Nella Larsen's second novel Passing appeared at the peak of the Harlem Renaissance. Many of its characeters and occasions resemble other novels written during that era. Indeed, the working title of Passing, "Nig," alludes to Nigger Heaven, the novel by Larsen's friend and mentor Carl Van Vechten.
However, Passing is more complex and ambitious than many of its predecessors and this may account for the title change and for earning its author the distinction of being one of the first Africnn American women to win a Guggenheim Fellowship for literature.
The central characters of Passing are Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry, two African Americans who look like European Americans. These two women had been girlhood friends but separated for years before they accidentally meet when Clare is seated next to Irene in an expensive Chicago restaurant that only serves European Americans.
Although both women are exploiting their appearance and passing for white, for Irene this is an occasional indulgence. She has established an identity as the doting mother of two sons, the wife of a prominent African American physician, and a supporter of appropriately conservative and uplifting community affairs.
Clare on the other hand has married a successful European American but also deeply dislikes African American people.
From this accidental reunion, the two women's lives become entangled as Clare increasingly seeks opportunities to socialize with (and Irene reluctantly sponsors Clare's entree into) the African American middle class. Clare's recklessness worries Irene because it threatens Clare's carefully constructed "white" identity. However, Irene also finds Clare's choices and the danger they entail both frightening and fascinating until she discovers that Clare is having an affair with her husband. This plot twist creates a climate of tension which climaxes when Clare's enraged husband rushes into one of these African American social gatherings, startling Clare and causing her to fall to her death. An air of ambiguity is added by the fact that, as Clare falls Irene is seen reaching towards her. In the context of the story, Irene's culpability is unclear. It is unclear whether Irene sought to reach Clare to save her or was partly responsible for the fall with a push.
Passing explores the relationships between appearance and reality, deception and unmasking, manipulation and imaginative management, aggression and self-defense. The novel's epigraph from Countee Cullen's poem "Heritage" encourages one to read Passing as another in the genre that explores the ambiguity and conflicts inherent in prevailing constructions of race. When it was first published, many reviewers referred to the novel as a "tragedy," alluding to both its shocking ending and to its obvious similarities to the tragic COTW genre exemplified by works such as William Wells Brown's Clotel (1853). Larsen's examination of passing, however, is more in the tradition of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's Minnie's Sacrifice (1868) or James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912) because it focuses more upon the psychological dimensions than upon the physical acts that the tragic COTW novels portrayed.
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Passing's depiction of race is informed by the racial discussion taking place in the United States during the 1920s, and the "Rhinelander Case" is a notable precedent for the Kendry-Bellew relationship. Praised upon its publication, the novel has since been celebrated in modern scholarship for its complex depiction of race, gender and sexuality. As one of only two novels by Larsen—along with Quicksand — it has played a significant role in positioning her at the forefront of several literary canons.
The 1920s in the United States was a period marked by considerable anxiety over the crossing of racial boundaries—the so-called "color line" between blacks and whites. The practice of crossing the color line and attempting to be recognized as a member of another racial group came to be known as "passing". Although the exact numbers of people who passed is — for obvious reasons — unknown, many estimates were made at the time. The sociologist Charles S. Johnson (1893–1956) calculated that 355,000 blacks had passed between 1900 and 1920.
A significant precedent for Larsen's depiction of Clare Kendry's and Jack Bellew's relationship was the 1927 legal trial known as the "Rhinelander Case" (or Rhinelander v. Rhinelander). The case was an annulment proceeding in which wealthy, white Leonard Kip Rhinelander sued his wife, Alice Beatrice Jones, for fraud. Rhinelander alleged that Alice had failed to inform him of her "colored" blood. Although the jury eventually returned a verdict for Alice, it came at a devastating social cost for both parties — the intimate exchanges between the couple were read out in court, and Alice was forced to disrobe in front of the jury in order to assess the darkness of her skin. The case is mentioned near the end of the novel, when Irene wonders about the consequences of Jack discovering Clare's racial status: “What if Bellew should divorce Clare? Could he? There was the Rhinelander case”.
The book opens with Irene Redfield receiving a letter from Clare Kendry, causing her to recall a chance encounter she had with her at the roof restaurant of the Drayton Hotel in Chicago, during a brief stay in the city. The women — both of mixed ancestry — were once friends, but lost touch when Clare's father died and she went to live with her two paternal white aunts. Irene is perturbed by her suggestion that she could "pass" for white — as Clare does — but is also fascinated by her. Although she attempts to rescind on a promise she made, she nevertheless meets up later with Clare and her black friend, Gertrude Martin. Towards the end of their talk, Clare's white husband John (Jack) Bellew arrives. Unaware that all three women are actually mixed race, Jack voices some very racist views and makes them uneasy.
The book resumes in the present day, when Irene lives in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. She identifies as part of and is actively involved in the black community — part of the committee for the "Negro Welfare League" (NWL). Her husband is a black doctor, Brian Redfield, and she has two children. After ignoring the letter, Irene is visited by Clare, who has been concerned at the lack of reply. Clare decides to involve herself with the black community — in spite of Irene warning her of the risks should her husband find out — and attends the NWL dance. The two resume their childhood friendship, and afterwards Clare is frequently at her home. However, Irene — who has been constantly aware of Clare's attractiveness — becomes increasingly suspicious that her husband is having an affair with Clare. During a shopping trip with her visibly black friend Felise Freeland, Irene encounters Bellew, who becomes aware of her — and by extension, Clare's — racial status; Irene considers warning Clare, but decides against it. Later, Clare accompanies Irene and Brian to a party hosted by Felise on the top floor of a building. The gathering is interrupted by Bellew, who accuses Clare of being a "damned dirty nigger!". Irene rushes to Clare, who sat by an open window. Clare then falls out of the window to the ground below, and is pronounced dead by the guests who eventually gather at the site. Whether Clare falls accidentally, is pushed by Irene, or attempts suicide, is unclear. The book ends with Irene's fragmented anguish at Clare's death.
Passing has been described as "the tragic story of a beautiful light-skinned mulatto passing for white in high society." The tragic mulatto (also, "mulatta" when referring to a woman) is a stock character in early African-American literature, the light-skinned offspring of a white slaveholder and his black slave, whose mixed heritage among a race-based society means she is unable to identify with either blacks or whites. The resulting feeling of exclusion is variably manifested in self-loathing, depression, alcoholism, sexual perversion, and attempts at suicide.
On the surface, Passing conforms to this stereotype in its portrayal of Clare Kendry, whose passing for white has tragic consequences. But the book resists the conventions of the genre through Clare's refusal to feel the expected anguish at the betrayal of her black identity, and her socializing with blacks for the purposes of excitement rather than racial solidarity. This has led scholars more generally to consider Passing as a novel in which the major concern is not race.
Scholars have identified a homoerotic subplot between Irene and Clare, centered on the erotic undertones in Irene's descriptions of Clare. In this interpretation, the novel's central metaphor of "passing" under a different identity occurs at a surprisingly wide variety of levels. The apparently sexless marriage between Brian and Irene — e.g., their separate bedrooms and identification as co-parents rather than sexual partners — allows Larsen to flirt, if only by suggestion, with the idea of a lesbian relationship between Clare and Irene. Brian has been subject to a similar interpretation: Irene's labeling of him as queer and his oft-expressed desire to go to Brazil—a country then more tolerant of homosexuality than the United States—are given as evidence.
Passing was published in April 1929 by Knopf in New York. Sales of the book were modest. Knopf produced three, small print runs each under 2,000 copies — and while early reviews were primarily positive, it received little attention beyond New York City.
In modern scholarship, Larsen is recognized as one of the central figures in the African-American, feminist and modernist canons, a reputation that depends on her modest output of two novels—Passing and Quicksand—and some short stories. As of 2007, Passing is the subject of more than two hundred scholarly articles and more than fifty dissertations, offering a range of critical interpretations.
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