|
Nella Larsen’s novel Passing is centered
on the character Clare Kendry, a light-skinned, biracial woman living as a white woman. She
has married a white man who knows nothing of her race and enjoys all the social comforts of
being white. In this way, this novel breaks down the thematic binary of black and white with
its depiction of racial passing. In addition to the reconstructed as fluid binary of black and
white, Larsen’s novel simultaneously explores the thematic binary of homosexuality and heterosexuality.
Deborah McDowell observes of the racial issues of Passing that “underneath the safety
of that surface is the more dangerous story–though not named explicitly–of Irene’s awakening
sexual desire for Clare” (xxvi). Corinne Blackmer notes that the encounter between Irene and
Clare “instigates a potent desire in her, described in an effusive letter intertwining romantic
and racial longings for Irene” (52). Thus, not only does Passing make fluid the binary of black
and white, but also that of heterosexual and homosexual. Further, the novel also renders fluid
the apparently solid barrier of class. Biman Basu observes that “Clare Kendry’s passing. . . is
predicated on a crossing over into otherwise barricaded economic zones” (384). Neil Sullivan
summarizes, usefully, that “For Larsen” “‘race’ is inextricable from the collateral issues
including class, gender and sexuality, and rivalry-that bear upon the formation of identity” (373).
This introduces the concept that these fluid binary oppositions of race, sexuality and class are
themselves interlinked under the larger rubric of identity formation.
But in order to fully understand this connection between the
thematic binaries that shape identity, binaries rendered fluid in Passing, the reader must
also of necessity examine other foundational binaries of literary form, including narrative structure
and focalization. For example, the novel is constructed around the two significant meetings of Clare
Kendry and Irene Redfield. The book itself is separated into three parts; the encounter, the
re-encounter and the finale. From this, it is clear that there are two significant parts of this
book--thesis and antithesis if you will--and then an added synthesis to complete the structure.
Obviously, the use of the terms encounter and re-encounter further demonstrates an opposition and
at the same time a relationship between two meetings. Similarly, the last sentence of the first
chapter of part three of this novel is “But it didn’t matter” (95). Then, chapter two of part
three opens with the words “But it did matter. It mattered more than anything had ever
mattered before” (96). What this manifests is a textual dialectic, a formal combination
of two ideas, which are opposed to each other. These two opposite statements have been
juxtaposed, relaxing their barrier and making it fluidly synthetic as well.
A more interesting manifestation of fluid formal binaries is evident in the narrative
focalization of the text. This novel is written in the third person, yet gives insight
into Irene’s character that would only come with a first person narration. Because of this, Irene
is often credited as the narrator of this book, even though the marking term of ‘I’ is almost never
used. In fact, at the conclusion of this novel, Irene faints while trying to utter this highly
problematic “I–” (114). Early in the novel, Irene receives a letter from Clare. Of this
letter, it is said “It had been, Irene noted, postmarked in New York the day before.
Her brows came together in a tiny frown” (9). This first sentence relays the internal
thought process of Irene while referring to her in third person. The second sentence is
entirely in third person and thus suggests a narrator other that Irene herself. For this
reason Sullivan suggests that the title Passing “hints at the subject’s disappearance in
the narrative” (373). Irene’s account of the encounter with Clare is provided, in third person,
by the words “This is what Irene Redfield remembered” (12). With this, the third person narrative
of the encounter is encompassed within the consciousness of Irene, which puts her in the position
of textual narrator. At very least, such movements break down the barrier between these two
narrative positions and create a fluid binary, which expresses aspects of both third and first
person narration. These reformed-as-fluid literary binaries unveil the unstable formal foundation
of Passing.
But I would argue that the most fundamental and
significant literary binary that has its parameters redefined to reveal the instability of this work
is the binary of beginning and end. The literary beginnings and ends of novels are obviously
regarded as the start and the finish of the work. Yet, like the thematic and formal binaries
that I have already discussed, the barrier between the two parts has been on occasion critically
disputed. Milorad Pavic states “Let us put the question of when, where, and in which part of the
text the reading of a novel starts, and when and where the reading of a novel ends” (142). He
cites “a good example” of a precise and stable novel as having an “unforgettable beginning” and “an
undeniable and unforgettable end” (142) and then observes “but this is not always the case with
other novels” (142). John Young supports this claim with his statement that “There is almost never
such thing as a single, stable text” (632). This is certainly the case with Nella Larsen’s Passing,
for there is an obvious temporal discrepancy between the narrative time line of this work and the
linear structure of this novel. The narrative time line actually begins in the second chapter of
Passing after “This is what Irene Redfield remembered” (12). The ending of the novel,
disturbingly if metaphorically, will make reference to a time “centuries after” the conclusion
of this text (114).
|
