Passing into Impossibility

“The tragic mulatta” exists in a realm of her own between black and white societies, struggling to assume an identity in one of the two. Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry, characters of Nella Larsen’s Passing , were born alike as mulattas but their decisions in life have led them to diverging paths that sets Clare on one side of the “tragic mulatta” and Irene on the other. Meeting by chance twelve years after Clare had left to pursue an identity in white society, the two develop a relationship of social and sexual desire for each other that cannot be satisfied and only serves to encumber each other’s life. The attempt to uphold such a relationship results in the destruction of both lives – the ultimate end of impossibility. The context and conclusion of their relationship reflects the impossibility of successful social boundary transgressions.
Race transgression offers an escape to burdens of race, yet to fully benefit from transgression one has to cut off all tie...