Degree Project Level: Bachelor’S Navigating the Colour Line

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Degree Project Level: Bachelor’s Navigating the Colour Line

A Critical Mixed Race Study of Biracial Identity and the Tragic Mulatto Trope in Nella Larsen’s Passing

Author: Sofia von Arnold-Grön Supervisor: Dr. Carmen Zamorano Llena Examiner: Billy Gray, PhD Subject/main field of study: English (Literature) Course code: EN2028 Credits: 15 ECTS Date of examination: 7 January 2021

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Dalarna University – SE-791 88 Falun – Phone +4623-77 80 00 Table of Contents

Introduction ...... 1

Sociocultural Views on Biracialism and Critical Mixed-Race Theory 7

Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield as Duplicate Selves ...... 10

“Racial Fraud” and The Rhinelander Case...... 17

The Tragic Mulatto Trope ...... 21

Conclusion ...... 23

Works Cited ...... 26

Introduction

It’s funny about ‘passing’. We disapprove of it and at the same time

we condone it. It excites our contempt and yet we rather admire it.

(Larsen 86).

When Nella Larsen first published her novel Passing in 1925, amid a time of considerable tumult and discussion over the crossing of racial boundaries in

America, it challenged the pre-conceived notions of biracialism and the stereotype of the “tragic mulatto”, an inherently doomed light-skinned mulatto who passes into white society. Set in the Harlem of 1920s New York City, Passing tells the story of two biracial women, childhood friends Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield, whose subsequent reunion leads to bitter consequences culminating in Clare’s tragic death. In the novel, the characters of Clare and Irene represent inverse explorations of their own racial identities as women of mixed race. While fair- skinned Clare has precariously transcended her race by “pretending” to be white and marrying a racist white man, Irene has dutifully remained in Harlem and chosen to stay on her “side” of the racial spectrum, reconciled to a life dictated by the injustices of being a black woman. The novel, which centers around the theme of “racial passing” and examines the complexities of navigating the so-called

“colour line” between blacks and whites, has been both hailed for its depiction of mixed race identity struggles and loss, and criticized for its sometimes ambiguous treatment of the complex hybrid nature of biracial identity.

It should be noted that the important cultural context of the Harlem

Renaissance1 and the painful historical legacy of slavery both play a significant role in informing the theme of racial identity in Passing. The 1920s in the United

States was a period of great racial tension stemming from the century-old practice of slavery and segregation of African Americans, and exacerbated by the Great

Migration whereby hundreds of thousands of black people from the rural south migrated to northern and midwestern cities. Many African Americans had fair skin due to European ancestry to varying degrees and this led to the practice of

“passing” or “crossing the colour line” from black to white society. The crossing of racial boundaries later led to the so called “tragic mulatto trope” used in a number of films and works of literature. The phrase was originally coined by poet and scholar Sterling Brown in 1933 “to connote the character who represents the problem of race mixing, and who is inevitably ruined because she or he is a person

‘without a race’” (Joseph 2). At the same time, the Harlem Renaissance marked a cultural and artistic blooming of African Americans, bringing to the forefront new ideas and perspectives on race.

Alongside the context of the divisive racial tensions which were at play at the time, Nella Larsen’s own life experience as a woman of mixed race must also have played a part in informing the narrative of Passing. Larsen, born Nellie Walker in

1891, was the daughter of what was believed to be a mulatto West Indian father and a Danish mother. Larsen’s mother Marie later remarried a fellow Danish immigrant and came to have another (white) daughter. Thus, Larsen had the painful experience of feeling that she did not truly fit in within her own white

1 The Harlem Renaissance was also known as the “New Negro Movement” and was a significant cultural revival of African American literature and art centered in Harlem, New York City during the 1920s. (Smethurst)

family due to the darker colour of her skin. As author and critic Darryl Pinckney wrote of her upbringing as a person of mixed race: “If she could never be white like her mother and sister, neither could she ever be black in quite the same way that Langston Hughes and his characters were black. Hers was a netherworld, unrecognizable historically and too painful to dredge up” (2). Although Larsen ultimately came to be considered a significant and acclaimed novelist of the

Harlem Renaissance, she felt self-conscious among her black peers, more comfortable in the company of writers such as Carl Van Vechten,2 who although white, wrote about Harlem in his 1926 novel Nigger Heaven, conveying an

“interracial bohemia” more appealing to biracial Larsen (Pinckney 7). Pinckney suggests that it was Larsen’s childhood trauma as the “darker-skinned daughter” which came to inform her fiction which was centered around “women too dark to be white and too light to be black…culturally not entirely at home anywhere” (2).

It is the complex and ambiguous nature of biracial identity, as portrayed in

Larsen’s Passing, which has in more recent years awakened an interest by social scientists and activists to “bring to light the uniquely racialised experiences of mixed-race people” (Sims and Njaka 15). In their book Mixed-Race in the US and

UK: Comparing the Past, Present and Future, Jennifer Patrice Sims and Chinelo

L. Njaka outline the evolution of “Critical Mixed Race Studies”, an area of research which makes use of racial formation theory, placing the notion of race into a socio-historical context, which in turn allows for a deeper understanding of both the structural and cultural elements in society which inform racial identity

(Sims and Njaka 18). In her book Transcending Blackness: From the New

2 Carl Van Vechten was a white American writer and photographer who was a patron of the Harlem Renaissance. He helped many black writers, including Nella Larsen and Langston Hughes, to publish their literary works. His controversial 1926 novel Nigger Heaven, which depicted Harlem life, has been both criticized for being offensive to African Americans and hailed for its nuanced portrayal of Harlem culture. (Bernard)

Millennium Mulatta to the Exceptional Multiracial, Ralina L. Joseph examines representations of mixed race and blackness in popular culture (mainly film and television) and literature, including the tragic mulatto stereotype, asserting that these tend to portray successful multiracial individuals as those who have been able to “rise above” or transcend their blackness, thus reinforcing the racist notion of blackness as inferior. An examination of Larsen’s Passing through the lens of

Critical Mixed Race Theory can accommodate a more nuanced understanding of the novel’s treatment of biracial identity in terms of its placement on the sociocultural racial spectrum and the implications thereof, which this thesis will elaborate on. While many critics, including those who are mentioned below and whose research is referenced in this thesis, do place a degree of focus on the issue of race and even on the issue of mixed race, they do not analyze the novel through the lens of the more recent Critical Mixed Race Theory. Rather there is often a tendency to analyse the novel and the theme of biracialism through the lens of

African American Literary Theory, which inevitably highlights the issue of race in terms of blackness but lacks a more nuanced theoretical approach to the hybrid notion of mixed race.

While some would argue that being biracial and having fair skin meant you were privileged in early 20th-century America, especially if you were sufficiently light-skinned to pass since darker African Americans were facing deep-rooted racism and prejudice at the time based on the colour of their skin, the practice of a biracial person pretending to be white nonetheless held the potential for dangerous ramifications. This is evident in the “one-drop rule”, a legal principle of racial classification which asserted a person’s “blackness” if they had even just one ancestor of sub-Saharan African ancestry. Larsen makes further reference to the

potential legal ramifications of passing with the novel’s brief but significant mention of the infamous 1925 Rhinelander case, wherein a wealthy white man,

Leonard Kip Rhinelander, attempted to sue his biracial wife for annulment of their marriage on the grounds that she had not informed him of her “coloured” blood.

The case built on the notion that a biracial woman pretending to be white is inherently deceptive and fraudulent, and also that an individual of mixed race is really black, drawing on the logic of “the so-called ‘one-drop rule’, which holds that a single drop of ‘black blood’ is enough to make a person ‘black’” (Nisetich

3). In her essay “Reading Race in Nella Larsen’s Passing and the Rhinelander

Case”, Rebecca Nisetich places focus on the significance of the Rhinelander Case in the narrative of Passing, contending that the need to categorize mixed-race individuals denies the existence of a middle ground. Nisetich also suggests that

Larsen’s treatment of biracial identity ultimately results in “dueling concepts of race as a physical fact and as a social construct” (50) because although Larsen challenges the idea of race as solely visually perceptible, “she refuses to establish race as entirely performative, either” (50).

Previous scholarship and criticism of Passing has focused on the performative roles of gender and race which can be found in the novel, while others have “overlooked or minimized the significance of race” (Wagner 154). A number of scholars have placed emphasis on a feminist analysis of the novel, as well as exploring what many regard as the hidden narrative of lesbianism. In her article “In the Place of Clare Kendry: A Gothic Reading of Race and Sexuality in

Nella Larsen’s Passing”, Johanna M. Wagner places both sexuality and race at the forefront of Larsen’s text, arguing that they are “the compelling issues of the novel” (145). Through a gothic reading of the novel, Wagner also points to the

notion that Clare is “Irene’s double” (147), a duplicate self mirroring her on the opposite side of the colour line. According to Wagner, “Clare is a destabilizing presence to Irene’s racial identity” (148) since to Irene, she reminds her of her own desire to be white and of the repressed “feelings, wishes, dreams from her own childhood that Clare’s presence has uncovered” (150). Thus, as this thesis will argue, the dual or “double” narrative of the novel conveys two opposing or contradictory representations of racial identity which inevitably present whiteness as superior.

This thesis will also draw on scholar Sinead Moynihan’s analysis of Passing through her comparison of the novel with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby in her essay “Beautiful White Girlhood? Daisy Buchanan in Nella Larsen’s

Passing”, arguing that there are significant intertextual parallels between the two novels which offer a deeper understanding of the notion of “passing” as reckless and unsafe.

Further, this thesis will elaborate on the notion of “transgression” in Passing and what it says about the dilemma of biracialism, drawing on scholar Margaret

Gillespie’s analysis of the novel in her essay “Gender, Race and Space in Nella

Larsen’s Passing (1929)”, in which she compares the narrative of racial transgression with the hidden narrative of lesbian transgression.

There is a sense that in Passing, Larsen struggles to grapple with the right and wrong of choosing one race over the other. Although the novel is in many ways a confrontation of the inherently prejudiced racial binary paradigms facing people of mixed race, it is the contention of this thesis that the way in which

Passing depicts race in 1920s America, through its presentation of two biracial women living and performing race on opposite ends of the social and racial

spectrum, actually serves to perpetuate the notion of black inferiority and the racist discourses that it aims to criticize, including the one-drop logic which asserts that a biracial individual is truly black. While it may be said that Larsen sets out to rewrite the archetype of the tragic mulatto in the character of Clare Kendry, it is instead reinforced when Clare pays the ultimate price for her racial transgression.

Sociocultural Views on Biracialism and Critical Mixed-Race

Theory

Although a number of scholars have previously focused on analyzing Passing in terms of race as a central theme in the novel, emphasis has been placed on the notion of race in terms of blackness rather than on its biracial context. African

American literary theorists have tended to examine the novel’s treatment of race in terms of the African American experience, implying that the characters of Irene

Redfield and Clare Kendry are primarily black in spite of their dual race heritage.

In their book Mixed-Race in the US and UK, Sims and Njaka discuss this tendency to regard people of black and white mixed race in terms of their blackness, describing how biracial individuals repeatedly experience other people viewing them “as Black regardless of their mixed-race heritage” (47).

Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) is a relatively new area of interdisciplinary research which places emphasis on “racialised mixedness” (Sims and Njaka 16). Formerly known as Mixed Race Studies, CMRS has developed over the past 35 years with the aim of examining biracial identity, representations of mixed race, race construction and socialisation. Drawing on racial formation theory, which gives the concept of race a socio-historical context, CMRS explores

the notion of race as a social construct. In Mixed-Race in the US and UK, Sims and

Njaka write about the history of race in the US and UK, noting the difficulties for people of mixed race to identify themselves within existing political and cultural frameworks. As outlined in the book, the addition of mixed-race identification to

US and UK censuses did not appear in any concrete form until 1990. Up until then,

“census enumerators were instructed to identify ‘Mulattos’ “ (Sims and Njaka 30) but there was no other way of officially identifying oneself as an individual of mixed race.

One possible “advantage” of biracialism, as identified by many CMRS scholars, is that, in contrast to other racial groups who have “little agency in selecting their racial identity” (Sims and L. Njaka 42), people of mixed race have a certain degree of “choice” in terms of their racial identity. This is also the basis for a profound dilemma, however, whereby biracial individuals experience pressure within society to choose one race over the over, bringing into play the performative nature of race: the “doing” of race. In Passing, the character Clare

Kendry passes into white society and “pretends” to be white or “acts” as a white woman (even though she is in actuality just as white as she is black). She has made the choice to perform one racial identity in place of the other. Certainly, it can be said that one of the great dilemmas of biracialism is that there is an implied expectation that one must choose one race over the other, rather than embracing the multicultural hybrid identity of mixed race. Joseph writes about this in her book Transcending Blackness: From the New Millennium Mulatta to the

Exceptional Multiracial, where she describes the difficulties which face individuals of mixed race to reside within a hybrid middle ground: “Performing hybrid blackness is not an option for multiracial black characters in contemporary

representations. Instead, even when blackness is not pathologized in the text, but more explicitly loved, hybridity is presented as unattainable, and perhaps undesirable” (169).

Joseph asserts that it is important to examine artistic and sociocultural representations of mixed race because they “transform seeming fictions of racialization and sexualization into something close to reality” (3). In other words, they have an effect on the way one perceives people of mixed race and what assumptions one makes about them. Although there are examples of mixed-race representations which are positive and “which equate multiraciality with progress”

(Joseph 2), most appear to reinforce the unspoken message that “blackness must be risen above, surpassed, or truly transcended” (Joseph 4). Thus, these representations of mixed race carry with them an undertone of racism, whereby whiteness is prized as superior and promise-laden, and blackness is a state and a deficit to be sloughed off. The notion of needing to rid oneself of one’s blackness brings to mind the character of Clare in Passing who successfully rids herself of her black race by “disguising” herself as white. Perhaps what is most problematic with this idea, as it is represented in Passing and in other artistic representations of biracialism, is the fact that, again, it reinforces the notion that there is no middle ground for people of mixed race, no “messy, hybridized, multiracial forms”

(Joseph 4). There is only black and white.

An analysis of Passing through the lens of Critical Mixed Race Theory allows for an interpretation of the novel which goes beyond much of the scholarship which has already been applied to the novel through African American

Literary Theory, in terms of understanding the complexities of navigating society as a person of mixed race. Both of the main characters in the novel, Irene Redfield

and Clare Kendry, are biracial. Therefore both sides of the “colour line” - both whiteness and blackness, but also the middle ground of hybridity which is biracialism – need to be included in an analysis of the novel’s exploration of racial identity.

Clare Kendry and Irene Redfield as Duplicate Selves

In her article “In the Place of Clare Kendry: A Gothic Reading of Race and

Sexuality in Nella Larsen’s ‘Passing’”, Wagner argues that the characters of Clare

Kendry and Irene Redfield are duplicate selves or “psychological doubles”, the implications of which lie at the heart of the tension in their relationship. According to Wagner, Clare is “the obvious image of a doppelgänger” (145) and it is when

Irene is confronted with this contradictory mirror image of herself as a white female double that “Clare forces the issue of race into Irene’s foremost thoughts”

(146).

…Irene Redfield wished, for the first time in her life that she had not

been born a Negro. For the first time she suffered and rebelled

because she was unable to disregard the burden of race. It was, she

cried silently, enough to suffer as a woman, an individual, on one’s

own account, without having to suffer for the race as well. It was a

brutality, and undeserved. Surely no other people so cursed as Ham’s

dark children. (Larsen 154).

Irene’s feelings of being burdened and cursed by her own black race come over her for the first time when Clare reenters her life and offers her a glimpse into

the life she could have lived on the other side of the colour line. On the one hand, she is critical of Clare’s passing into white society and she condemns her refusal to stay on her chosen side of the racial spectrum: “the trouble with Clare was not only that she wanted to have her cake and eat it too but that she wanted to nibble at the cakes of other folk as well” (Larsen 38). Irene resents the fact that Clare benefits from the privileges of the white lifestyle she has with her husband John Bellew while still engaging with her black heritage behind her husband’s back, as though her blackness is something to be ashamed of. According to Joseph: “Throughout much of African American history, the idea of passing, or passing as white, accompanied the notion of invisibility: ‘black’ people who passed disappeared from the African American communities” (7). Thus, even the controversial practice of passing carried with it an implied set of rules and accepted behaviour.

Clare refuses to abide by these “rules” of passing by remaining separated from and invisible to the black community she grew up in. By secretively engaging with the black community of Harlem when and how she pleases, she manipulates her racial identity according to what best serves her interests. For Irene, who has spent her life following the implied social rules and restrictions of race by accepting her

“blackness” in accordance with the one-drop logic, Clare’s refusal to adhere to rigid racial categories seems unfair, even immoral.

Yet, while Irene does judge Clare for being disloyal to her own black roots, there is also clearly a part of Irene that is envious of Clare and the life she has acquired by passing into white society. According to Moynihan: “Irene secretly covets Clare’s position as a white, upper-class wife…” (22). Because the novel presents the women in binary opposition, as doubles, each representative of white and black respectively, there is a clear sense that Clare has climbed the “social

ladder” by passing as white and that she has surpassed the black Irene. The underlying narrative of Passing points to the notion that Irene is envious of Clare and her white lifestyle.

In the novel, the two women live their lives on opposite ends of the colour line: Irene in the black community of Harlem and Clare in upper-class white society. While Irene is portrayed as good, dutiful and “loyal” to her black roots,

Clare is seen as reckless, dangerous, and as someone who will do anything to get what she wants. As she herself says: “Why, to get the things I want badly enough,

I’d do anything, hurt anybody, throw anything away. Really, ‘Rene, I’m not safe”

(Larsen 129). Addressing Irene, Clare says: “It’s just that I haven’t any proper morals or sense of duty, as you have…” (Larsen 129). This juxtaposition of good and bad establishes a basis upon which to draw parallels between morality and racial loyalty, immorality and passing. The implication is that Irene is morally right to accept her inherent blackness and remain on her side of the colour line, whereas Clare is morally wrong and deceitful to choose to pass as a white woman.

In this sense, the novel also reinforces the racist idea imposed on biracial individuals that it is right to choose one race over the other rather than embody a hybrid multiracial identity, and furthermore that it is right to accept one’s blackness. This notion of racial morality, as seen in Passing, was also heavily influenced by both the dictates of the one-drop rule as well as residing antimiscegenation laws3 which forbade race mixing.

An important factor in the choices which the two women make in terms of race is the socioeconomic and class implications of those choices. The period of the 1920s was “a time when the boundaries of racial and gender identity were

3 Antimiscegenation laws, which legislated against interracial marriage and interracial sexual relationships, existed in America until 1967. (Daniel et al. 17)

being drawn more sharply than at any other period in America’s history”

(Gillespie 3). Racism against African Americans was “undergirded by dozens of anti-ethnic, anti-miscegenation, and anti-immigrant laws passed during the decade” (Gillespie 7) and “more lynchings were perpetrated in the Twenties than at any other time” (Gillespie 7). Race was, and still is, inextricably linked to class and economic opportunities and privileges. Gillespie points to the various boundaries, both socially and geographically, which can be seen in the novel, drawing a distinct line between black and white, poverty and affluence: “The city of Chicago which forms the backdrop to the opening chapters of Passing for instance seems to form an unyielding topography of racial fixity and inviolable separateness: the ‘south side’ synonymous with African-Americans and districts like Lincoln Park with the white, affluent and educated” (12). Clare’s passing allows her to enter a previously inaccessible world inhabited by white, affluent people. Her persona as a white woman grants her entry to a higher social class. At the scene of their first meeting at the whites-only rooftop of the exclusive Drayton hotel in Chicago, whereby the women are reunited for the first time since adolescence, Irene reflects upon this other world which Clare now inhabits, recalling an account she had heard of Clare being seen in the company of a white man: “And there was another which told of her driving in Lincoln Park with a man, unmistakably white, and evidently rich. Packard limousine, chauffeur in livery, and all that” (Larsen 27). Parallels are drawn between whiteness and affluence: “Well, Irene acknowledged, judging from her appearance and manner,

Clare seemed certainly to have succeeded in having a few of the things that she wanted” (Larsen 28). Irene, as narrator, implies that Clare has wanted to have certain things which her passing as a white woman has now granted her. By

transcending her blackness, Clare has climbed upwards on the socioeconomic ladder. She has successfully sloughed off her blackness, a way of winning in what was, and still is, a race-fixated society. As she puts it: “ ‘Money’s awfully nice to have. In fact, all things considered, I think, ‘Rene, that it’s even worth the price’”

(Larsen 42). This implies that Clare is aware that she has had to “pay a price” by passing in order to acquire a higher socioeconomic status. Irene, on the other hand, has chosen to remain in the black community of Harlem, where she lives a life comfortably situated in a middle class household with her husband and two sons.

Despite the fact that Irene is by no means poor, a number of references are made in the novel to the black community in Harlem as poor, and the implication that blackness is equated with an inferior lower class. When Clare voices a desire to return to Harlem and be reunited with the black people she grew up with, Irene says: “‘Well, Clare can just count me out. I’ve no intention of being the link between her and her poorer, darker brethren’”(Larsen 85).

The narrative of the duplicate selves on opposite sides of the colour line not only serves to contrast whiteness and blackness in terms of socioeconomic factors, it also reinforces the notion of whiteness as the superior standard for beauty. In the novel, Irene eventually comes to suspect, or realize, that her husband Brian is having a romantic affair with the fair-skinned Clare. Brian’s attraction to Clare, indeed his sexual preference for her over his black wife Irene, can be seen to underscore the notion that fairness is equated with desirability. Throughout the novel, Irene describes Clare in terms of her beauty and pale skin: “with those dark, almost black, eyes and that white mouth like a scarlet flower against the ivory of her skin” (Larsen 17). As Moynihan argues in her essay “Beautiful White

Girlhood? Daisy Buchanan in Nella Larsen’s Passing”, Irene clearly admires

Clare’s whiteness and seems to covet the “white standards of beauty” (22) which she represents. Moynihan draws a number of parallels between the narrative of

Passing and that of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, also a novel about passing or pretending to be someone else, pointing to the significance of the use of white powder in both novels. In Passing, Irene applies white powder to her face in a number of instances, seemingly in a “desire to lighten her ‘warm olive skin’ and

‘dark white face’” (Moynihan 22). As the character Gertrude Martin, a biracial childhood friend of Irene and Clare, puts it in one scene of Passing: “‘…of course, nobody wants a dark child’” (Larsen 56). Her remark also refers to the fear that

Clare had felt when she was pregnant with her daughter Margery, a fear felt by many biracial women who have passed and have children with white men who do not know of their black heritage – the fear that one’s child will turn out to be dark and thereby reveal one’s blackness. This points once again to the notion of white superiority as it relates to normative ideals of beauty. It also relates to the notion that white skin is “pure”, and should not be “tainted” by blackness. Repeatedly throughout the novel, similar remarks are made which imply that white skin is prized, explaining Irene’s envy of Clare’s fairness.

Through her interpretation of the double narrative in Passing, Wagner interprets the conflict in the relationship between Irene and Clare to be linked to

Irene’s need for security and the threat which she feels Clare poses to that security.

According to Wagner, “Irene’s only wish is to keep herself secure” (153). Clare’s reappearance in her life, as her psychological “white” double, is a way of putting a mirror in front of Irene’s face, forcing her to examine her own life and racial identity for the first time. In many ways, Irene’s life, up until her reunion with

Clare, has been comfortable and without conflict, due in large part to the fact that

she has suppressed her feelings of suffering due to her identity as a black woman.

Once Clare reenters her life, Irene must reconcile those suppressed feelings and confront the issue of race. As Wagner writes: “Irene ultimately begins to break down. By her very lack of racial markings, Clare forces Irene to see, to explore her

African American-ness. By coercing her into an uncontrollable situation where

Irene must look at race and racism directly, she can no longer ignore the issue”

(153-154). Irene has lived her life in a false sense of security, ignoring the issue of race which has all the time been there. Clare represents an unravelling of that security, when she forces Irene to see the cruel truth about her own racial identity:

“Herself. Her race. Race! The thing that bound and suffocated her” (Larsen 153).

It is also this theory of the duplicate selves which may explain the tragedy of

Clare’s death in the final scene of the novel. Clare’s death is never definitively explained in the book, in large part due to the unreliable narration of Irene: “One moment Clare had been there, a vital glowing thing, like a flame of red and gold.

The next she was gone” (Larsen 178). Because Irene is in control of how the story is told and can choose what she discloses, the reader is not given access to knowing exactly how Clare dies. Many scholars, however, including Gillespie, believe that Larsen intentionally leads the reader to believe that Irene is responsible for Clare’s death, by pushing her. As Gillespie puts it: “An increasingly suspicious Irene interprets the apparent complicity between her spouse and Clare as clear-cut evidence of marital infidelity and it is she, the reader is strongly led to believe, who is responsible for her rival’s fatal fall to her death in the novel’s closing pages” (14). Regardless of whether or not it is Irene who indeed pushes Clare to her fatal end, her death serves to remove the conflicting

parallel existence of Clare as Irene’s “white” double, leaving behind the allegiant black self. It also serves to punish her for her racial transgression.

When Clare dies, she pays the ultimate price for her passing. However, in many ways she has already paid a great price long before her death because of the loss she has had to face by passing: the loss of her black heritage and community.

Although she has wanted to rid herself of her blackness, another part of her longs for it: “‘You can’t know in this pale life of mine I am all the time seeing the bright pictures of that other that I once thought I was glad to be free of… It’s like an ache, a pain that never ceases…’” (Larsen 12). Thus, her choice to live as a white woman is also equated with loss and pain. By being forced to choose one race over the other, just as Irene has chosen to be black, Clare has negated the other part of herself, just as so many other people of mixed race are forced to deny their own racial hybridity.

“Racial Fraud” and The Rhinelander Case

The Rhinelander case is only mentioned once in Passing, in a scene where Irene ponders over the potential consequences of Clare’s husband John Bellew discovering that she is black: “What if Bellew should divorce Clare? Could he?

There was the Rhinelander case” (Larsen 159). The case made sensational headlines in 1925 when the legal trial was held and received extensive media coverage. It was the first public divorce trial of its kind, bringing to the public consciousness the notion of legally fraudulent marriage on the basis of “racial fraud”, with the underlying message that a biracial woman who presents herself as white is fraudulent. Although the case is only referenced once in the novel, it is

echoed in the narrative of Clare Kendry, whose marriage to the racist white Bellew becomes a catalyst for the tragic events which unfold thereafter.

In “Gender, Race and Space in Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929)”, Gillespie draws comparisons between the narrative of racial transgression in Passing and the hidden narrative of homosexual transgression in the novel, arguing that the act of passing at the time, whether racially or sexually, would have been considered “a blatant flouting of the perceived fixed social, sexual and ethnic identity positions”

(4) which were the norm. Passing was considered an act of fraud during a period in

America when “the regulation of sexual, social and racial types was being enforced” (Gillespie 4) through legislation and high-profile lawsuits such as the

Rhinelander case. The need to classify people according to strict race categories meant that “mixed-race America was quite simply declared a fiction” (Gillespie 6) and there was no tolerance for a racial middle ground. The context of this time period in America, in which people of mixed race were marginalized and forced to conform to narrow views of race which provided little acceptance for their multiracial identities, provides the framework for the novel and an explanation for the underlying sense of tension and danger in the narrative.

Nisetich argues that the Rhinelander case “actually underscores a central theme of the novel” (2). Its mention in the novel is significant because it offers clues into the tragic mulatta characterization of Clare and because, according to

Nisetich, both the trial and Passing “illustrate the problematic ways Americans sought to categorize racially ambiguous individuals in the 1920s” (2). The

Rhinelander case raised the question of racial identification and race mixing, exacerbating the tensions which already existed at the time due to “eroding race and class boundaries” (Nisetich 7). The concept of race had evolved into a black-

white dichotomy and “Americans considered racial identity to be a fundamental fact” (Nisetich 9), something which is determined by descent. The jury of the

Rhinelander trial ultimately ruled in favour of Rhinelander’s wife Alice Beatrice

Jones, but they did so on the grounds that “it was not possible for her to have deceived her husband because her ‘race’ was visibly apparent” (Nisetich 1). In other words, they determined that she was undeniably black, even though she was a woman of mixed race and identified herself as white. This need to categorize individuals into one race or another serves to negate the middle ground of mixed race identity and also denies the complexities of racial identity as socially constructed or performative.

The notion of race as a social construction is the center of an ongoing discussion amongst Critical Mixed Race theorists. Many scholars, including Sims and Njaka, refer to the notion of race as performative and socially constructed as it is presented in racial formation theory. According to racial formation theory, race is “constructed through both structural and cultural elements within societies”

(Sims and Njaka 18). For multiracials, this idea is especially complex because it suggests that one can choose or be influenced to identify oneself as one particular race over another. If race is socially constructed, then biracial individuals may feel that they are in essence black or white, regardless of the colour of their skin or the biology of their racial heritage. However, the idea that a multiracial person is really “undeniably” black because it is biologically proven – as evidenced in the

Rhinelander case and echoed in the narrative of Passing – points to a racist black/white dichotomy which does not allow for the notion of race as performative, nor does it allow for a hybrid middle ground.

In Passing, the narrative of Clare echoes the tragedy of Alice who is left by her husband because of her racial “transgression”. Clare is ultimately punished for her passing and the narrative ultimately reinforces the idea that passing is a form of “racial fraud”. As Nisetich points out: “the act of passing both subverts racial categories and reinforces them, employing the logic that people of mixed ancestry are ‘really’ black but pretend to be white” (22). Irene, who prides herself on maintaining a form of loyalty to her African American heritage by remaining in the black community of Harlem, describes Clare as having “no allegiance beyond her own immediate desire” (Larsen 8). She also claims that Clare has “concealed her own origin” (Larsen 78), suggesting that she is hiding her “true” race, the one she really belongs to: “No, Clare Kendry cared nothing for the race. She only belonged to it” (Larsen 79). Yet there is much evidence to suggest that Clare identifies herself as white and does not see herself as “truly” black, or at least that she does not identify herself according to racial categories which are dictated by physical fact or biological heritage. Larsen seems to point to the fact that Clare experiences race as performative, as something she herself has chosen to be.

The idea that a biracial individual is “really” black, but not “really” white, goes back to the one-drop rule which “dictated that any degree of black ‘blood’ was considered black” (Joseph 2). In this sense, Clare can never escape her blackness. Larsen reinforces this idea by creating a narrative which ultimately punishes Clare for attempting to transcend her black race and live as a white woman. Even if she identifies herself as white and experiences race as something which is socially constructed and performative, the dictates of racial classification in accordance with the one-drop logic are inescapable.

The Tragic Mulatto Trope

In Transcending Blackness, Joseph examines cultural representations of blackness and mixed race. As she puts it, many such representations “equate mixed-race with pain: the multiracial individual is mired in the confusion and problems imagined to be inherent in the racial mixture of black and white” (1). These images of biracial individuals, tragically at odds with their biracial identity, are essentially renewed versions of the old literary stereotype of the “tragic mulatto” or “mulatta”. The tragic mulatto trope has been used in a number of works of literature and film, including the character of Clare Kendry in Passing, often as a sort of cautionary example which equates biracialism with something dangerous, wrong, or doomed.

As previously mentioned, one of the seeming dilemmas of people with mixed race heritage is that many of them feel pressure to choose one race over another.

On the one hand, racist logic like the one-drop rule renders it next to impossible for biracial individuals to identify themselves as white. On the other hand, cultural representations of mixed race often portray successful biracials as those who are able to “transcend” their blackness because “multiracial blackness is disdained for its imagined primordially raced nature, with its tragic-mulatta lineage” (Joseph 4).

The use of the tragic mulatto stereotype in artistic representations, including

Larsen’s portrayal of Clare, has played a significant role in manifesting the notion of blackness as a deficit, something to rid oneself of.

According to Joseph, the stereotype of the tragic mulatto has a dark history, particularly for women or “mulattas”: “The sexualized figure of the tragic mulatto or mulatta featured prominently in slavery-era “fancy girl” (prostitution) markets”

(Joseph 12). Mulattas were also frequently the victims of rape and sexual abuse by white men, due in part to “ideas of mixed-race female hypersexuality” (Joseph 12).

This notion of mulatta hypersexuality can be seen in many artistic representations of biracial women, including that of Clare Kendry who is presented as the seductress in Passing. As Joseph explains: “the mixed-race African American body is . . . tied to an imagined, excessive sexuality” (33).

The stereotype of the tragic mulatto, beyond the myth of hypersexuality, is also marked by a belief that biracials are psychologically unstable. Edward Reuter, who wrote about mulattos from a social scientific perspective in The Mulatto in the

United States (1918), described them as “uncertain” and “self-conscious” in their racial identities. As Joseph points out, Reuter’s analysis of mulattos contributed to the tragic mulatto myth narrative of “psychological dysfunction” (17) and the idea that biracial people are inherently unstable. Many Critical Mixed Race scholars point to a problematic tendency to view biracial individuals as psychologically unstable, because they are perceived to be uncertain of their own identities and worth in relation to people who belong to one specific race, particularly white people who are viewed as the “superior” group (Joseph 17). The implication is that people of mixed race have some form of inherent inferiority complex and psychological dysfunction which render them unstable. This is also reflected in the character of Clare who is portrayed as dangerous and unstable, on the brink of tragedy.

Some critics have argued that Passing defies the narrative of the tragic mulatto, “foregrounding other issues that move the novel beyond the tragic mulatto type” (Wagner 144). However, in a number of ways, Clare appears to fulfill the archetype and the cautionary narrative which goes along with the racist trope. Throughout the book, language is used to describe Clare as “hyper- eroticized” (Gillespie 22), and there is a clear “subtext of seduction” (Gillespie 22)

suggested in connection with her character, despite the fact that she never actually does anything sexual in the novel. Irene describes Clare as having a “seductive caressing smile” (Larsen 58) and “stepping always on the edge of danger” (Larsen

7). She is presented as the unstable and seductive “exotic other”4 who poses a threat to the stability of Irene’s existence. “Irene, finally, cannot function with

Clare’s dangerous presence” (Wagner 153).

Gillespie also points to the tragic mulatto trope as it is represented in the death of Clare, alleging that the novel has an “allegiance to the formulaic tragic mulatto tale in which a mixed-race protagonist typically tries to escape the wretchedness of black life by passing as white and, by a life of suffering, is made to pay the price of his or her transgression” (13). The “hazardous business of

‘passing’” (Larsen 36), in the words of Irene, can be dangerous. As Gillespie points out, “transgressing such boundaries may prove fatal, particularly for women” (12). For Clare, the act of passing, of “pretending” to be a white woman, sets in motion a chain of events which ultimately lead to her death. Thus, her racial transgression is finally punished in the harshest of ways and the novel reinforces the stereotypical cautionary narrative of the tragic mulatto.

Conclusion

It can be said that in Passing, Nella Larsen defies the tragic mulatto trope as it applies to Clare Kendry because Larsen avoids many of the conventions of the stereotype. Clare displays none of the anguish or guilt traditionally associated with the tragic mulatto stock character. She appears to enjoy the benefits of passing as a

4 The term “exotic other” is most commonly used in Postcolonial literary criticism and comes from the European tradition of “Orientalism” which identifies the East as “other” and inferior to the West. At the same time, “the East is seen as a fascinating realm of the exotic, the mystical and the seductive” (Barry 195).

white woman, and only the fear of being found out can disturb her enjoyment.

However, by punishing the choice Clare makes to first pass as a white woman and then not remain on her chosen side of the colour line, Larsen creates a narrative which ultimately manifests the idea that racial transcendence is wrong. Thus the narrative of the novel falls into the trap of being yet another racist cautionary tale of the tragic mulatto.

In the tragic final scene of Passing, Clare falls to her death: “Gone! The soft white face, the bright hair, the disturbing scarlet mouth, the dreaming eyes, the caressing smile, the whole torturing loveliness that had been Clare Kendry. That beauty that had torn at Irene’s placid life” (Larsen 179). When she is killed, it is unclear if she has been pushed by Irene or, as some critics have speculated, committed suicide. Regardless of the cause, her death underscores the underlying themes of racial transgression and the tragic mulatto in the novel. Seen through the lens of the duplicate selves narrative, Clare’s death resolves the conflict which has been brewing between her and Irene throughout the novel. Once she is eliminated and punished for her transgression, Clare no longer threatens Irene’s secure existence on the black side of the racial spectrum. As Irene’s “white” double,

Clare’s death is also symbolic because it is ultimately the white identity or self which is taken away. Remaining is the black one – Irene - who accepts her “true” race in allegiance with the racist one-drop logic which dictates that a person of mixed race is really black. Just as Alice Beatrice Jones faced the devastating consequences of being “found out” when her white husband Leonard Kip

Rhinelander attempted to annul their marriage in the infamous 1925 trial, Clare

Kendry is also ultimately “found out” to be black, and punished accordingly.

The duplicate selves narrative of Passing fuels the racist undertone of the novel because it sets up a black/white dichotomy, creating the basis upon which to draw comparisons between the two sides of the divisive colour line. Through

Larsen’s depiction of the two women as white and black mirror images on opposite ends of the racial spectrum, the notion of black inferiority is perpetuated and whiteness is presented as superior and prized.

Still today, artistic representations of multiracials fall into the trappings of the tragic mulatto trope. Joseph argues that the inherently racist representations of individuals of mixed race, in particular women, which stem from the tragic mulatto stereotype at play in works of literature from the early 20th century such as Passing, continue to influence the way in which biracial individuals are perceived in society. “The tragic-mulatta genealogy dictates the new millenium mulatta’s iteration of angry and sad race girl” (Joseph 20). Although it may not have been Larsen’s intent, her depiction of Clare takes its place in a long line of doomed mulatta characters still influencing racist notions of multiracials today.

Passing is a novel which is preoccupied with the notion of racial identity, specifically the dilemma of finding one’s own racial identity as an individual of mixed race. One can imagine that Larsen’s own experience of displacement as a biracial woman, of feeling like an outsider because of the duality of her heritage, of weighing the benefits and costs of black and white in a race-fixated society, informed the painful narratives of Clare and Irene as biracial women on opposite ends of the colour line. As doubles or duplicates of one another, the women represent the different choices biracial women are forced to make in search of their true race and identity. Ultimately though, what Larsen uncovers in Passing is the

true tragedy of biracialism and the “tragic mulatto” forever navigating the divisive colour line.

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