Book Review: Passing

[osprey_archer]

I meant to read Nella Larsen’s Passing slowly so as to discuss it with asakiyume, but once I started reading I grew so absorbed that I accidentally devoured the book in a morning. In my defense it is very short. The book grabs you by the throat from the very first page, when Irene receives a letter from an old childhood friend: Clare, who is now passing for white.

Although Clare is married to a deeply racist man, which makes any connection with her old life fraught with danger, she yearns to be among Black people again… at least on an occasional basis. Irene remains embedded in the Black community, but, light-skinned herself, she occasionally takes advantage of her ability to pass to use white-only facilities - which is how she runs into Clare, after not seeing her for over a decade: both women are drinking iced tea in a rooftop hotel restaurant in Chicago.

Irene is scornful of Clare’s choice to pass permanently, but she can’t help admiring the moxie it takes to do it… as well as Clare’s sensational, magnetic beauty, on which Irene comments every time that she sees her, which generally happens after Irene has sworn that she will never see Clare again and then goes to see her anyway, because Irene just can’t seem to resist her.

When I bought the book, the used bookstore clerk commented, “I’ve heard really toned down the sapphic overtones in the movie.” I haven’t seen the movie yet, so I can’t comment, but I intend to report back once I do.



This is a point of personal preference rather than a literary criticism, but I did sigh resignedly when, inevitably, the book developed into a love triangle between Irene, Clare, and Irene’s husband. My feeling (which may not be what Larsen meant me to feel, but it is a door she left open) is that the love triangle actually exists only in Irene’s head, and she’s projecting her own magnetic attraction onto her husband: “Of course he can’t resist her! No one could!” But this makes less difference than you might expect in the Love Triangle Reading Experience (™).



On the whole, though, an excellent book. Larsen milks the premise for both drama and sociological insight, and it's a pleasure to see a premise so absolutely wrung dry.

Comments

[asakiyume]

I sent you a bunch of thoughts by email, so here I'll just say--at least for starters--that I very much enjoyed the book too. Irene strikes me as a *very* un-self-aware person (who thinks that she is self-aware), and yes, all that about her husband could well have been completely in her head--but the lengths she lets it take her to reveal her unresolvable ambivalence toward Clare (it seems to me).

I thought Irene's state by the end was a beautifully portrayed example of severe depression, though it probably didn't go by that name at the time.

[osprey_archer]

Ha, yes, I just answered your email! And yes, I think one of the things that makes the book so good is its virtuoso portrayal of someone who *thinks* she's so self-aware but is deeply un-self-aware.

TBH nowadays when I meet someone who actually states out loud that they are VERY self-aware, I
mentally detract two self-awareness points, on the grounds that a truly self-aware person would know how clueless that sounds. It's sort of like meeting someone who brags that they're so humble, or talks over someone else to say that they're a GREAT listener.

Perhaps the possibly-imaginary love triangle is Irene's attempt to resolve that ambivalence toward Clare? It would give her an excellent excuse to get Clare out of her life, where she can no longer distress Irene, and also maybe provides an outlet for some pent-up aggression she feels toward her husband. (I read the book focused mainly on Clare & Irene but the marriage is also chillingly well-observed: outwardly functional but emotionally hollow.)

Nervous breakdown might be one period-appropriate term for Irene's mental state by the end, and yes! That's also so well-done. At first it builds up slowly (you have this sense of unhappiness in her marriage, fear of the future, just general low-key dissatisfaction), and then Irene absolutely fixates on this idea of an affair and suddenly her whole mind revolves around it endlessly.

[asakiyume]

suddenly her whole mind revolves around it endlessly. --Yes there was some language that was exactly that. (Which I probably highlighted, along w/half the book).

I thought her wanting to just sleep, sleep, sleep was another aspect of it.

I also thought this was super well-observed:

And this absence of acute, unbearable pain seemed to her unjust, as if she had been denied some exquisite solace of suffering which the full acknowledgment should have given her ... Or was it that she lacked the capacity for the acme of suffering? “No, no!” she denied fiercely. “I’m human like everybody else. It’s just that I’m so tired, so worn out, I can’t feel any more.” But she did not really believe that.

[osprey_archer]

Yes! I read the last part so fast, in a hurry to get to the denouement, that I'd forgotten that, but yes. That overwhelming tiredness.

I bet that if Irene could look her attraction to Clare right in the face, she'd discover that she could experience the acme of suffering and of love right then and there. But she can't, or won't let herself, which comes to the same thing in the end.

[asakiyume]

Yes: I agree.

[asakiyume]

At one point Irene thinks--it's when she's thinking how Christmas that year is unseasonably warm--"The weather, like people, ought to enter into the spirit of the season." --And at that point I made a note to myself that she's all about oughts. Things *ought* to be a certain way. But others, at different points in the story, are about how things actually *are*.

[osprey_archer]

Yes! I think that really succinctly sums up one aspect of her personality. And, if you read Irene as attracted to Clare Kendry and deeply uncomfortable with it, that's one of the reasons why: she's breaking a really big "ought," and as usual when she breaks an "ought," she can't/won't look at that fact head on.

[asakiyume]

Yeah: so she bundles up that attraction she has for Clare and attributes it to everyone else--"everyone else is attracted to Clare, but not me!"--when really, she's the one with the preoccupation. She's the one who falls deliciously for Clare's charms each and every time, to her husband's bewilderment (and scorn).

[osprey_archer]

On some level she knows Clare is a threat to her marriage and the security that she has so painstakingly built, but she can't acknowledge that it's her *own* attraction to Clare putting it all in jeopardy - not least because acknowledging that would only bring the danger nearer. Can't run away with Clare if she hasn't even acknowledged she would *like* to run away with Clare!

[anna_wing]

TBH nowadays when I meet someone who actually states out loud that they are VERY self-aware, I
mentally detract two self-awareness points, on the grounds that a truly self-aware person would know how clueless that sounds.

Same for anyone who declares themselves to be "unconventional", "non-conformist" or "eccentric", in a society where that will not actually get them killed.

[osprey_archer]

If someone is TRULY eccentric, other people will notice without being prompted!

[anna_wing]

Exactly! Most "non-conformists" are just conforming to some different, but similarly rigid set of rules. Different bottle, same fermented grape juice.

[luzula]

It's been a long time since I read this (or actually listened to this very good audiobook), but yeah, I do remember the clear f/f content!

[osprey_archer]

I suspect that (VERY subconsciously) part of Irene's late-book animosity towards Clare arises from the fact that Clare has not planted one on her and perhaps has no INTENTION of planting one on her. How can she go around being so seductive and attractive and messing up Irene's head like this and NOT have any plans to kiss her, the injustice.