Week 4, entry two

Based on the excerpt I would want to read more of Nella Larsen’s Passing. Both Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry have upper-middle class privileges but feel unsatisfied. In addition to exploring those voids, a more complete picture of Clare Kendry could be provided given the full text. The excerpt seems very much about Irene, while only the foreword provided by the editor gives a sample of Kendry’s domestic life. Most of all, the full text would provide a complete picture of this urban gentility that draws from the Southern legacy.

Within Passing there is some remodeling of Southern gentility to fit Harlem. Specifically, this is the life Irene Redfield embraces, and the life she suspects Clare Kendry to be disrupting. The silence between Irene and her husband Brian mirrors the unspoken tension of those empty, arranged marriages in the South. Irene seeks to harbor her children within that gentility by marking the racial issue taboo.

This lifestyle affects both Irene and Brian. Brian feels frustrated that his professional growth has stagnated and seeks to move to Brazil. Meanwhile, the serenity and composure Irene affects, in the face of infidelity, makes her feel “years, not months, older” in the short time she suspects Brian’s affair. Harlem seems inhospitable to providing the systems that sustain this elitism Irene lives. The snowy and arid months match the despair pervading Irene’s relationship, which provides no recourse in the cool, temperate climates of the South. Her social network does not actively live the urban gentility life style, as Irene discovers Felise passing, which provides no recourse in the elaborate social networks evidenced in the South. Additionally, Irene seems to internally struggle with this lifestyle, as seen in her response to Clare’s value of money. Irene internalizes her response, feeling: “Her reason partly agreed, her instinct wholly rebelled” (Larsen, 463). This reason, logic, may have been constructed over the years of this privileged middle class life, while the instinct may be the sum of her experiences, the reminders of her skin color in a segregated United States.