In a society dictated and governed by color, the complex identities and relationships of the characters in Nella Larsen’s Passing are not printed in grayscale. In a time when the color of one’s skin determines one’s fate, race, and opportunities, color in Passing is attributed like any other quality. Living in a society where color is all that matters, what enables or prohibits relationships, what connects and divides, the characters in Passing view the picture of race not in aesthetic black and white but rather in vivid Technicolor.
The use of terms such as ‘black’ and ‘white’ in the novel signifies a much more complex separation between the commonly contrasted descriptions of race. For Irene and the narrator of Passing, there are more shades to ‘black’ and various tones of ‘white’. In a world that loves to organize people by colors, Irene’s sketches of race are far more graphic, far more animated. In Irene’s eyes, all characters, whether black or white, have a distinct and personal color.
In Irene’s eyes, all characters, whether black or white, have a distinct and personal color.
Clare’s portrait is the most colorful one in the novel as it is subjected to various points of view. Irene describes her as having “slanting black eyes” and “bright hair” (10), an image that keeps recurring throughout. Her eyes are also “dark, almost black”, and her mouth “like a scarlet flower against the ivory of her skin” (16). Irene also paints her with “pale gold hair”, lips of “geranium-red” and “black lashes” (30). These seem to be Clare’s dominant descriptions, for Irene once again calls her “golden”, with “golden feet” and eyes “sparkling like dark jewels” (75). Other characters’ views of Clare expand her picture: for her husband Jack, she was “as white as a lily” (40) and for Hugh Wentworth she is “the blonde beauty out of the fairy-tale” (77).
Penguin UK.
Irene as a master-painter reveals the plurality, contrasts, and uniqueness of racial identity by distinguishing between complexions even for people of the same race. Bob Kendry, Clare’s father, is described as having a “pasty-white face” (10) yet Clare’s escort at the Drayton was “very red in the face” (15). Jack’s portrayal, on the other hand, includes his “dark brown” hair and “dough-coloured face” (40). In a way, Irene humanizes the distinction between ‘black’ and ‘white’ by personalizing these terms in her description of the characters, all of whom, in one way or another, cannot escape ‘coloring’ and are all attributed a color by her.
The collection of such descriptions reveals that Passing is not only a story of race, class, and desire, but also a story of contrasts.
The rest of the main and even minor characters who appear sporadically in the novel are separately and individually ‘colorized’: Liza has an “ebony face” (33), Brian has “tea-coloured fingers” (57) and skin of a “deep copper colour” (54), Zulena is a “mahogany-coloured creature” (54) and Hugh Wentworth has eyes of “clouded amber” (78). The collection of such descriptions reveals that Passing is not only a story of race, class, and desire, but also a story of contrasts. To use the exact words of Hugh Wentworth when seeing Clare, “fair and golden, like a sunlit day” dancing with the “dark […] like a moonlit night” Ralph Hazelton, Passing provides a “nice study in contrasts” (77); contrasts which are beautiful like “the silver spoon in the white hand slit[ting] the dull gold of the melon” (16), intense like the “brown eyes” returning the stare of the other’s “black ones” (16), ironic like a white man “surrounded by three black devils, drinking tea” (42) and unexplained, mysterious, and outstanding like the “purple ink” (10) against an ordinary pile of letters.
