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Racial Boundary And Symbolism In Passing By Nella Larsen

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In the novel, Passing by Nella Larsen, the author explores the theme of the racial passing taking place in the United States during the 1920s. The story takes place in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City in the 1920s, the novel focuses on the reunion of two childhood friends of mixed-race descent. Irene Redfield’s struggle is to keep her charmed existence away from Clare Kendry. In an analysis of this text, the reader understands how the author portrays the crossing the racial boundaries between blacks and whites bring advantages and tragedy. The relation between Irene and Clare is very ambiguous and irony. Irene wants Clare out of her life but she is also intrigue by Clare crossing the racial boundaries and passing for a white woman, …show more content…

From the start the crossing the racial boundaries between blacks and whites bring tragedy to the end. At the party in Felise’s house, Irene comments “It seems dreadfully warm in here. Mind if I open this widow? […] Open one of the long casement windows”(110) The importance on how warm Irene is reminds us the beginning of the novel, which happened on “a brilliant day, hot, with a brutal staring sun” (12). Clare’s husband, John Bellew, discovering Clare is part black; he storms into the party to confront her. Rather than a dramatic reaction, Clare stood at the window, unaware of any danger and than she smile. It was this smile that enraged Irene; make her runs towards Clare and where Irene lays her hand upon her. However, what happens afterward is unknown because “What happened next, Irene Redfield never afterwards allowed herself to remember” (111). Because Irene later reiterates that Clare just fell. Although the cause of the man’s falling is unknown to Irene because she quickly leaves the scene, the reason for Clare’s falling being uncertain is because Irene immediately represses this memory, she choses to refuse this knowledge, by rushing away. In both cases, Irene is unaware of the reason behind the fall because of a necessary disaffection of herself, in the beginning physically and in the end psychologically. Also, in both cases the person who falls is removed from the narrative. The man just “Toppled over and became an inert crumpled heap on the scorching cement” (12), Clare "just tumbled over and was gone before you could say Jack Robinson” (113). The connection between the beginning and the end is also reinforced by a syntactic similarity. The ending of Passing, and of the life of Clare Kendry, starts on the sixth

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