How does Clare feel about passing for white?
For one, she is not concerned with the moral implications of passing for white. Unlike other black characters whose passing enables them to marry white people, Clare does not pass for love. Even though she views passing through the lens of rank materialism, ultimately she sees passing as play.
How does Clare feel about her black identity in the novel?
Clare has forgone her black identity to live among white people as a white person. Clare lies to her husband, John, who believes she is completely white, and who is openly racist around her. At the beginning of the book, Clare seems to think that her lifestyle, in which her black identity is totally erased, is better than Irene’s.
What is Clare's identity in the things they carried?
Other characters, such as Clare, have passed completely, totally rejecting and hiding their black identities. Clare has forgone her black identity to live among white people as a white person. Clare lies to her husband, John, who believes she is completely white, and who is openly racist around her.
Why does Clare lie to her husband about her race?
Clare lies to her husband, John, who believes she is completely white, and who is openly racist around her. At the beginning of the book, Clare seems to think that her lifestyle, in which her black identity is totally erased, is better than Irene’s.
Why is Clare intrigued by Irene?
Who plays Clare Kendry in Passing?
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Why do Irene Clare pass?
Irene passes Clare in how she sees herself in the world, as Irene is confident in her identity as a black woman and distances herself from Clare because of the danger in Clare's passing for a white woman.
How is Irene different from Clare?
Unlike Irene, who fears individuality and self-reliance, Clare is able to threaten the society in which she lives by passing from one world to another, never picking one, and living in the in-between.
How is Clare described in Passing?
Clare Kendry Bellew A childhood friend of Irene's, now passing for white and married to a rich, racist white man. Clare is beautiful and vivacious, but she is also dangerously unpredictable. Her selfishness is her main driving force, and she is loyal only to herself. Clare serves as Irene's foil.
What is the message of Nella Larsen's Passing?
The one thing most people know about Nella Larsen's Passing is that it explores a peculiar kind of deception — being born into one marginalized racial category and slipping into another, for privilege, security, or power.
Is Irene jealous of Clare?
Clare gets a horrible, unexpected ending as she is pushed out of a window by one of the characters. Irene was jealous of Clare and this made the readers feel that Clare did not care about Irene's feelings because she was suspected of getting close to Irene's husband.
In what way is Clare a foil to Irene?
Clare and Irene act as foils to each other. While Clare is a pragmatist, who openly speaks of her desires and fears, Irene attempts to hide her desires and fears under noble positions on race that she often contradicts.
Does Irene have feelings for Clare?
Irene's desire for Clare bubbles up at one point in the novel, when Clare walks into her room and kisses her head. Irene feels an “inexplicable onrush of affectionate feeling” in response, grasps Clare's hands, and cries out that Clare is lovely.
What happened to Claire in the Passing?
After Irene suspects that her husband Brian and Clare are having an affair, and after Clare's husband discovers that his wife is Black, a violent confrontation ensues, and the film ends with Clare falling out of a window, her body broken and lifeless on a bed of pure white, Harlem snow.
Is the book Passing a true story?
Is Passing based on a true story? No, Passing is entirely a work of fiction. Clare and Irene weren't real people. Passing isn't, however, an original screenplay.
Why is Irene an unreliable narrator?
Irene dislikes for passing can be explained by her struggle with her identity, and this struggle with her identity makes Irene into an unreliable narrator because all of Irene's actions are based on how she believes she should act, and her opinion on how she identifies conflicts with how she presents herself and other ...
What is the main idea of passing?
Passing is a novel highly concerned with the reality of uncertainty, specifically in terms of identity. With the understanding that identity shapes experience, Nella Larsen creates a narrative in which characters are forced by society to choose their experience.
Why does Irene go to the Drayton hotel?
Irene is about to faint when a friendly driver helps her into his car and offers to drive her to the Drayton, a white hotel, so that she can buy an iced tea.
How does Irene feel about Clare?
Irene's desire for Clare bubbles up at one point in the novel, when Clare walks into her room and kisses her head. Irene feels an “inexplicable onrush of affectionate feeling” in response, grasps Clare's hands, and cries out that Clare is lovely.
What happened passing?
Suspecting that Brian and Clare are having an affair, Irene is filled with jealousy, doubt, and anger. Then John discovers his wife's true ancestry, and a confrontation ensues in Passing's ending, resulting in Clare falling out of a window to her death.
Why did Clare pass for white?
But it wasn’t racial self-hatred that catapulted Clare into whiteness; it was the shabby room. Clare passed for white because she hated being poor, not being black. Clare passed for white because she hated being poor, not being black. All passing narratives are about class as much as they are about race.
Why is Clare Kendry passing?
Clare Kendry has not used her fair skin to make a political statement; she has not been passing in order to undermine and subvert the system of white supremacy. There has been no greater good. Instead she has been passing purely for personal gain. Although she grew up in the same racial world as Irene, her social circumstances were radically different. Among their cohort of middle-class girls, “Clare had never been exactly one of the group.” Her father had gone to college with some of the other girls’ fathers, but he had somehow wound up a janitor, and “a very inefficient one at that.” He was also a violent alcoholic who would ultimately die in a bar fight. Among Irene’s earliest memories of Clare are images of “a pale small girl sitting on a ragged blue sofa, sewing pieces of bright red cloth together, while her drunken father, a tall, powerfully built man, raged threateningly up and down the shabby room, bellowing curses and making spasmodic lunges at her.” The stubborn little girl boldly stitching together the bright cloth in defiance of her father’s rage would grow into a young woman who defied fate, custom, and white supremacy by crossing the color line. But it wasn’t racial self-hatred that catapulted Clare into whiteness; it was the shabby room. Clare passed for white because she hated being poor, not being black.
How is Clare Kendry different from other passing subjects in American literature?
Clare Kendry is markedly different from other passing subjects in American literature. For one, she is not concerned with the moral implications of passing for white. Unlike other black characters whose passing enables them to marry white people, Clare does not pass for love. Even though she views passing through the lens of rank materialism, ultimately she sees passing as play. Clare Kendry is not an incarnation of the “tragic mulatto” figure, inherently alienated and adrift, whose mixed blood dooms her to racial purgatory. She is not wandering in the interstices of black and white. Instead, Clare is a hunter, stalking the margins of racial identity, hungry for forbidden experience, “stepping always on the edge of danger.” She is a gambler, playing the high stakes game of racial roulette. For her, passing is a sport, and she is unrivaled in her technique. Clare desires many things, among them to be among Negroes again. But ultimately, the true nature of her driving need is as opaque as the “ivory mask” she wears.
What is the book Passing about?
Passing is about hypocrisy and fear, secrecy and betrayal.
Who is Irene Redfield?
Irene Redfield, who prides herself on being a ticket taker for a ball for the Negro Welfare League, would have been impressed by the company Larsen kept. It is safe to say that both Nella Larsen and her character Clare Kendry would have had easier lives as mixed-race women in the 21st century.
What is the meaning of "passing"?
Passing is about the monumental cultural transformations that took place in American society after World War I. It is about changing definitions of concepts like race and gender, and the inextricable relationship between whiteness and blackness.
Who is Nella Larsen?
Nella Larsen in 1928. Nella Larsen was born Nellie Walker in 1891 in Chicago. Her mother was a Danish immigrant and her father an immigrant from the Danish West Indies. Nella’s father disappeared from her life when she was young.
What color is Clare's skin?
Clare has light skin, blond hair, and dark eyes. Clare describes herself as someone who will do anything to get what she wants. After her father’s death during her adolescence, Clare moved away from her mostly-black neighborhood in Chicago to live with her white aunts.
Where did Clare go after her father died?
Irene then remembers that, after her father died, Clare went to live with family in a different part of Chicago. Clare used to visit... (full context)
Why does Irene defend herself?
Irene defends herself for having not thought of Clare, telling Clare that, like everyone, she is very busy with her present life. Clare says... (full context)
How old was Clare when Bob died?
Irene then remembers the day Bob died in a saloon fight, when Clare was fifteen years old. She thinks of Clare standing and looking with “disdain” at his... (full context)
Why did Drearily go upstairs?
Drearily she rose from her chair and went upstairs to set about the business of dressing to go out when she would far rather have remained at home. During the process she wondered, for the hundredth time, why she hadn’t told Brian about herself and Felise running into Bellew the day before, and for the hundredth time she turned away from acknowledging to herself the real reason for keeping back the information.
What does Irene feel when she examines her annoyance?
Later, when she examined her feeling of annoyance, Irene admitted, a shade reluctantly, that it arose from a feeling of being outnumbered, a sense of aloneness, in her adherence to her own class and kind; not merely in the great thing of marriage, but in the whole pattern of her life as well.
What did Irene cry out?
Gertrude, after another uneasy shift in her seat, added her shrill one. Irene, who had been sitting with lips tightly compressed, cried out: “That’s good!” and gave way to gales of laughter. She laughed and laughed and laughed. Tears ran down her cheeks. Her sides ached. Her throat hurt. She laughed on and on and on, long after the others had subsided.
Why is Irene jealous of Clare?
Irene certainly is jealous of Clare, but her anger may also stem from the fact that Clare has said many negative things about blackness and has benefited from passing for so long.
Who is Clare's husband?
Clare lies to her husband, John, who believes she is completely white, and who is openly racist around her. At the beginning of the book, Clare seems to think that her lifestyle, in which her black identity is totally erased, is better than Irene’s.
Why do Clare and Irene call into question ideas of race as inherent and distinct genetic categories?
Essentially, the racial ambiguity and fluidity of characters like Clare and Irene call into question ideas of race as inherent and distinct genetic categories, because they show how race, although it has very real implications for people’s lives, is constructed and performed.
What is the slur in the scene of Irene meeting Clare's husband?
During the painful scene of Irene’s first meeting with Clare’s husband, John expresses vitriolic racism and calls his wife the racial slur “nig.”. The slur is a “joke” about Clare’s supposedly darkening skin color, as John does not realize that Clare (or Irene, or Gertrude) is black, or comes from a black community.
What does Irene feel when she examines her annoyance?
Later, when she examined her feeling of annoyance, Irene admitted, a shade reluctantly, that it arose from a feeling of being outnumbered, a sense of aloneness, in her adherence to her own class and kind ; not merely in the great thing of marriage, but in the whole pattern of her life as well. He roared with laughter.
What is an example of a character who passes as white only when it suits her?
Irene is an example of a character who passes as white only when it suits her. For example, she passes at the beginning of the book so she can drink an iced tea in the white hotel Drayton’s. While at Drayton’s, Irene notes that she only passes when she is alone, associating the concept of passing with isolation from the black community. ...
Why does Irene pass at Drayton's?
Irene also takes care while passing at Drayton’s to remind herself that she is passing for convenience, not because she rejects anything about her black identity.
What does Clare and Irene represent?
Both Clare and Irene represent opposing ends of of this ideological spectrum in their performances of their racial identities, and in doing so further perpetuate the socially enforced idea that biracial individuals must “choose a side” to perform , rather than embracing and performing their biracial identity.
What are the benefits of passing as black or white?
Both women reap the benefits of passing as Black or White—the feeling of community supplied by Harlem as well as the privilege of being allowed to exist in White spaces—while also feeling the costs of the race they chose to “give up” for the majority of their day-to-day lives.
What is the theme of Nella Larsen's novel Passing?
Nella Larsen’s novel, Passing, centers around the experience of two biracial women whose identities are primarily performative as they navigate life with the privilege of “passing” as White. Through this narrative, Larsen suggests that both racial and gender/sexual identities are as largely performative as they are inherent. Passing explores the ideas of both these identities as they exist in a world where passing is possible. Larsen calls into question the very nature of such concepts and their intersections: how identity shapes the experiences of individuals, and how those individuals shape those identities in turn.
What is the uncanny doppelganger in Irene and Clare?
In many ways, Clare serves as the uncanny doppelganger to Irene in the Freudian psychoanalytic sense.
What is the difference between Irene and Clare?
Applying this to Larsen’s novel, critic George Hutchinson explains: “the difference between Irene and Clare is not that Clare escapes from the [one drop] rule, which she does not recognize, but that her attempt to live free of its sway is in the end defeated by the way in which others, including Irene, view her” (345).
What makes a double uncanny?
Freud theorizes that what makes the double uncanny is its role in confusing the idea of the “self”, that providing a duplicate of the self that draws into question who or what can be identified as the “real” or “true” self. Thus, Clare occupies the narrative space as the uncanny double figure of Irene, embodying the familiar in the sense that she seems to share the same racial, sexual, and gender identities as Clare while also being a representative of the unknown, as she chooses to live her life as a White woman. This explains some of Irene’s frustrations with Clare, as Irene can recognize the strong connections between her and Clare’s identities, and this forces her to consider the morality of how she chooses to pass permanently as Black, only engaging with her own White identity when it suits her interests.
What is the novel Passing about?
Passing is a novel highly concerned with the reality of uncertainty, specifically in terms of identity. With the understanding that identity shapes experience, Nella Larsen creates a narrative in which characters are forced by society to choose their experience. By identifying those aspects of identity that are performative, Larsen asks her readers to consider the ways in which they also perform their own identities. Through the inverted images of Clare and Irene, Larsen explores performances of identity and their effects on the individual experiences of race, gender, and sexuality. However, Larsen also seems deeply interested in how these performances and engagements with externalized identity will inform experiences of the generations to come. While the novel does not spend much time considering the upcoming generations, it is clear Larsen is attempting to question the performances of identity reflected in her characters and suggesting that perhaps there is a different approach that has been left unconsidered as of yet: the idea of embracing the duality, rather than choosing to fight it.
Why does Clare refuse to tell Irene her husband's name?
Irene feels like Clare did this on purpose because she does not trust Irene to be discreet
Who has Irene received a letter from?
Because in the beginning of the section, Irene has received a letter from Clare Kendry, who has been lost connection with Irene since Clare's father died.
Why is Clare intrigued by Irene?
In the film, Clare is intrigued by Irene because Irene seemingly has it all together. She chose to stay on the Black side of the color line, she married and had three children and has a good job. At the same time, Irene is intrigued by Clare, who longs to be connected with the Black community and begins to spend more and more time with Irene’s family to do so, regardless of that putting her in danger. Passing is an exploration of the choices we make to pursue happiness and the worth of said choices.
Who plays Clare Kendry in Passing?
Netflix’s Passing, a film adapted from the 1929 novel of the same name by Nella Larsen, is a captivating tale of two Black women, Irene Redfield ( Tessa Thompson) and Clare Kendry ( Ruth Negga ), who can “pass” as white but Clare chooses to do so permanently while Irene does not. The film from director Rebecca Hall shows the vast differences in the women’s lives based on the choices they make. Ruth Negga has explained why she believes Clare chose to live on the white side of the color line.
