, exotic, and stunning, and describes her features in exquisite detail; she describes Clare’s dead body as “glorious.”  Irene does not admit that she is attracted to Clare, but it becomes a possibility to the reader that Irene is actually panicked by the affair because she is jealous of Brian. 

However, there is no proof of this either, and the reader is forced to entertain the possibility that it is Clare’s wealth and stature as a “passing” African American—her material success—that Irene is jealous of, and possibly desires to get rid of at the end of the novel.  This lack of self-awareness and ambiguity causes the reader to doubt the truth in Irene’s speculations later in the novel, especially in the final climactic scene.  One of the few things that is clear to the reader is the fact that Irene cannot decide whether she actually enjoys Clare’s company.  Certainly, she constantly tries to avoid it, only to give in because she cannot resist Clare. 

Clare’s desire to mingle with darker African Americans, and “her people”, in turn raises the big question: “what is race?” Several possible definitions of racial identity are played out in the novel, but no certain definition emerges as an argument separate from the protagonist’s narration.  The setting of the novel, 1920s Harlem, is crucial, because at that period in history the idea of the “one drop theory” was being debated.  Did “one drop” of African blood make you “black”?  If the reader only considers Irene’s perspective, this is the definition of race.  Irene says that Clare “cared nothing for her race; she only belonged to it”—but whether she acted at Irene thought “blacks” should, she was definitely Irene’s “people” because she had African ancestry.  However, for Irene, this became a sort of positive idea of kinship, not a negative and demeaning reference to slavery.  The narrative voice also complicates this singular definition of race by showing Irene’s view of class, in which middle and upper class Harlem blacks saw themselves as separate from working class blacks.  Here, class culture becomes almost like another race.  Brian brings up the possibility that race is the magnetism felt by all members of the race toward each other, and is separate from physical appearance, class, or ancestry. 

By his definition, Clare is “black”, because Clare uses Irene as a guide to her “poorer darker brethren”, and attempts to insert herself into this society any way she can.  She goes dancing in African American clubs, and goes to parties with Irene’s friends.  However, this is paradoxical, because if Clare was completely a part of Irene’s “race”, then she wouldn’t need a guide.  In this way, Clare is “white”, just like the Caucasians who would go to African American clubs like the Cotton Club, and observe the culture but only be able to spectate.  Another “race” emerges through Clare.  That is the “race” of people like Clare who are light enough to pass, and call into question the whole idea of racial identity in the first place.  As we hear the story from Irene’s point of view, we are invited to scorn Clare as a “passing” African American.  She is part of the African American race, and yet belongs simultaneously to another race of passing individuals.  So while two characters in the novel give their opinions on the definition of race, the definition still remains ambiguous and the reader without answers.   In this way, the narration of the novel is a barrier—we must struggle to see past Irene’s thoughts, points of view, and speculations toward her own interiority, for Irene does not know herself.

These racial and social tensions come to a climax at the end of the novel, when Clare, attending an all-“black” party at Irene’s home, falls, or is pushed, out of the window.  She “passes” into the next life just as she “passed” during her life, but many key elements needed to “answer” the racial questions raised are missing because of Irene’s limited perspective.  Prior to Clare’s fall and death, her husband, who has discovered she is really “black”, rushes into the party and reveals her.  Immediately, all the African Americans in the room—“passing” or not, darker-skinned or wealthy—band together against the unquestionably “white” intruder.    Irene only remembers laying a hand on Clare’s arm as Brian and Clare’s husband also start forward, and then that Clare is dead.  The reader doesn’t know whether Clare was pushed, or if so, by whom.  It is possible that Irene pushed Clare out, jealous of her possible affair (for whatever reason), or jealous of Clare’s lifestyle.  Brian could have pushed Clare for reasons unknown; Clare’s husband could have pushed her out of anger.  Or Clare could have fallen—or perhaps even committed suicide, unable to deal with her life without true and certain identity.  However, the reader cannot possibly know what really happened, because of Irene’s limited perspective and complete lack of clarity, even in her reaction to Clare’s death. 

This same lack of clarity results in ambiguity regarding all of the different questions raised in the novel, especially race.  One could argue, though, that in this non-argument there is, in fact, an “answer”.  Larsen could be arguing that there is no way to tell what “race” is; it is impossible to define what it is to be “black” or “white”, because our own limited perspective on the world will blind us from the truth, if it even exists.  Larsen could be showing the reader, through the complicated and tragic lives of her delusional characters, and the frustrating ambiguity, that we are all Irene Redfield.  We may all be prejudiced, paranoid, uncertain, and unaware as we go through our lives, and that who we are is not defined by race in any sense, but by everything from our gender to our class to our spouse.  But Larsen doesn’t even definitively make that argument—in Passing, there is no way to tell for sure.  Larsen forces you to see all of these inconsistencies outside of Irene’s acknowledgements to demonstrate the extreme complications involved with defining race. The ambiguity of the end of the novel due to narrative perspective—the fact that you don’t know exactly how Clare died—represents these divides.