I read Passing for the first time earlier this summer, and it’s so fresh in my mind that I’m loving the reread knowing the ending. I appreciate all the tips for annotating as well - it’s a good way to force myself to slow down and pay attention to what Larsen is doing.
Yes! Annotating can be such a great way to slow ourselves down. (And to notice the moments when we're just SO wrapped up in the story that we can't possibly slow down to take a note!)
Thanks for sharing my notes Haley! I’m excited to see how others have been annotating.
I love your comments about staring and being seen; there is truly so much mention of “eyes” in this first part!
Some thoughts:
As I was reading part 1, I started to notice how much emotion we get, and how rapidly it changes. I started circling each emotion as they came up, and I noticed that Irene gets thrown into such a mix of emotions whenever she is around Clare - by contrast, there are very few instances where we get Clare’s emotions.
I’ve also been tracking power, and I realized that though Clare is in some ways exerting her power (through her camouflage and her secret), it is actually Irene who exerts power more visibly throughout her interactions - like when the topic of children’s skin color comes up, or when she is trying to escape Gertrude.
I’m paying so much attention to Irene on this reading and I can’t wait to see what emerges in Parts 2&3.
Thank YOU again for sharing your annotations!! It's so fun to see different examples from readers!!
And these are fantastic observations, Shruti! I looove this idea of tracking emotions — maybe there is a cool way to collect all the emotional words and group them to help uncover deeper connections?
So excited to see what else you start to track and notice! (Especially with Irene!)
I tracked Irene's emotions too and so many were akin to annoyance, resentment, uneasiness, etc. She seems pretty buttoned up and not in touch with her own desires. I'm interested to see if we get beyond the facade.
So far, this novel is not at all what I expected. Haley your note about Larsen’s narrative voice having “an edge of violence. A dangerous undercurrent” had me highlighting all the dangerous words that slither through the narrative like so many snakes - danger, malice, menace, seduction, scorn, mockery, anger, fear, fury, rage, betray - are just some of the examples in my list from just part 1 of the book. I’ve also highlighted two places where I’ve wondered if this is where Larsen’s story is going. Clare says in her “encounter” with Irene “But I’m not surprised to see you, ‘Rene…in fact ever since I’ve been here, I’ve hoped that I should, or someone. Preferably you, though.” It reads like Clare has been stalking Irene. Is it because Irene (and others) selectively pass as white for access to places like the Drayton? It certainly shades Irene’s claim to righteousness knowing that she does this at times for her own advantage. Is the story going to proceed to knock down Irene’s sense of making the right choices in her life? The other is at the end of Chapter 4 where Irene worries about her husband’s “unhappy restlessness” which at the “beginning of her marriage she had to make such strenuous efforts to repress.” I’m not exactly liking Irene at this point, and I definitely do not trust Clare who at least in Irene’s view has “no allegiance beyond her own immediate desire.” The word seduction has appeared frequently, so who exactly is going to be seduced and in what ways?
I also made note that Irene continuously refers in her thoughts to “Clare Kendry”, her full name, and not just “Clare”. What’s up with that?
I like to get my thoughts in order before reading your guide, so now I’ll dig in to see where we mesh and what things I’ve missed. I had to really stop myself from just reading straight through the novel, but I’m trusting the process.
Ooooooh Maryann this is SO GOOD!! Ahhh I am so excited for you to read the rest of the book now! The way you're tracking this idea of danger with the idea of seduction and desire is totally perfect. I don't want to spoil anything — just...keep at it!!!
As for the reference to Clare's full name: I think there are lots of ways to read that, and many of them have to do with something you're already tracking in Irene's psyche. On this re-read, what's sticking out to me is that Irene seems pretty attached to this old idea of Clare—who Clare Kendry was, as a Black girl from their neighborhood. "Clare Bellew" is a white woman and someone Irene doesn't really know...So I'm kind of reading her insistence on Clare's full name as a kind of identity marker. Maybe she thinks of "Clare Kendry" as a Black woman and "Clare Bellew" as a white woman?
I wish I had all this guidance/advice on close reading/annotating when I was in college - both were such a mystery and I was always told to figure it out for myself - like that was part of the assignment. I love seeing how others annotate and read as well. Thank you for sharing your process and Shruti's.
Hi Kerry!! It’s such a difficult thing to learn without any guidance. I learned from the best, so I feel lucky and happy to share what I have learned and how it helps
Me read!! I’m glad this is helping you deepen your reading practice! ✨
Re-reading this novel has been such a cool experience, because my copy has all of my annotations from the last time I read it. I keep finding paragraphs I underlined and asking myself why I thought those were important; or, I find something I didn't annotate, and I ask myself how I could have possibly missed it before!
The last time I read it, I seemed really focused on little moments that Larsen sneaks into the narrative to give us a closer glimpse at the hidden lives of our characters (like Irene's offhand thought, "Why was it that almost invariably [Ted] wanted something that was difficult or impossible to get? Like his father. For ever wanting something that he couldn't have."). This time, however, I'm much more interested in the relationship between a character's feelings and their actions. I love how we get glimpses of Irene's inner monologue and can see a tempered disdain for Clare, yet she still visits her. There's a great moment when Irene feels absolutely insulted, but manages to keep her composure, keeping Clare from realizing her true feelings: "Irene, who was struggling with a flood of feelings, resentment, anger, and contempt, was, however, still able to answer as coolly as if she had not that sense of not belonging to and of despising the company in which she found herself drinking iced tea from tall amber glasses on that hot August afternoon."
Or, there's a moment when Clare and Irene are sharing tea during their first encounter and Clare sits with "an air of indifferent assurance" despite that fact we can tell that she is heavily invested and almost desperate for her conversation with Irene. Over and over, I kept noticing the disconnect between our character's feelings and their actions, and it made me think about the way "passing" manifests for our different characters. For Clare, it's not only about race, but about her appearance of security and her confidence in her decisions. For Irene, it's about how she manages her true feelings towards others in her actions and words. I'm excited to see what other instances I can find in the next part of the novel, and to see how this reading experiences compares to the last time I read and annotated.
Hi Jordan! I love these observations. The disconnect between Irene's true feelings and how she behaves, as well as Clare's flirtations with "danger" as she looks to hold up polite conversation as a hostess, really heighten the tension! And, as you've pointed out, it all has to do with *appearances,* which is what passing is all about: appearing to be something you are not (or perhaps, in this novel, appearing to be one thing when you are really many, many, many things all at once).
I'm curious what you make of this reduction: that passing reduces these women to less than they are. Is there contempt in that, too? What, or who, are they really angry with?
I would have thought at the conclusion of Part I that Irene was solely angry with Clare. While I do think she is resentful over the situation Clare put her in, it feels like some of that anger is directed back at herself. I was reading the first chapter of Part II this morning, and there's this telling moment where Irene asks herself why she didn't "take of the defence of the race to which she belonged" in John's presence. Later, she defends the act of passing to her husband, saying that even those who reject or condemn it still protect it. There's also this theme of satisfaction throughout, such as Irene and her husband's speculation on Clare's satisfaction (or lake thereof) in her lifestyle, and Irene's own reflections on her dissatisfaction over her familial situation despite getting what she wanted (keeping her husband home with her and their kids). Maybe the act of being dissatisfied with a situation, especially if it's exactly the scenario they desired most, lends itself to the outward expression of anger? I'm not entirely sure, but I'll have to keep it in the back of my mind as I keep reading!
This is interesting "Maybe the act of being dissatisfied with a situation, especially if it's exactly the scenario they desired most, lends itself to the outward expression of anger?" I think along those lines I had highlighted this passage to consider "The tea, when it came, was all that she had desired and expected. In fact, so much was it what she had desired and expected that after the first deep cooling drink she was able to forget it...". There is also the part where Irene says that Clare not only wants to have her cake and eat it too, but also nibble everyone else's. There is so much unfulfilled desire in this book. Are we always doomed to never be satisfied, or are both of these women seeking what they are expected to want vs what they truly desire?
I hadn't even thought of the connection between food/drink and desire/satisfaction! My first thought is of the scene when Clare, Irene, and Gertrude are drinking tea together while Clare talks about her fear during her pregnancy. I underlined the paragraph about Irene's feelings of "resentment, anger, and contempt" towards the others' discussion of dark skin, which are situated in the context of "the company in which [Irene] found herself drinking iced tea from tall amber glasses on that hot August afternoon." When I think about this in the context of satisfaction, the ideal image of a cold drink on a warm day is sullied by the conversation of Irene's company. In fact, that initial scene you mentioned in your comment when Irene is drinking tea at the Drayton may be the only scene so far where Irene appears satisfied, something that only lasts until Clare arrives (I would need to comb back through the chapters to verify this though!). I love the question you pose at the end here, that maybe both Clare and Irene are only seeking what they believe they are supposed to want. It seems that maybe when Clare and Irene are together, they reveal to one another the extents of their dissatisfactions or unfulfilled desires?
I am re-reading Passing but this is my first time annotating (I'm not a big novel-annotator!), so it's been interesting to go about it at a different pace! I remember the first time I read the novel, it felt much like Toni Morrison's Jazz: that almost dizzying energy of a new rhythm of a Black cultural moment growing larger than its original neighborhoods. This time around, I am forcing myself to sit with the silences and the non-spoken words and it's adding a whole new layer to it the story!
I really liked your point about why Clare remains "Clare Kendry"--I actually highlighted and added a little exclamation mark to this passage on Chapter 2 that I think may help sum up this: "You are changed, you know. And yet, in a way, you're just the same."
One thing I found really interesting was the dynamics between Irene, Clare, and Gertrude, and particularly the way Irene sees Gertrude. Perhaps I'm being a little bit contaminated here by my reading of the chapters to come, but her POV in that encounter comes across as informed by a classism, a type of middle class ethics and etiquette that perhaps also plays into her fascination with Clare: Clare has socially ascended in ways that could never be open to a Black woman, but at the same time Irene retains a sense of pride in her own experience of "excellence" (or "elitism" depending on your perspective) that does not accord neither with the idea of "passing" for a living nor with blue-collar labor.
The class layers of this novel are always SO fascinating to me, especially given Larsen's own proximity to Langston Hughes and Du Bois and other Harlem Renaissance thinkers. I keep thinking about my (limited!) knowledge about the discourse of "racial uplift" and how Clare, Irene, and Gertrude seem each to represent different rungs on the ladder, so to speak. As you say, Clare has ascended higher than most Black woman in this time would've been able, at least on their own, but she's had to do it at the cost of her racial identity. I think that's where Irene (perhaps mistakenly?) feels morally superior to her...? Irene has established great comforts and social credibility and community by remaining a Black woman, married to a Black man, and these other women — with white husbands and a deep anxiety about their resulting children from these unions — seem to almost resent and judge her for it. Just as she seems to be resenting and judging them. I was struck by how much, in Part 1, the narrative itself seems to remain carefully neutral (I can't feel, yet, that the novel is saying any one way of living is "better" than the others) even as all the characters are anything but neutral in their feelings about race and class.
Haley this whole post is amazing - so much detail! I LOVE IT! I have just finished part one and have a lot of thoughts. As someone who never annotates their books, it’s been interesting to see how I am trying. So far, I am just marking all the ‘moments’ where race is directly discussed and confronted. Eg with the conversations about babies. There’s so much unsaid in this novel about race, even though it is the entire nature of the book, so I am keeping an eye out for all the times it is directly referenced and discussed, how it is addressed and what this means for the dynamics on the page. I loved your comments about variability and all the language Larsen uses surrounding being seen - that’s something I would honestly not have picked up on (I’m such a fast reader, to my detriment sometimes).
The themes that I’m thinking of the most are shame and power. The former, the role that shame can play in people’s lives, and the societal constructs that this shame derives from. Clare, initially, seems shameless in with her first interaction with Irene, and subsequently in her home when the conversation unfolds with her racist as hell husband. But by the closing of part one and her letter, it is evident that she is not shameless at all and is characterised by so much shame; shame that has driven her to live a life of a lie. This shame interacts perfectly with the theme of power too; how they feed each other. Clare’s character is a vehicle for Larsen to interrogate racism in American society at that time, and also an opportunity to suggest the structures of power within society are built upon shaky grounds. Initially it seems Clare holds the power, and then perhaps her husband, but it’s actually Irene that holds the power. Because nothing is more powerful than the truth (tale as old as time) but also resisting in engaging w power structures that are put in place to humiliate and dehumanise people. While Irene plays along for the sake of protecting herself and the other women in that moment with Clare and her husband, I thought Clare’s intense stare tells us all we need to know about how powerful Irene is and that Clare knows it. As a reader you can’t help but feel Clare is intentionally playing a dangerous game, inviting I and G to meet her husband who houses the views he does. I really wonder what her MO is? Surely, it cannot just be to rekindle with old friends? Clare seems too sneaky for that.
I feel tense and excited for the rest of the novel, eager to know if Clare ever gets ‘found out’, but equally feeling sad about the impact that this will have on her and her life.
hi Martha! I am so glad you're getting a chance to explore your annotation style and what you're noticing!
I love your thoughts on shame here. And I'm also so struck by your rumination on truth: "Nothing is more powerful than the truth, but also resisting in engaging with power structures that are put in place to humiliate and dehumanize people." It makes me think: what is "truth" in this book? Is "passing" a form of dishonesty? Is it truthful? Is it powerful? Is it humiliating?
Passing, the very act of appearing as some race or identity other than your own, is wrapped up in all of these questions. By the end of the final chapter in Part 1, we see that Clare is admitting to Irene: I thought I had it all figured out, but now I see you and your life and how you live...and I'm not sure passing remains a true way forward for me, anymore. It's almost as if she's admitting: I did this to get ahead, but now I'm ahead and....what? I'm anxious, I'm married to a racist, and I'm stuck. No wonder she's second-guessing this "resisting" of those "power structures put in place to humiliate and dehumanize" herself. It makes me wonder: can Clare get anything she wants? What *does* Clare Kendry want?
(And how does this echo Irene's musing, early in the novel, that her husband always wants things he can't have?)
Ok so I finished it yesterday. So many thoughts I will refine for later in the weeks post. The book did not take the trajectory I expected and I am really interested looking back at what I thought might happen and the theme of power I thought I had all figured out!!!
I love and appreciate these further thoughts in the comment from you - they have made me reflect on the book in a much more profound way. You’re the GOAT Haley x look forward to talking end of book reflections at the end of the week!!!
this! book! is! so! good! and what a perfect ghost story for the season.
So many contrasts stood out to me on this first read: order and disorder, desire and renunciation, transgression and conformity, fascination and disgust. I am struck in these pages at how deeply Irene holds onto a sense of rigidity and self-control, how determined she is to stand apart from disorder (of which Clare's passing is a form of...?) — and yet how in different places she stands on the precipice of inviting it in (in the form of continuing to engage with Clare).
(Sidebar: The moment when the man collapses on the sidewalk in the Chicago heat and Irene keeps walking! Thinking about how she feels sticky and damp from 'contact' with other messy bodies! Such brilliant characterization of Irene.)
At the Drayton, Clare appears to disrupt the boundaries of “class and kind” that Irene has carefully adhered to. In that scene with Clare and Gertrude, that feeling of disruption places Irene on the back foot. She feels “outnumbered” by these two women, and tries to re-establish her footing by summoning (and repressing) contempt at their transgressions. For some reason unable to fully unleash those feelings on Clare, Irene instead heaps disgust on Gertrude, whom she views as "broad," "appalling," "sleazy."
And then to end the chapter and the arc: I wonder if the humiliation that Irene feels at the hands of Bellew actually gives her a narrative with which she can re-establish the rightness of her world. She subsumes that humiliation into the story that Clare has indeed done something abhorrent—not fascinating or compelling, simply wrong—that engaging with her was a mistake, that Irene does not need to spend more time thinking about her. So as we go into part two, I’m excited to see how Irene’s willfully tidy story of Clare Kendry gets disrupted again, presumably in ways that will disrupt both her sense of order and her ability to sublimate disorderly experiences into orderly self-narratives.
I am not an annotator by instinct - I guess I have preferred to let the words rush over me like water, and then ruminate on my ideas and reactions afterwards. Although I know that I need to slow down my reading and not rush through to find out what happens. This week I am just too busy to do it. But all the comments of my fellow readers are inspiring me to try it myself - maybe I won't manage it for Passing but for my next read with you. And I am getting lots of emotional responses to the story, mostly about what passing means in different situations - how have I 'passed' in my life (being bisexual and sometimes being seen as straight, sometimes as gay), the different roles and identities we all adopt in the various situations we are in (although I have never faced the jeopardy faced by black people in Jim Crow USA which gives such an edge to Clare's story. Its not just the fairy tale poor girl gets rich guy and is happy ever after).
I read Passing for the first time earlier this summer, and it’s so fresh in my mind that I’m loving the reread knowing the ending. I appreciate all the tips for annotating as well - it’s a good way to force myself to slow down and pay attention to what Larsen is doing.
Yes! Annotating can be such a great way to slow ourselves down. (And to notice the moments when we're just SO wrapped up in the story that we can't possibly slow down to take a note!)
Thanks for sharing my notes Haley! I’m excited to see how others have been annotating.
I love your comments about staring and being seen; there is truly so much mention of “eyes” in this first part!
Some thoughts:
As I was reading part 1, I started to notice how much emotion we get, and how rapidly it changes. I started circling each emotion as they came up, and I noticed that Irene gets thrown into such a mix of emotions whenever she is around Clare - by contrast, there are very few instances where we get Clare’s emotions.
I’ve also been tracking power, and I realized that though Clare is in some ways exerting her power (through her camouflage and her secret), it is actually Irene who exerts power more visibly throughout her interactions - like when the topic of children’s skin color comes up, or when she is trying to escape Gertrude.
I’m paying so much attention to Irene on this reading and I can’t wait to see what emerges in Parts 2&3.
Thank YOU again for sharing your annotations!! It's so fun to see different examples from readers!!
And these are fantastic observations, Shruti! I looove this idea of tracking emotions — maybe there is a cool way to collect all the emotional words and group them to help uncover deeper connections?
So excited to see what else you start to track and notice! (Especially with Irene!)
Ooh that’s a great idea! I’ll try to think of how I can collect these emotions, and how they’re grouped together
I tracked Irene's emotions too and so many were akin to annoyance, resentment, uneasiness, etc. She seems pretty buttoned up and not in touch with her own desires. I'm interested to see if we get beyond the facade.
So far, this novel is not at all what I expected. Haley your note about Larsen’s narrative voice having “an edge of violence. A dangerous undercurrent” had me highlighting all the dangerous words that slither through the narrative like so many snakes - danger, malice, menace, seduction, scorn, mockery, anger, fear, fury, rage, betray - are just some of the examples in my list from just part 1 of the book. I’ve also highlighted two places where I’ve wondered if this is where Larsen’s story is going. Clare says in her “encounter” with Irene “But I’m not surprised to see you, ‘Rene…in fact ever since I’ve been here, I’ve hoped that I should, or someone. Preferably you, though.” It reads like Clare has been stalking Irene. Is it because Irene (and others) selectively pass as white for access to places like the Drayton? It certainly shades Irene’s claim to righteousness knowing that she does this at times for her own advantage. Is the story going to proceed to knock down Irene’s sense of making the right choices in her life? The other is at the end of Chapter 4 where Irene worries about her husband’s “unhappy restlessness” which at the “beginning of her marriage she had to make such strenuous efforts to repress.” I’m not exactly liking Irene at this point, and I definitely do not trust Clare who at least in Irene’s view has “no allegiance beyond her own immediate desire.” The word seduction has appeared frequently, so who exactly is going to be seduced and in what ways?
I also made note that Irene continuously refers in her thoughts to “Clare Kendry”, her full name, and not just “Clare”. What’s up with that?
I like to get my thoughts in order before reading your guide, so now I’ll dig in to see where we mesh and what things I’ve missed. I had to really stop myself from just reading straight through the novel, but I’m trusting the process.
Ooooooh Maryann this is SO GOOD!! Ahhh I am so excited for you to read the rest of the book now! The way you're tracking this idea of danger with the idea of seduction and desire is totally perfect. I don't want to spoil anything — just...keep at it!!!
As for the reference to Clare's full name: I think there are lots of ways to read that, and many of them have to do with something you're already tracking in Irene's psyche. On this re-read, what's sticking out to me is that Irene seems pretty attached to this old idea of Clare—who Clare Kendry was, as a Black girl from their neighborhood. "Clare Bellew" is a white woman and someone Irene doesn't really know...So I'm kind of reading her insistence on Clare's full name as a kind of identity marker. Maybe she thinks of "Clare Kendry" as a Black woman and "Clare Bellew" as a white woman?
Thanks. That's a good call on the name. And on Clare's side, she uses the nickname, Rene, as though she's trying to make the connection too.
I also tracked the theme of danger and fear.
I wish I had all this guidance/advice on close reading/annotating when I was in college - both were such a mystery and I was always told to figure it out for myself - like that was part of the assignment. I love seeing how others annotate and read as well. Thank you for sharing your process and Shruti's.
Hi Kerry!! It’s such a difficult thing to learn without any guidance. I learned from the best, so I feel lucky and happy to share what I have learned and how it helps
Me read!! I’m glad this is helping you deepen your reading practice! ✨
Re-reading this novel has been such a cool experience, because my copy has all of my annotations from the last time I read it. I keep finding paragraphs I underlined and asking myself why I thought those were important; or, I find something I didn't annotate, and I ask myself how I could have possibly missed it before!
The last time I read it, I seemed really focused on little moments that Larsen sneaks into the narrative to give us a closer glimpse at the hidden lives of our characters (like Irene's offhand thought, "Why was it that almost invariably [Ted] wanted something that was difficult or impossible to get? Like his father. For ever wanting something that he couldn't have."). This time, however, I'm much more interested in the relationship between a character's feelings and their actions. I love how we get glimpses of Irene's inner monologue and can see a tempered disdain for Clare, yet she still visits her. There's a great moment when Irene feels absolutely insulted, but manages to keep her composure, keeping Clare from realizing her true feelings: "Irene, who was struggling with a flood of feelings, resentment, anger, and contempt, was, however, still able to answer as coolly as if she had not that sense of not belonging to and of despising the company in which she found herself drinking iced tea from tall amber glasses on that hot August afternoon."
Or, there's a moment when Clare and Irene are sharing tea during their first encounter and Clare sits with "an air of indifferent assurance" despite that fact we can tell that she is heavily invested and almost desperate for her conversation with Irene. Over and over, I kept noticing the disconnect between our character's feelings and their actions, and it made me think about the way "passing" manifests for our different characters. For Clare, it's not only about race, but about her appearance of security and her confidence in her decisions. For Irene, it's about how she manages her true feelings towards others in her actions and words. I'm excited to see what other instances I can find in the next part of the novel, and to see how this reading experiences compares to the last time I read and annotated.
Hi Jordan! I love these observations. The disconnect between Irene's true feelings and how she behaves, as well as Clare's flirtations with "danger" as she looks to hold up polite conversation as a hostess, really heighten the tension! And, as you've pointed out, it all has to do with *appearances,* which is what passing is all about: appearing to be something you are not (or perhaps, in this novel, appearing to be one thing when you are really many, many, many things all at once).
I'm curious what you make of this reduction: that passing reduces these women to less than they are. Is there contempt in that, too? What, or who, are they really angry with?
This question is so challenging in the best way!
I would have thought at the conclusion of Part I that Irene was solely angry with Clare. While I do think she is resentful over the situation Clare put her in, it feels like some of that anger is directed back at herself. I was reading the first chapter of Part II this morning, and there's this telling moment where Irene asks herself why she didn't "take of the defence of the race to which she belonged" in John's presence. Later, she defends the act of passing to her husband, saying that even those who reject or condemn it still protect it. There's also this theme of satisfaction throughout, such as Irene and her husband's speculation on Clare's satisfaction (or lake thereof) in her lifestyle, and Irene's own reflections on her dissatisfaction over her familial situation despite getting what she wanted (keeping her husband home with her and their kids). Maybe the act of being dissatisfied with a situation, especially if it's exactly the scenario they desired most, lends itself to the outward expression of anger? I'm not entirely sure, but I'll have to keep it in the back of my mind as I keep reading!
This is interesting "Maybe the act of being dissatisfied with a situation, especially if it's exactly the scenario they desired most, lends itself to the outward expression of anger?" I think along those lines I had highlighted this passage to consider "The tea, when it came, was all that she had desired and expected. In fact, so much was it what she had desired and expected that after the first deep cooling drink she was able to forget it...". There is also the part where Irene says that Clare not only wants to have her cake and eat it too, but also nibble everyone else's. There is so much unfulfilled desire in this book. Are we always doomed to never be satisfied, or are both of these women seeking what they are expected to want vs what they truly desire?
I hadn't even thought of the connection between food/drink and desire/satisfaction! My first thought is of the scene when Clare, Irene, and Gertrude are drinking tea together while Clare talks about her fear during her pregnancy. I underlined the paragraph about Irene's feelings of "resentment, anger, and contempt" towards the others' discussion of dark skin, which are situated in the context of "the company in which [Irene] found herself drinking iced tea from tall amber glasses on that hot August afternoon." When I think about this in the context of satisfaction, the ideal image of a cold drink on a warm day is sullied by the conversation of Irene's company. In fact, that initial scene you mentioned in your comment when Irene is drinking tea at the Drayton may be the only scene so far where Irene appears satisfied, something that only lasts until Clare arrives (I would need to comb back through the chapters to verify this though!). I love the question you pose at the end here, that maybe both Clare and Irene are only seeking what they believe they are supposed to want. It seems that maybe when Clare and Irene are together, they reveal to one another the extents of their dissatisfactions or unfulfilled desires?
I am re-reading Passing but this is my first time annotating (I'm not a big novel-annotator!), so it's been interesting to go about it at a different pace! I remember the first time I read the novel, it felt much like Toni Morrison's Jazz: that almost dizzying energy of a new rhythm of a Black cultural moment growing larger than its original neighborhoods. This time around, I am forcing myself to sit with the silences and the non-spoken words and it's adding a whole new layer to it the story!
I really liked your point about why Clare remains "Clare Kendry"--I actually highlighted and added a little exclamation mark to this passage on Chapter 2 that I think may help sum up this: "You are changed, you know. And yet, in a way, you're just the same."
One thing I found really interesting was the dynamics between Irene, Clare, and Gertrude, and particularly the way Irene sees Gertrude. Perhaps I'm being a little bit contaminated here by my reading of the chapters to come, but her POV in that encounter comes across as informed by a classism, a type of middle class ethics and etiquette that perhaps also plays into her fascination with Clare: Clare has socially ascended in ways that could never be open to a Black woman, but at the same time Irene retains a sense of pride in her own experience of "excellence" (or "elitism" depending on your perspective) that does not accord neither with the idea of "passing" for a living nor with blue-collar labor.
hi! YES to all of this!!!
The class layers of this novel are always SO fascinating to me, especially given Larsen's own proximity to Langston Hughes and Du Bois and other Harlem Renaissance thinkers. I keep thinking about my (limited!) knowledge about the discourse of "racial uplift" and how Clare, Irene, and Gertrude seem each to represent different rungs on the ladder, so to speak. As you say, Clare has ascended higher than most Black woman in this time would've been able, at least on their own, but she's had to do it at the cost of her racial identity. I think that's where Irene (perhaps mistakenly?) feels morally superior to her...? Irene has established great comforts and social credibility and community by remaining a Black woman, married to a Black man, and these other women — with white husbands and a deep anxiety about their resulting children from these unions — seem to almost resent and judge her for it. Just as she seems to be resenting and judging them. I was struck by how much, in Part 1, the narrative itself seems to remain carefully neutral (I can't feel, yet, that the novel is saying any one way of living is "better" than the others) even as all the characters are anything but neutral in their feelings about race and class.
Haley this whole post is amazing - so much detail! I LOVE IT! I have just finished part one and have a lot of thoughts. As someone who never annotates their books, it’s been interesting to see how I am trying. So far, I am just marking all the ‘moments’ where race is directly discussed and confronted. Eg with the conversations about babies. There’s so much unsaid in this novel about race, even though it is the entire nature of the book, so I am keeping an eye out for all the times it is directly referenced and discussed, how it is addressed and what this means for the dynamics on the page. I loved your comments about variability and all the language Larsen uses surrounding being seen - that’s something I would honestly not have picked up on (I’m such a fast reader, to my detriment sometimes).
The themes that I’m thinking of the most are shame and power. The former, the role that shame can play in people’s lives, and the societal constructs that this shame derives from. Clare, initially, seems shameless in with her first interaction with Irene, and subsequently in her home when the conversation unfolds with her racist as hell husband. But by the closing of part one and her letter, it is evident that she is not shameless at all and is characterised by so much shame; shame that has driven her to live a life of a lie. This shame interacts perfectly with the theme of power too; how they feed each other. Clare’s character is a vehicle for Larsen to interrogate racism in American society at that time, and also an opportunity to suggest the structures of power within society are built upon shaky grounds. Initially it seems Clare holds the power, and then perhaps her husband, but it’s actually Irene that holds the power. Because nothing is more powerful than the truth (tale as old as time) but also resisting in engaging w power structures that are put in place to humiliate and dehumanise people. While Irene plays along for the sake of protecting herself and the other women in that moment with Clare and her husband, I thought Clare’s intense stare tells us all we need to know about how powerful Irene is and that Clare knows it. As a reader you can’t help but feel Clare is intentionally playing a dangerous game, inviting I and G to meet her husband who houses the views he does. I really wonder what her MO is? Surely, it cannot just be to rekindle with old friends? Clare seems too sneaky for that.
I feel tense and excited for the rest of the novel, eager to know if Clare ever gets ‘found out’, but equally feeling sad about the impact that this will have on her and her life.
hi Martha! I am so glad you're getting a chance to explore your annotation style and what you're noticing!
I love your thoughts on shame here. And I'm also so struck by your rumination on truth: "Nothing is more powerful than the truth, but also resisting in engaging with power structures that are put in place to humiliate and dehumanize people." It makes me think: what is "truth" in this book? Is "passing" a form of dishonesty? Is it truthful? Is it powerful? Is it humiliating?
Passing, the very act of appearing as some race or identity other than your own, is wrapped up in all of these questions. By the end of the final chapter in Part 1, we see that Clare is admitting to Irene: I thought I had it all figured out, but now I see you and your life and how you live...and I'm not sure passing remains a true way forward for me, anymore. It's almost as if she's admitting: I did this to get ahead, but now I'm ahead and....what? I'm anxious, I'm married to a racist, and I'm stuck. No wonder she's second-guessing this "resisting" of those "power structures put in place to humiliate and dehumanize" herself. It makes me wonder: can Clare get anything she wants? What *does* Clare Kendry want?
(And how does this echo Irene's musing, early in the novel, that her husband always wants things he can't have?)
Ok so I finished it yesterday. So many thoughts I will refine for later in the weeks post. The book did not take the trajectory I expected and I am really interested looking back at what I thought might happen and the theme of power I thought I had all figured out!!!
I love and appreciate these further thoughts in the comment from you - they have made me reflect on the book in a much more profound way. You’re the GOAT Haley x look forward to talking end of book reflections at the end of the week!!!
this! book! is! so! good! and what a perfect ghost story for the season.
So many contrasts stood out to me on this first read: order and disorder, desire and renunciation, transgression and conformity, fascination and disgust. I am struck in these pages at how deeply Irene holds onto a sense of rigidity and self-control, how determined she is to stand apart from disorder (of which Clare's passing is a form of...?) — and yet how in different places she stands on the precipice of inviting it in (in the form of continuing to engage with Clare).
(Sidebar: The moment when the man collapses on the sidewalk in the Chicago heat and Irene keeps walking! Thinking about how she feels sticky and damp from 'contact' with other messy bodies! Such brilliant characterization of Irene.)
At the Drayton, Clare appears to disrupt the boundaries of “class and kind” that Irene has carefully adhered to. In that scene with Clare and Gertrude, that feeling of disruption places Irene on the back foot. She feels “outnumbered” by these two women, and tries to re-establish her footing by summoning (and repressing) contempt at their transgressions. For some reason unable to fully unleash those feelings on Clare, Irene instead heaps disgust on Gertrude, whom she views as "broad," "appalling," "sleazy."
And then to end the chapter and the arc: I wonder if the humiliation that Irene feels at the hands of Bellew actually gives her a narrative with which she can re-establish the rightness of her world. She subsumes that humiliation into the story that Clare has indeed done something abhorrent—not fascinating or compelling, simply wrong—that engaging with her was a mistake, that Irene does not need to spend more time thinking about her. So as we go into part two, I’m excited to see how Irene’s willfully tidy story of Clare Kendry gets disrupted again, presumably in ways that will disrupt both her sense of order and her ability to sublimate disorderly experiences into orderly self-narratives.
I am not an annotator by instinct - I guess I have preferred to let the words rush over me like water, and then ruminate on my ideas and reactions afterwards. Although I know that I need to slow down my reading and not rush through to find out what happens. This week I am just too busy to do it. But all the comments of my fellow readers are inspiring me to try it myself - maybe I won't manage it for Passing but for my next read with you. And I am getting lots of emotional responses to the story, mostly about what passing means in different situations - how have I 'passed' in my life (being bisexual and sometimes being seen as straight, sometimes as gay), the different roles and identities we all adopt in the various situations we are in (although I have never faced the jeopardy faced by black people in Jim Crow USA which gives such an edge to Clare's story. Its not just the fairy tale poor girl gets rich guy and is happy ever after).