Claudia Tate on Passing

The ‘tragic mulatto’

Argues that Clare disproves this stereotype as she doesn’t seek out the black community to regain a sense of racial pride & solidarity, she is simply looking for excitement

Passing as a romance of psychological intrigue

Passing is treated as a romance of psychological intrigue in which race = more of a desire to sustain suspense than merely a compelling social issue. Race is merely a mechanism for setting the story in motion and bringing about the external circumstances for it’s conclusion, as the only time Irene is aware of race impinging on her world is when the exposure of Clare’s identity threatens to hasten the disruption of Irene’s domestic security.

Clare as a mystery

Larsen creates a dense psychological atmosphere before her appearance and her letters heighten her mystery due to them being presented as enthralling, evasive and beguilingly unobtrusive. Her letter is described as provocative, bewitching & elusive yet wildly conspicuous - mimicking Clare’s physical appearance - and it foreshadows her arrival, forming an ambiguous portrait that renders her mysterious. The letter demonstrates the psychological atmosphere cloaking her character.

Irene’s psychological focus

In contrast to Clare, attention towards Irene remains focused on her psychological character through her encounter with Clare - her physical portrayal is largely ignored. Their 2 portraits are therefore polarised while also mutually complementary - internal & external.

The ending

Larsen deliberately avoids narrative clarity & we are left not knowing whether Irene is glad fate has removed Clare from her life, whether she doesn’t regret killing her, or whether she is experiencing temporary amnesia & doesn’t know what her role was. The interpretation that it was suicide enhances the ambiguous conclusion & draws on Larsen’s narrative techniques of reflection and suggestion. It can be argued that as she did with her dad’s death, Clare surveys the fragments of her life & vanishes from a painful situation she can’t alter. Furthermore, forcing the interpretation that Irene pushed her can be forcing it to fit with the demands of critical expectations.

Larsen

She is simply seen as a writer who chose to escape the American racial climate in order to depict trite melodramas about black women passing for white, however this view has obscured her talent & relegated Passing to the status of a minor novel of the HR.

Irene

Her personal feelings remain confined to an outer shell of superficial awareness & her perceptions often become clouded by obsessions with jealousy. We are only given the external details of Clare’s life and they are observed through Irene’s psychology - we must determine whether she accurately portrays Clare of whether it is affected by her emotional turbulence of growing jealousy & insecurity. Larsen uses Irene’s failure to perceive the intangible aspects of Clare’s character as a means of revealing disturbing aspects of her own psychological character.